i spy

...the horse-drawn garbage truck going down Rue Saint Sauveur on an early misty morning.  After three tries, I finally got a picture!!

Sorry it's sideways!

...the group of English exchange students from another Lycee who look a little lost.  I've run into them twice now.

...my students at the theater.  Yeah, I'm not the only Victor Hugo fan.

...the Spanish assistant, kicking back in our laundromat.

...the pretre doing his shopping.

...my students in Monoprix.  They actually acknowledged my presence.
...the bartender winking at the German assistant.  They don't really draw the line anywhere!


I hope...

...my students didn't see me as I almost got stuck in the undercarriage of a bus trying to retrieve my suitcase :)
...that spring is on the way, like soon.
...that we eat at Le Glacier just one more time!

an iconographer and a cat

If you happen to be in Hania, you can find the fountain, take the road by the Starbucks and follow it past Tamam, up some stairs and on the right you will find Margarita's shop.

Margarita is a Greek-Australian woman of medium height and dark blond hair. She has one of those inviting smiles that makes you like her instantly, and she is an amazing artist, or writer of icons.  If you ask her, she will tell you everything there is to know about icons, and you won't be bored for a second!

Margarita makes all of her icons from completely natural materials.  The paint, for instance, is minerals mixed with egg yolk (or egg tempera for you artist geeks out there).  It takes about a month to prepare the wood for painting.

We spent a delightful morning and a good part of the afternoon chatting with her in her shop, drinking coffee and raki, and petting her cat (who really liked Veronica and kept jumping on her lap).  Raki is an excellent Grecian liquor that is also used for tacking the gold leaf on icons! Talk about ingenuity.

We bid Margarita and Bella (the cat) goodbye and headed to Tamam for a delish lunch of fried cold with a garlic puree sauce.  Just as we were finishing our meal, the waiter came up to us and gave us dessert "on the house."

The people of Crete are some of the friendliest people I have met on my travels.  Granted, we were some of the only tourists in town and so could enjoy personal time with the locals.

A few more examples, we stepped into a shop to look around and ended up buying olive wood things.  The lady offered us some raki (probably hoping we would buy it).

They gave us a discount everywhere we went and were interested in us in a friendly way.  I might just be naive.  I know times are rough in Greece and even harder in off-season for Hania, but I've never met such geniune people on all my travels (and, as of now, I am well-travelled.)

Bucket list item accomplished: make friends with a person from a foreign country in a place where you aren't living.  Check.  Some day, I promise, I will buy one of Margarita's icons.

My Big Fat Cretean Experience

I. Love. Crete.

I think I've probably made you all extremely jealous just by going there, because face it, you SHOULD be jealous.  It is that awesome.

When I left Verdun at the beginning of vacances, it was snowing and I had to drag my suitcase through ankle-deep, digusting white stuff...

But enough about snow. The trip there was mostly without hiccups.  We got stuck in front of the emergency exit on the plane and the stewardesses kept yelling at us in Greek to keep our stuff off the floor (when everyone else was clearly stowing their luggage under the seats.  They didn't even let us keep our purses! sheesh).  It was only when the plane landed that I figured out why.

We were lucky enough to stay with an American family, whose friend picked us up from the airport (the situation was a little complicated).  At the house, we met up with our friend Veronica and cooked dinner (Greek bottled wine isn't bad).

We woke to the sound of the rooster crowing in the backyard and the prospect of Greek yogurt for breakfast (the rooster had actually been crowing all night, but I digress).

I ran out onto the porch, barefoot, and took in the snow-capped mountains in the distance and the lemon tree right before my eyes.  I reached out and touched a lemon.  Yep, it was real and I tried very hard to think that I was dreaming.
(oops, no picture of this.  Laura has one, I think.)

We spent the day in downtown Hania (also spelled as Chania or Xania, only the latter is with Greek letters). On our morning stroll up to the lighthouse, we caught glimpses of octopus drying on a pole between two chairs, people enjoying a coffee and a game or two of backgammon.

That first morning made life look so simple.  I had no desire to use my phone or check my email.  I was so engaged with the people around me.  Crete welcomed me with open arms.

 

There and back again

Hello, I'm back!  (please excuse spelling.  I spent the past two days typing on a French keyboard and my fingers are confused). 

In the next few days I will be posting pictures and stories about my adventures. 

I went to Marseille and the south of France for the first week of vacances and Crete for the last few days.

How did I get home from these places?  I took two planes, a train, a bus, the RER, the metro, the TGV, a train and a bus to get back to Verdun from Crete.  So if you'll excuse me, the stories might be a while in coming.  Times like these require laundry to come first in my life :)

In the following posts you will learn how Laura and I tuckered ourselves on our first day in Marseille, how we ate AMAZING food with Jonathan (the great food connoisseur), how we got stuck in a sketchy hotel in Marseille (and how we got out of it), how we made friends with Creteans (and a cat), and how we hit the beaches with our lovely  friend Veronica.

More to come, people!