A lemon tree of our own

Crazy puppies playing in Western Crete

I mentioned the other day that I had rediscovered some pictures we took in August last year, when Claire's mum was over visiting us. During her stay, we took a 'tourist train' out on the Western Crete adventure, and part of the trip was to visit a place where they made raki. When we got there, it wasn't as interesting as the place next door, which appeared to be a farm that made puppies. There were five of the little rascals running around causing mayhem. I took this video clip.

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All about raki. Sort of.

We recently found a batch of photographs I took last year on a 'tourist train' trip out to Western Crete, but had plonked into the wrong folder on my PC. This shot comes from a raki-making farm that we visited as part of the trip for a demonstration. And for some obligatory raki tasting. It looks to me that whoever did the translation had maybe had one too many shots of raki before they started writing...

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Tourists = Terrorists

We liked this bit of graffiti. Not least of which because it was only a few hundred metres down from where a local police chief had his car blown up by some very Greek direct activists!

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Doing Greece's bit for race relations

I spotted one of the gift shops in Chania doing its bit for Greece's race relations, with this 'blacking up' kit. Helpfully the packaging shows you how to put a ring through your nose and paint on 'comedy' red lips. Tasteful. Still I suppose the Conservatives in Britain have got to get their 'amusing' make-up from somewhere.

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Invasion of the blobs

With the terrible weather we've been having, lots of debris has washed up on the beaches we usually walk to town on. Most sinister of all has been these black blobs. Claire thinks it might be some kind of oil - but I'm slightly concerned it may be another attack by Omega's anti-matter blobs...

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The harbour takes a pounding from the sea

I couple of days ago I posted a video clip of how rough the sea was around the beach where we live. Here you can see the effect the wind and storms have been having on the usually picturesque harbour. It certainly lends credence to papalaz's theory that the motorbike that fell into the harbour probably did so under the influence of the weather...

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New puppy on the block

There is a new puppy on our block - well, down the road at least. He's a very jolly little fellow, and usually chases after us for a bit when we go down to the beach on our walk into town. We think he must be a stray, but he seems to have adopted his home as a garden and patch of rough ground on the way down to the sea. It is inhabited by two dogs that live there, but they are usually chained up. I guess that means that our little puppy has a good chance of sneaking...

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The end of the road for our lemon tree?

The weather has been appalling here over the last couple of weeks, and we had some really bad storms at the weekend, which left us virtually house bound. We did take a stroll down to the beach, to find the normally placid spot looking like it had Atlantic rollers on it, and there were actually people surfing. In this video clip you can just make out the waves crashing over the top of Lazaretta - it must have been terrible to have been forced to live on that tiny island at this time of year. Odd to think that in...

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The owl house survives

At the foot of our road is an abandoned old factory / warehouse / mill or something or other, which is in spectacular ruins. This is where our local pair of owls live. They often swoop down our street during the summer months. The building next door has been torn down, and a new supermarket is rapidly going up in its place. Fortunately, the 'owl house' itself does not seem to have been disturbed by the building work. Whether the owls will still fancy living in the neighbourhood remains to be seen. It looks very sparse in the winter, and...

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New bus ticket machine at Plateia 1866

We'd known for some time that the 'posh' side of town had automated bus ticket dispensing machines. Our usual stop at Plateia 1866 completely relied on an old wooden kiosk though. Buying tickets from there is where we first got our primitive grasp of counting in Greek. But when we got to the square last week there was a huge commotion going on at the bus stop - we were getting our own automatic machine. I shall look forward to standing in a long queue behind bamboozled tourists during the summer...

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Chania's motorbike graveyard

We often get cross in a huffy middle class old person sort of way when we see people, both locals and tourists, carelessly tossing their rubbish into Hania's beautiful old harbour. However, this seems to be going above and beyond the call of duty in terms of getting rid of unwanted rubbish! Of course, without seeing how the motorbike got into the harbour, it is impossible to tell whether it was deliberately dumped, ended up in the sea as a prank, or as the result of an accident on the road leading around the harbour. I wonder how long it...

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Not completely abandoned

When we were in Maleme we made our way up a little hill to the Church. On the way we passed a small abandoned building. Well, not completely abandoned. In amongst the debris and the broken shell of the building, one spider had obviously made itself very much at home.

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HP Sauce in Maleme

We took another trip to Maleme on the KTEL bus the other day. We'd last been there in November, looking for the fabled 'British Food Store', without any luck since it was yet to open. This time we were more fortunate. One thing that always makes me laugh about 'British' food now, especially if you read a lot of the press like the Mail and the Express moaning about immigrants, is that a large number of the specialities are curry and oriental dishes. The British shop sold a wide range of Indian spices, Naan breads, cook-in-wok noodles and so forth....

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