Photos On!

I posted the photos for Barcelona if you want to go back and see them. Stoupa coming up soon.

Tomorrow we are off to Hydra, Greece, an island. Then Nice France on Friday.

Home in 2 months!

Stoupa Greece three Weeks of Peace, Almost

Three Weeks in Stoupa

We weren't even sure when we started out that we would come to Greece for sure, although it was on the list. It got on the list because Anika was interested in visiting Greek temples of the gods after reading the Lightning Thief series. Her interest waned but Greece stayed on the list. I have a cousin I hadn't seen in years, since I was Anika'a age, who lives in Athens. That was another reason to come. And we knew people in Santa Cruz who had a house they rent in a Greek beach town. Now after three weeks in Stoupa I think we would all agree this is one of the most magical places we have been and one we want to come back to. And we haven't even seen much of the rest of Greece yet.

View of Stoupa from the Acropolis (hill near by)

When we arrived my cousin Mechthild and her boyfriend Thomas picked us up at the airport. This in itself felt luxurious. We didn't have to figure out a new country and language all on our own. They rented a car and drove us to Stoupa, about five hours away from Athens in the Peloponnese, on the Mani peninsula. We had rented a house in Stoupa that belongs to one of my co workers in CA. Stoupa is a beach side town that has become a mecca for British and Northern European tourists. But it is still very small and charming. When we got here there were hardly any other visitors the first week. Each week more came, but it still doesn't feel crowded. They say in July and August it really fills up but right now that's hard to imagine.

Mechthild and Thomas

We arrived in the dark, pretty late. Right away I noticed the smells. Stoupa is the best smelling place we have been. Honeysuckle, jasmine, sage, lavender, oregano, rosemary and many others I don't know the names for all perfume the air. We settled in the house and went to the first of many excellent Greek meals at Pefko, one of the closest restaurants to the house. We can walk there in five minutes. Although it was after 10pm the owner really went all out. It didn't hurt that my cousin, who is German but has lived in Greece for close to 20 years, speaks perfect Greek and knows how to order. We had a delicious feast. Welcome to Greece!

Olive Grove

The next morning was sunny, blue sky and warm, just glorious. We took our first walk along the ocean and above the cliffs on a bike path that goes between Stoups and the next town Agios Nicolous, kind of like Westcliff. We passed olive tree groves and wild flowers blooming and of course all the good smelling plants I listed before. On the other side was the Mediterranean and the rocky cliffs tumbling into it. We stopped in Agios Nicolus and had a drink by the little harbor there. It was all picture perfect. When we got back Mechthild and Thomas had to head back to Athens. It was a magical start to our time in Stoupa.

Wild flowers along the coast walk

Harbor at Agios Nicolous

The first week and a half the weather was hot and sunny. We went in the water every day. It is not warm like say Hawaii, but it is warmer than CA. Part of what keeps it cool is a series of cold springs that are just off shore along the coast here. What made it enticing for me (and I don't like cold water) was that it is crystal clear, you can see every rock on the bottom. We had snorkel gear so we could see the fish and rocks. It's not a coral reef of technicolor fantasy like Indonesia, but it was still pretty. The water had a silky texture and there were no waves or undertows to worry about. The next week and a half it cooled down and rained from time to time so we did not go in the water. But we lucked out and it warmed up our last few days and we got a great beach day for the end of our time. There is a small rocky beach where we went most of the time five minutes from the house. But there is also a larger, perfectly curved main beach and another very sandy beach all within short walking distance. The sandy beach has several restaurants right on the beach. There seems to be a little more activity with volley ball, paddle ball and more families on this beach. The day we spent there a big Greek group, looked like they were celebrating something, came and did Greek folk dancing in one of the restaurants.

The amazing clear and colorful water of the Mediterranean Sea

We had a car for a few days and used it to explore some of the hill towns that are hard to get to any other way. There seems to be very little public transportation in this part of Greece. There was a train but it got cut back to almost no service due to the current economic crisis. There were more buses but same thing. The Mani area didn't have a road until the 70's and electricity only came a little before that. Before that time people took boats from village to village or donkey and walked. There are very old stone paths through out the mountains that were a main form of transportation back in the donkey walking days. Some are very broken down and grown over, others you can hike on.

Tower house in Mani hill town

The tiny towns are mostly uninhabited. They all have a church or several of them. Houses are often old and crumbling or only lived in for summer or vacation. Many towns have the remnants of watch towers and other buildings from the past. The towns are fun to explore as you wander on narrow paths, barely streets, between buildings that sometimes dead end or sometimes open up to a square or church yard. Every town has a taverna so you can stop for a drink. There are also the ruins of monasteries tucked away in the mountains. As you are walking you look up and see churches in the most difficult to reach looking places, perched on the edge of cliffs or at the top of a precipice. There are over 1,000 churches here in the Mani some from Byzantine times are 1,200 years old. When you open the door (if its not locked) it can be a surprise. Inside are paintings, frescoes, sometimes well preserved in brilliant colors. Some are white washed inside. Some are so small one person can barely stand inside and others its clear a small group still come regularly to worship. They are really interesting and everyone is a bit different. Many are also made with pieces of previous churches or buildings so they have a collage like look about them.

Narrow ally/streets

This was one of my favorite churches. You cannot tell form the photo but it is a collage of pieces from many older churches and temples reused to make this church from the 12th century.

This is Anika inside one of the smallest churches we visited.

Anika outside the same tiny church

Well preserved fresco inside one of the many churches we visited

One of our car trips was 2 and ½ hours north to Olympia for the Olympic torch lighting ceremony. The ceremony itself was really not that great, hot, crowded, not easy to see or hear what was going on. The ruins of Olympia were also not that impressive. We had a guide book and there were good signs in English. But we have seen some serious ruins at this point and these were not that well preserved. But you did get a feeling for how big the place was and how important it was in both ancient Greece and Rome. We were also disappointed because when we got to the museum around 3:00pm it was closed. The museum houses many of the best statues and remains from the site. It is closed early because of the cut backs due to the failing economy. But we can say we saw the 2012 summer Olympic torch get lit in Olympia ans start its journey to England.

Me where the athletes practiced

Anika in one of the tubs the athletes bathed in

Olympia

Our last big adventure was with a nice British couple who live here and their dog Jay. They took us to two monasteries we had wanted to visit but missed. It is easy to drive by things because there aren't good signs and often they are only in Greek. Both monasteries were in beautiful spots with views to the ocean. At one a herd of goats were also visiting. From there we went to a higher town. At night from the coast these towns way high up almost look like constellations. We had lunch over looking a deep gorge.

Anika by the bell at the first monastery

Part of the second monastery

Goats visiting the second monastery

Lunch time view of the gorge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 We then walked through the narrow, windy, ally ways of the village. On the side of one building we turned down an over grown path between a field and a stone wall. It ended at a small church (locked) with a fantastic view. We walked back and they led us down another path you would never find that eventually went along the gorge edge. It led out to a small church on the top of a rock out cropping with views in both directions down the gorge. It was the kind of view you can just sit there and drink in for a long time. One direction you looked down and saw a monastery and further on the ocean. Across there were caves in the gorge wall. Some had walls or what looked like the remains cliff dwellings on them. In the other direction the walls of the gorge were varied in color, rocks jutted out and the white rocks at the bottom of the gorge curved up and out of sight. Words and photos will not do this justice.

Church on rock outcropping

View from the church to the sea

We then walked through the narrow, windy, ally ways of the village. On the side of one building we turned down an over grown path between a field and a stone wall. It ended at a small church (locked) with a fantastic view. We walked back and they led us down another path you would never find that eventually went along the gorge edge. It led out to a small church on the top of a rock out cropping with views in both directions down the gorge. It was the kind of view you can just sit there and drink in for a long time. One direction you looked down and saw a monastery and further on the ocean. Across there were caves in the gorge wall. Some had walls or what looked like the remains cliff dwellings on them. In the other direction the walls of the gorge were varied in color, rocks jutted out and the white rocks at the bottom of the gorge curved up and out of sight. Words and photos will not do this justice.

Anika rescuing a tortoise on the way home

We did have one really scary experience here. One night while we were sleeping someone broke into the house. We had made it easy for them by leaving a window open. The bottom floor is really one room with the sleeping alcove we are in directly across form the window the thief came in. I don't know what made me wake up and start screaming. Dave says I first said to him someone is in the house, I think someone is in the house. Then I screamed like I have never screamed before. The thief fled through the window he came in. I remember seeing the shadow form of a person and a reddish light like from a flashlight (I almost wrote torch, I think we have been around too many British people!) I don't know the exact order of events after that because it was one of those times that time gets weird. We got up, turned on the light, looked what was missing. Just my camera. The miracle was the computer and mini external hard drive were on the table next to the camera. I had just downloaded the photos from the camera to the computer and then too the hard drive, before I went to bed. I looked at the clock it was 2:22am.  We found Anika's day pack outside and a wrench where the thief came in the window. We got Anika out of the back bedroom and her stuff and moved her in with us. We set up a bed on the floor but we all got in our bed together and of course couldn't go back to sleep.I looked at the clock, it was 3:22am.

Until here we have been so careful locking all our important things up every night no matter what. Everyone here, including the owners of the house, talk about how safe it is, they don't lock their houses or cars. But things are getting worse and worse economically here and people are probably getting more desperate. For a few nights I didn't sleep very well. But the days were still so good that I got over it. The same thing could have happened, and does happen, at home. We just don't leave anything unlocked there.

Stone floor in an old church

One of the best things about being here was I got into a great daily routine. I got up most days before Dave and Anika. I would go on the roof top terrace that looks to the sea on one side and the mountains on the other. I would do yoga and meditate. Then make myself tea and write in my journal. Around the time I finished with that they would wake up and we would have breakfast and decide what to do that day. The setting between the beach and the mountains, coupled with perfect weather and the quiet village life combined into a most peaceful setting. It was a perfect pace for life. It was also beautiful everywhere you looked. I took so many photos it was hard to pick what to post here. Visually it is amazing. That's why we stayed so long, it was so easy and pleasing to be here.

Greece - We Saw the Torch Get Lit

This is a short blog because it took so long to get these photos on here. We have been in Greece two weeks and are skipping Turkey to stay here longer. Yes, we have heard how great Turkey is, but its for another trip and where we are is just so comfortable, beautiful and easy we are not ready to go.



We drove to Olympia from Stoupa where we are staying and saw the torch lighting ceremony in the original Olympic stadium. There were speeches and dancing and lots of people. After we walked all over the ruins of the complex where athletes from all over Greece lived and trained. It was impressive.

The Torch goes by

Who are these crazy people chasing the torch!!!

Barcelona- Eight Days Were NOT Enough

I really wish I could post photos with this because it was a visual feast. You will just have to wait I am sorry to say.

Barcelona - Eight days was not enough

Part of a mural

I loved our time in Barcelona. Sitting here now in Greece, two weeks later, it feels very far way, a different life completely, from this little Greek beach town. Barcelona is a big city, one of the most visited in Europe. But as big and bustling as it is, it also have quiet and calm spots that were not hard to find. We had not been in a big city I really enjoyed since Santiago and that could not come close to the history, art, architecture and food Barcelona had to offer. (Although Santiago did have a lot of heart and spirit which makes up for other things.) All I know is I want to go back because we only saw a fraction of what this great city has to offer.

Skyline of Rambla

We flew from Buenos Aires to Barcelona. It was a long flight and we were tired when we got there. For the first time we did not stay in a hostel or hotel or even a regular rental unit. When I was looking for a place, and not feeling really excited by what I was finding, I posted on Thorntree, a section of the Lonely Planet web site where travelers can ask each other questions and give advice. One of my responses was try Air BnB, which I had never heard of. This is a web site where you can advertise a room in your house, your apartment or home to rent it to travelers. We connected to Cesar through the site and rented his apartment for about the same price as a hostel for three, but with a full kitchen, wifi, washing machine and outdoor terrace, all just for us. It felt very good to be in a home and he treated us as a host would. He stayed with his widowed mother for the week, who was happy to have him. We met his girl friend Laia. They are both math teachers and she has a side business running a writing school. They helped us figure out all kinds of things. They are hoping to take a year off to travel too so we had a lot to talk about. Apartment and friends in one!

The street our apartment was on.Its across the street from Dave.

The apartment was right around the corner from a metro stop so we were in the touristy parts of Barcelona in 15 minutes. Their public transportation is excellent, we could get anywhere we needed to go very easily including the airport. The metro runs every three minutes during the week and every five minutes on the weekend. They also have a system of bikes around town for locals to use. They pay a yearly fee and get a code. Then they can pick a bike up at one place and leave it at the next. Around Cesar's neighborhood, and throughout the city, there are many pedestrian only streets making it really good for walking and strolling. Why we don't have these in the US I don't know. We loved walking around the neighborhood where kids still play outside and everyone goes out and strolls around in the evenings. It was about a 20 minute walk to the beach and a beach front park. Within short waking distance there are every kind of shop you could want, bakery, fish, produce, deli, health food store and a big super market if you prefer that. There was also a covered outdoor market with booths selling everything, which we had experienced in Southern Spain on an earlier trip, ten years ago, when Anika was three and we had our first family trip to Europe. Now we were wondering why we had waited so long to come back. The place feels so civilized and easy to be.

Typical Rambla street. Notice the school class in the background. The town was over run with French school classes on field trips the entire time we were there.

Flower sellers St Jordi's day

After having a day to recover we headed to “the Rambla” the tourist area in the old part of the city. And we really just rambled. There was so much to see just walking down the streets; street performers, architecture (old and new), sculptures, shops selling all kinds of things, the central outdoor market with every part of every animal for sale, fresh squeezed juices by the cup, nuts, candy, peppers, olives, eggs, and ham of course. It was also Saint Jordi's day, a kind of Valentine's/Book Celebration day. The custom is for men to buy women roses and women to buy men a book. Book and flower sellers lined the streets and were doing a brisk business. Narrow streets branch off in all directions from the Rambla. As you wind around suddenly you are in front of an very old looking church, or a modern art museum or a shop selling nothing but knives and scissors. Or you are smelling pastry and coffee, or looking up at public art or stopping for tapas.

Old church in the Rambla area

Street performers. she looks like she came off the church behind her.

Vegetarian friends look away! One of the many interesting things for sale at the market.

Ah, tapas. We had really had it with the food in Argentina and Spain came to the rescue. The food was just our style. We love ordering lots of little plates and getting to try many things. They are meat eaters but it is not the featured item of every dish, seafood is also very popular. We love grilled sardines and anchovies, thinly sliced ham (there is an art to slicing it, we watched the artists at work), patron peppers with rock salt, little toasts with tomato and other treats piled on top. There are so many variations. To drink we would have a dry white wine or beer or a hearty red, or sangria. “Now how,” asked Dave, “ could Argentina not have food like this, this is what their ancestors came from!” Who knows. We also had a very memorable meal one day with Cesar and Laia. They took us to the village north of Barcelona, La Escala, that Laia comes from. We wanted to treat them but they ended up treating us to two styles of paella with seafood of every description. I have not liked muscles for a while but I decided to try them again. I am so glad I did because these, in a tomato based sauce, where so good, I could have eaten them all. I could go on and on about the food. We did not have one bad meal, the prices were moderate (like home or less) and shopping and cooking in the apartment with such fresh and varied ingredients was fun too. I don't have photos of tapas but here's more food form the market:

Dried fruits and nuts

Juice

Serrano Ham of course

Eggs of all varieties including Emu and Ostrich

Every day after our ramble through The Rambla we had another serving of eye candy. The city is full of art, museums, old churches and buildings and all styles of architecture. We went on a walking tour of Gaudi architecture. The guide was an art historian from Ireland. She had a wonderful voice and personality. We learned a lot about Gaudi and Barcelona. Barcelona is like a museum of Gaudi, most of his major works are here and many you can go inside. We spent the next two days seeing the inside of two of his famous buildings.

(She also shared that she is one of two out of five in her flat that she shares with a job. There is 25% unemployment in Spain and worst hit are people in their 20s. Cesar and Laia had to take 20% pay cuts. When I think about how we complained and moaned in Santa Cruz about cutting 5-10 days off the school year I realize how lucky we have been. They are also in a big up roar here because they are going to have to start paying something for prescriptions. More on that later.)
Gaudi building exteriors:

The Sagrada Familia, Gauid's biggest project, is still a work in progress. they hope to finish it in 14 years!

Interior Ceiling Sagrada Familia Church

We also visited the Joan Miro Foundation which is a museum dedicated to this artist who was born and lived much of his life in Barcelona. I love his work and have used it in my art classes because I think he is very accessible for a modern artist whose work can be very abstract. I loved several things about the museum. One is, like the Van Gogh museum in Amsterdam you can really get a feeling for his development as an artist over time. They even have a sketch he did when he was eight years old! Through his writings (which are shared with you via the audio tour) you can hear a bit of what he was thinking too. I also liked seeing his work in mediums other that painting or sculpture, things that are less famous but equally interesting. Last I loved that he had difficulty in his early drawing classes but he didn't let that stop him from pursuing what he loved to do. And his teacher advised him to feel the thing he was going to draw and then draw it without looking at it, just based on what his hands felt, well, I loved that advise too!

I didn't get any photos of Miro's work but this is a mural I liked. I don't know who the artist is.

You are probably all thinking well of course she was comfortable there, they speak Spanish and she was just working on that for four months. They do speak Spanish but they also speak Catalan which is like French, Spanish and Portuguese mixed up and reorganized into something else. Many signs are in Spanish and Catalan, some in English too if its a touristy area. There is a strong tradition of Catalan poetry and literature. The language was kept alive during the Franco dictatorship despite it being outlawed. As a matter of fact Catalonia was the last part of Spain to fall to Franco. Franco was the longest ruling dictator in European history. (See what you learn on a trip like this?!) We learned more details of the long history of this interesting and strongly independent, region during our stay. The strong attachment to socialism that has developed was the part that most attracted me.

View of La Escala where Cesar and Laia took us to lunch

On one of our last days we took the train to Figeres, north toward the boarder with France, to visit the Salvador Dali museum. Like the work of Dali, it is a trip. It is in an old theater that was partially destroyed during a war (I can't remember which one). He then turned it into a fantasy land of his art, with the intention of having more visitors than Picasso had at his museum in Barcelona. He was very competitive with Picasso. I think it worked because the place was packed almost to the point of making it not that enjoyable. But we did get to see many interesting, witty pieces and the design of the space is very unique. He was a great technician in many mediums and had an unusual visual vocabulary. But for me his work lacks some of the heart and spirit of someone like Miro. There might be more too it but there was no audio tour, or much written explanation, so you had to just go with your reaction to what you saw with no details of what he was thinking. There might be more to some of the pieces than optical tricks and bizarre combinations of images. There was a side gallery with jewelry he designed that was also very good.

Interior of largest gallery in Dali Museum

Anika and Dave in front of Dali museum

I mentioned the economic situation here earlier. Although Spain is in a terrible economic crisis and everyone is talking about it, as a tourist you don't feel it. Tourism in Barcelona is one of the biggest income generators. Many things are changing in Spain because they can not pay for all the services they have lived with for years now. And unemployment for the young is very high. If you are older you would not think of leaving your job, like I have, because it would be hard to get hired again. But the level and type of public services they enjoy are unlike what we have in the US where we are experiencing some of the same crisis. Universities are free. Medicine is socialized. Dave ran out of his thyroid medication. Cesar and Laia checked it out for us and told us where to get it and what doses it came in here. We went to the pharmacy and asked for the medicine, showing our empty bottle from the US. He turned to a shelf took down a box with fifty pills and asked for 3 euros, about 5$. Our mouths fell open, we thought it was a joke. Our co pay at home for the same medication is 20$. No prescription needed here either. They are talking about people here having to pay for medicine and it is coming as a shock to the public.

Protests in Barcelona after we left.

Michelle already asked what the color is for Barcelona. Red has to be one. But Miro adds yellow and black for me. Red, yellow and black, strong colors with flavor and fiery spirit. As for dogs in Spain its like Japan. They are well trained and cared for, no strays running about, and best of all, no poop to make walking a challenge. Why do people in some places pick up after their dogs and they don't in others? There's a question for future anthropological, sociological research .I felt in Barcelona like I did when I came to San Francisco the first time. I left and knew I had to comeback, I knew I would come back. I want to come back to Barcelona and see some of the things we didn't have time for like the Picasso Museum, Dali's home, Gaudi's home/museum, inside the churches the views from some of the hills to name a few. I want to eat more tapas. I want to learn more about the history of Spain and Catalonia. This is the best way to leave a place, wanting to come back for more.