Greek Myths

Here are a few surprises for me and information:

- All roads in the town are actually sidewalks that cars feel the need to drive on and no where to park an actual car.

-Roads are like a driveway...the main road all around the island reminds me of the road to the Lake House. That quality. Also the island is a big rock. The roads have been blasted into the hillside and a bit of concrete splashed down and now its considered the road to travel on. You might see a guard rail or more often not...and if you happen to glance down, you are about 300-400 feet above the ocean water or gully. The goats seem not to have a problem but feel they have the right-of-way and this is another road concern. Need-less-to-say, you travel about 15mph and it takes forever to get anywhere.

-All Greek food is not just seasoned with lemon and oregano. It is very good and a great variety. Not a lot of meat is used and at dinners (I mean at the aunties houses) it reminds me of Grandma Nugents house....at least 3 types of veggies are served.

-Bread, where to begin. My weekness. Auntie bakes bread every other day. She has these great baking pans about 50yrs old and about 4inches high and they are square that take up the whole oven space. She fills these pans as quickly as I can put together a pie. Then when ready to come out of the oven, a large cotton cloth is put on the kitchen floor, upturn the pan and break apart the loaves which look a bit like our french bread shape. You keep doing this same process because you have 3 pans. One pan is for regular eating and the other breads are then spliced and put back into the over to slow bake to remove all moisture. This bread is now stored and used to "dunk"...you can buy it at all the bakeries.

-We picked up a hitchhiker...a little old Greek woman was standing by an old cemetary carved into the hill waving her cane and shouting. We stopped and fortunately we had cousin Chris with us who could understand her. She was just waiting for a ride to get back into town. Cute and very typical looking old gal. We sort of figured out from the conversation, that all her family has died and she visits the cemetary for a few days? or few hours? can't tell and then back into the city.

-Everyone is related somehow and everyone is a cousin. Amazing, got to be a little cross-breeding somewhere. Charley is a little sensative to my comments on this.

-Polmigranites (SP?) - they grow upside down on the branches,lot of volunteer fruit trees mixed in the old olive orchards. Other trees, orange, apple, lemon, lime, fig....speaking of fig...not bad. I think we have had them over ripe and the ones I've had aren't outragiously sweet.

-Lots of flies - crazy you would think we are in Montana on a ranch.

-Siesta - all shops close up about 3pm-6pm for nap time....and I mean everything. You can't even purchase a bottle of water.

Well this is longer than I thought, but I'll think of more Greek facts and report more later.