After the eventual opening of the High Street there began a series of cultural events. First there was the 2nd International Chess Tournament. A large chessboard was painted on the pavement outside the community centre, and each evening there was a line of tables where the youngsters played.The Live Music scene has also been very rich this year! The Skala has had a live band almost every Monday - rock, jazz or funk - and you can sit on the rocks by the jetty to listen if the bar itself is full.
One of our favourite acts came to the Atoli: dear old Angel Skordilis! He has featured on the blog before and is as competent as ever - doing a Santana medley finale to blow the mind!Early on there had been a couple of evenings when Swedish Mats played at the Seagull - mostly Dylan, but also happy to play along with other numbers from fellow guitarists. An on-going theme between him and us has been our delay in buying his CD. He has now gone home and we still haven't bought one!
And then along came Mike from Kenilworth with daughter Sophia, so the baton was passed to them and Richard (see last year!). The venue has moved down to Yanni's Place and they played there several times during their fortnight's stay!On the official side there was some sort of inter-cultural song and dance festival over three days. Last year the guest troupe was from Cyprus. This year Brazil (no idea why!)
.. and of course we have had a few famous Cretan bands playing on Saturday nights down by the old port jetty. Each time this happens there is an outbreak of "Greek tourist behaviour" in the village. Its features are at least as well known and despised amongst the locals as amongst we onlookers. These include ridiculous double and triple-parking to avo
id any walking or to buy a frappe, rude treatment of waiters (including clicking of the fingers), lining up empty beer bottles on the ground beside the table, over-ordering and playing with food, and heavy petting which would cause thier Mama to have a fit if she saw it!Anyway... whilst the evenings have been rich and varied the days have been dominated by weather! In the last week of July we had been detered from going to the beach (or had been driven off from it) so many times that we decided to go to Chania. Up there we had no wind! We stayed the night in a small but very comfortable hotel on the front at Nea Hora. We found the cheaper Chinese (Shanghai Lily near the bus station) and got the l
onged-for duck. We went to the market and bought prunes for Judy and John, then did the three-supermarket trail in order to stock up on goodies for us. When we got back to Paleochora it was windy!!! The full moon was on 5th August and just before it we had a couple of glorious sunny and still days. Then there was a couple of days of the unusual West wind which brought out the windsurfers.We chose restaurants to optimise views of the lovely red moons which followed, and as we sat in one we had a frantic series of SMSs from Chloe and Chris as they travelled from Santorini to Heraklion and hence to us. (They had been determined not to come to us here, but were persuaded - possibly by diminishing money!)
They arrived on Saturday 8th and stayed three nights until we all moved on. They didn't have great weather, but we took them for some excellent food (see the Crocodile plate!), played Scrabble and cards, did their washing and had some great conversations. Bob and the kids walked the Anidri Triangle despite the wind.