Pascha or Pasxa, Greek Easter. Megali Evdomada, This week, the week before the Easter celebrations, is known in Greece as Megali Evdomada, Holy Week or Great Week. Today is Megali Pempti, Holy Thursday, the day that traditionally, the people of Greece hard boil and die their eggs the colour of the blood of Christ –…
I guess that you all know by now that the Island of Crete has a huge number of wildflowers. Many are found only in Crete. It is in the springtime that these flowers mostly burst out into their individual beauty. And that is when I’m on the prowl with my trusty camera. These pictures were…
Tomorrow is clean Monday, the first day of Lent, and the day that all Greeks go and fly a kite on the beach or a high hill. But today, today was Carnival Day. Here are some pictures of our local carnival in the town of Kalives, Hania. These are a few of the well-dressed locals…
The island of Spinalonga (actual name Kalidon) lies just off the coast of the village of Plaka, near Elounda, Agios Nicholaos, in Crete. The name Spinalonga is Venetian meaning ‘Long Thorn’. It came to note in the year 1579 when the occupying Venetians created a fortress on the island. Some years later when the Ottoman…
We decided to visit the Skinakas Observatory. Here is the blurb info: “The Skinakas Observatory is located on the peak of Skinakas at an altitude of 1750 m., a few kilometres after Anoyia and 60 km from Heraklion. The Skinakas Observatory has been built and operates as part of a scientific research collaboration between the…
For all those of you who responded to my last posting, here are the words of Joni Mitchell herself regarding Matala in Crete and the song ‘Carey’. It appears that Joni was in Matala, Crete around 1970/72 – five years after 1966 when I went there and it seems that it had developed a bit…
Those of you who may have read my book Secret Crete, Searching for my Home, will have come across my visit to Matala in 1966. Or you may have heard the stories from the days when this tiny bay became the hippie capital of Crete. Why Matala in the sixties happened I don’t know, but…
I know that it’s a little after Valentines’s Day on February 14th, but this clip from Giannis Kotsiras singing Stin Ygeia Mas in English on Greek Television is just right . . . . Love me tender on Greek Television Views: 32
I was very pleased to get our olive harvest in and pressed when I did because this last Cold Snap just beggar’s belief. This morning the cat’s water that we leave outside was frozen solid. Two inches of ice in a place where we never hardly ever approach zero centigrade never mind get to minus…
Last year we harvested the olives pretty early, the first couple of weeks in November and the oil was great, if a little peppery. This year we waited a little until the day after New Years day, the first week in January for the olive harvest. This time we had an Incredible Olive Harvest much…
The Labyrinth of Crete is situated around 3 km northeast of the archaeological site of Gortys in central Crete. It is an underground quarry in marly limestone, excavated probably during the Roman Period. It was first described and mapped in the 18th and 19th centuries. More detailed descriptions have been published recently. Below is the…
I was asked recently by someone to post some of my old pictures of Crete. Well, this meant digging them out if I could, and I have lost most of them over the years. Then it meant scanning them and trying to present them at their best and the truth is that there are not…
