A lemon tree of our own

The thin end of the wedge for the harbour?

I know it is quite normal for people to moan about how things "aren't like they used to be". And a lot of people say that the beauty of Crete has been drastically reduced by all of the tourism development and modernisation on the island. Certainly the film clips from Anthony Sooklaris show an island that in many cases has now completely disappeared. However, we think we spotted a new low for the globalisation of Chania. Just as you enter the old Venetian harbour, opposite the fountain, a coffee and ice cream parlour that opened last year has closed down....

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Visiting Venice in China

The biggest attraction near to us in Macau - and I mean biggest - was The Venetian casino. It is being built on reclaimed land that used to be between the islands of Taipa and Coloane, and it dominates the skyline. It opened in August last year and has already had 10 million visitors. In fact Macau's economy has come to rely heavily on gambling being legal in this small 'Special Administrative Region' of China, and between them, the casinos of Macau now take more money than Las Vegas. The Venetian, as the name suggests, is built as a replica...

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Fire! Fire! The Macau fire service museum

We've recently been in Macau, and I've been pretty slow about writing it all up for the blog... After our visit to the park, cemetery and art gallery, our next port of call was the Fire Service museum. This is housed next to the current fire station on the Macau peninsula. In the opening lobby it features a couple of trucks used by the service in the 1950s and the 1960s. On display was all sorts of kit used by the fire service through the hundred or so years of their existence. They also had a wall of photographs of...

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Film of Crete from the 1960s

If you enjoy our stories from Crete, you might also like this blog about the island. It has been publishing a great series of videos from YouTube of what the island looked like in the 1960s. This clip is of Chania. The films were taken by Anthony Sooklaris in 1961. If you enjoyed that, then the Crete blog has linked to a couple of others, including views of Iraklio and of Agia Triada.

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A week of 'name game' politics in football

Football can be a very political game here, and there were a couple of classic examples over the last couple of weeks. Last night NET had live coverage of Arsenal-Liverpool, followed by delayed coverage of Chelsea-Fenerbahce. What with it being 1am, I had to keep rather quiet as the Russian-money-all-stars came a cropper against the Turkish team. I also didn't want to be noticed by the neighbours openly supporting a Turkish team. The Greek position on Turkey was made quite clear by the commentators, who, in defiance of the wisdom of The Four Lads, kept insisting the game was being...

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A peaceful park, a cemetery and a gallery

One day when we were visiting Macau we headed into the north-western corner of the peninsula. This was a bit of unknown territory for our hosts, but I'd spotted a couple of things in the guide book which I wanted to visit. It meant suddenly getting off the bus and plunging into some very Chinese back alleys. I was looking for a small park, which turned out to be perched on a plateau rather like Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost World. The steps up to the park on the northern side were an open air temple. As you looked back it...

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