Live Music 1 - birthdays on the beach

Tuesday 26th August - Felix reaches 17 and Arvid reaches some rather larger figure! He and Jo also arrive for their holiday.

The Hains planned a magnificent party on one of the small hidden beaches before Gramenon.

We were taken out there in the camper van and found a huge bonfire, delicious food cooked at the campsite, punch in a watermelon, but not much light!

As well as the birthday boys and family and ourselves there were Eion and Julia from Surrey and Felix and Antonia from Vienna. We were treated to great jamming, setting the tone for the next two weeks.

Reluctant Hero (and half of a pair of plonkers!)

Friends Rainer, Doris, Felix and Lucas arrived from Germany in their new camper van for an extended stay from 22nd August. Many Brownie points were awarded for their itinerary:- by land all the way to Piraeus passing though a handful of Balkan countries.

Points were then forfeited by the boys for gross stupidity on their first night here! On their way back to the van they played volley ball with the keys using telephone wires as the net. Inevitably the keys got caught up there, and the boys then threw up a wallet to dislodge them. This (containing inter alia passport and a very valuable travel pass) landed on a random balcony. It was about 1 a.m.! Disaster! Many fruitless strategies were adopted but eventually young Nikos from Yanni's Place - not known for his proactive behaiour stepped in, found a ladder from somewhere (no questions asked!) and retrived the items. He wallowed in the praise!

Harvest moon!

A full moon again, so time to update! Chloe joined us from 3rd to 13th September filling the gap between her gap year and going to Brighton Uni.

It was the first time she had seen the new apartment and she was particularly taken with the bougainvillea and view on our balcony.

We had a week in Paleo with plenty of beach time, wind-driven days at Anidri and the Viena, good meals and stories from Chloe of Cuba, S America, Morocco, our flat in Fuerte, Tribe of Doris Festival and Oxford japes. She made a collection of photos around the village to share on Facebook with all those similarly-aged guys and gals who no longer loaf around here in August.

We then had three days camping at Mithimna (see earlier postings) - very quiet and a bit windy! On the Friday we went to do some business in Chania and had a Chinese meal - with duck!- bliss! On Saturday we investigated the Akrotiri and found a very pleasant beach at Kalathas. Then Chloe took the ferry back to Piraeus and we drove back to Mithimna.

Yesterday we came back home to Paleo. The weather had apparently been very good whilst we were away. The main topic of conversation in the village - of course - is the collapse of XL and Kosmar.

Hanging out in (C)Hania

The Ch is pronounced as a hard H so the C is sometime omitted!

We are halfway through our 15 week stay in Paleo so last Tuesday we went for a break in Chania. We were armed with helpful directions from Pascale, Canadian Pete and Calyso Barry so we began with trips to out-of-town superstores various, with some success, but it was at least 39 C, so soon we repaired to the fab fish restaurant by the Nea Hora. They don't publicly hang out their octopus to tenderise as here -this is nearby!

We had a recommendation of a small Norwegian-owned hotel and that turned out to be very comfortable and cheap. In the evening we set off to find a Chinese restaurant for the much-missed duck, but with no hints on this we failed, Ruth twisted her knee and so we fought our way back round the Old Harbour (crowded and naff!), hobbled back to Nea Hora, had a beer in a very civilised little bar and went to bed with no supper!

Next day after Norwegian breafast we resumed the shopping quests but panicked at the sight of enormous queues at the few petrol stations that were open. We had little idea what was going on - just part of Crete affected as shown on national news - so we reluctantly decided not to waste diesel on trips round the city. Hence the lighting shop was never found! We did however get two sunbeds en route back (they just fitted into the car) and have a little stop in Kastelli-Kissamos, which is always nice! On return to Paleo we found we had missed two pretty good beach days. Later on the Living in Crete forum. (http://www.livingincrete.net) we discovered the story of the fuel protest (It lasted just those two days)

That's more like it!

... flacid flags at last!

On Saturday afternoon the wind dropped and the rest of the Bank Holiday weekend has been as warm and still as one wants it - with perfect sea as well!

The beach has been crowded of course - and the traffic ghastly, but they will be going back to Chania or Athens tonight or tomorrow!

All good news for the Brits like Noreen and Tamara expected on Tuesday and possibly despondent after reading of the last moon cycle's weather! Things can only get better!

We had a red(dish) moon this evening following the partial eclipse last night.

The figures here are based on an old sepia photograph of intrepid early foreign visitors. A Dutch guy made the metal statue in the 90's and donated it to the town. This is its second resting place - the sunset mirador on the sandy beach. Currently it has chalked-on visual features - last month it was lime-green paint!

A blip on the weather front!

Here is the town end of the beach at peak beach-time on Friday 8th August! On dear!!
Note the demise of half the semi-permanent straw parasols, the "white horses"in the sea and the complete absence of sunbathers!
Our records show (how sad - retired - nothing better to do!) that for the lunar month since the last (red) full moon we have had 16 out of 28 days that most people thought unbeachable.
Eight days or so have been lovely and four debatable. This is not how it should be!


Particularly cheesed off will be the Brits who had Tuesdays 22/7 to 5/8 as their time here. You needed to be very philosophical and into unbeachy things to keep your karma!
We heard that other places - even on the South coast - were having a better time, but how to get there?

This is the Samaria having a rough time docking one evening, and you would not have wanted to be on that boat!

Almost every day Meteo Greece has forecast 5 or 6 Beaufort and the "realtime" weather station just above our apartment (http://www.meteo.gr/stations/paleochora/) has told of gusts around 60 km/hr (which we now know to be high 7/ low 8). It has felt worse!! No structural damage (to anything permanent) but a lot of minor casualties - from wine glasses via lilos (off to Libya) to lethal sharp-pointed parasols and flying metal sunbeds! Tempers are fraying!! Climate change - what climate change? .. and today is the dreaded 15th - about the only reliably profitable weekend for many business-people here. Doom and gloom prevail!

Desperate Measures

Last Monday the weather was perfect - what a relief!

It didn't last! Ever since we have had gale force winds everyday - with especially noisy nights. Add to this a sense that tourism (or tourists who spend) is in decline, and we have desperate measures!

Kostas at the Cosmogonia has responded with pancakes - but note the translation to Czech and Finnish. He was so desperate that he edged up the street so that he was in front of the radio station studio. The staff didn't know whether to laugh or cry - images of pancakes on turntables!

On the other hand Kostas' place was heaving a few days before when there was live music:- Swedish Mats, NZ/Kenilworth Mike and Spaniakos/Leamington Richard playing Rock & Blues very delightfully. The tale of what Fluffy Alex's girlfriend did to need reprimand can wait!

Anyway, this left us with days too windy for the beach. One morning we saw that Yvette had a bare rear-end! The wind had ripped her special cover. So we took it off and went out for two short drives. One was to the Hotel Viena on Thursday -a great little place that few know about (well- till now - no! few know about!) with a quiet grassy garden well above sea level and a clean swiming pool.

On Saturday we went to the newish taverna at Grammenon which was packed with out-of-town Greeks and a bit sheltered from the wind. Some dramatic statistics for wind gusts on the real-time weather station site - but the forecast just keeps on saying Beaufort 6, which must be wrong! Metal sunbeds have been reported as flying!