The Sadness of Zorba

One of the changes in Paleochora that got missed in the last post is the sad closure of the open-air cinema! Greyrocks was on speaking terms with the charming couple who ran it for as long as we have been visiting (30 years)
An evening there in the twentieth century was truly special! The next night's film would be  advertised on the three boards around the village and the reels come down on the bus. It could be anything! Just one projector meant at least one break at a random point, and time to buy another bottle of retsina. It was not unknown for a cat to walk across the screen and it was one of the few places in the village with mosquitoes. The local youth sat smoking at the back, and reacted some seconds after the rest having read the subtitles!
In recent years things changed with the advent of DVDs. It opened on fewer evenings and showed a more limited range of films. But now it is no more, as the husband passed away over the winter, and the family want to build a hotel on the site. On hearing the news we thought how sad it is that we will no longer see that tattered old poster for "Zorba the Greek": a film they showed every couple of weeks - putting up the price for tourists! And then - last weekend - we made our  trip to Chania to escape the wind.

On Sunday morning we went in search of the right breakfast and ended up with coffee outside the Centre for Mediterranean Architecture near the Old Harbour, and became aware of a high level of activity. There was - eerily - an exhibition dedicated to "Zorba the Greek"!

It included film posters from all over the world, many documents related to the production and on a video loop the iconic "sirtaki" sequence and some contemporaneous footage from awards ceremonies. We loved it.

Here is the sequence!

 This was just part of a glorious Sunday spent walking round the back streets. We stopped for a beer in simple square at a kafenion where we were the only customers with alcohol, and then followed custom and practice by eating savoury pastries from the bakery next door. We had three days of Nea Hora sunbathing and swimming, which was pleasant but too crowded to be any sort of competition for Paleo, and two evenings available for un-Paleo-like dinners. For one we found a newly opened Chinese (well fusion really!) and had some wonderful duck!

We came back on the bus on Monday afternoon and all was still; but we heard that Saturday had, indeed, been "unbeachable", so it was definitely worth it!

Feast your eyes on some of these weather stats for Paleochora in July (like Saturday 22nd)!