Pilot Butte is an instinct volcano, it is a cinder cone which rises nearly 500 ft above the surrounding plains. Bend is one of the very few cities in the United States with volcanoes located within there boundaries
Like many travellers I have an obsession with photographing doors. It started in Mexico many years ago and has stayed with me throughout my travels. The more colorful, faded, and older they are the better. If there's paint peeling off them, wonderful. If there are wooden shutters somewhere on the facade that match, perfect. Like the painted blue chairs in Greece, antique wooden doors are something we associate with atmospheric neighborhoods, characterful back streets, ramshackle buildings... it's about having those romantic notions of what an old village should be like satisfied, about having those travel expectations met. But for me, it's something more as well. I also want to take a look behind them. I want my curiosity about what's inside sated. I dream of an amiable little old lady in a headscarf and apron opening the door and inviting me in for tea and showing me around her home. If she offers me her photo album, I'll be in heaven. My ideal 'tour' is one where a guide shows me around a village or town for a day, inviting me into the homes of the locals. I want to be a fly on the wall and see how people live their lives. But then I'll be just as happy to join them for lunch. And I won't mind one bit doing the dishes afterwards.
I thought this cloud looked like Flipper, what do you think?
Sometimes gestures language is not so innocent as we think about it. When you plan a trip in a place that you did not visit before, you have to control the most popular and offensive gestures common for that place. To understand where they've sent you, at least.
Crete's cafe life is tidal. It ebbs and flows throughout the day and night. It follows a rhythm, a regularly recurring pattern of activity. But each cafe, in each different town, dances to a beat of its own. By day it's rhythm is directed by the movement of the sun and the cycles of the seasons. One cafe may be more popular at a particular time of day simply because of its terrace in the sun. It may be packed in the morning when the sun shines on the tables outside while the afternoon sees it empty when it's in the shade. In summer, it's a different story when the locals welcome the warmth of the morning sun but in the afternoon seek shelter from the sweltering heat. And then there are the winter cafes that only open in the evening when their patrons head inside to take advantage of an open fireplace. Unless you stay in a place at least a few days it's impossible to pick up the rhythm, to identify the time of the tides. You may follow a guidebook suggestion and wonder why you're the only couple lunching at 1pm. When the locals start to arrive at 3pm as you're finishing dessert and the place is packed when you ask for the bill fifteen minutes later you'll understand why. Our first night in Rethymno we went out around 10pm in search of a restaurant for dinner. All of the tavernas recommended to us by the hotel staff and listed in our guidebooks were empty. We took a risk at one anyway, only to find the place filling as we were finishing close to 11.30pm. The next night we went out at 11pm and all the tavernas were buzzing. It was much easier for us to make our choice. Midnight we were in the thick of the local action and able to gauge the scene so much better. By 1am we were enjoying our raki and sweets with the last of the regulars. A good case for slow travel and taking time to get to know the rhythm of towns.
" F" for Flowering Cactus
" F " for Fence
I can't believe they did any work that made a disruption to households before 8:00 AM
Why are they doing this?
I couldn't help but capture a snap of these bright blue cafe chairs at a taverna on the waterfront at Chania, Crete, yesterday. How often have you seen similar images on Greece Tourism television ads, in travel guidebooks, or on postcards? This is one of those quintessential scenes that creators of travel images and architects of representations have reproduced innumerable times in the media to feed our desire for postcard-perfect pictures of those destinations we dream of going to for that ideal vacation. This is how we imagine Greece thanks to clever branding, strategic marketing, unimaginative picture-editing, and our willingness to accept the perpetuation of myths. But, Greece's blue chairs aren't entirely a myth... we've seen them all over, from Santorini to Samos, and today in a small town on the south coast of Crete we saw taverna owners taking advantage of the off-season to paint their chairs - Mediterranean blue! And when you travel in Greece you can't not love the blue chairs. They just make those holiday snaps so pretty. But the reality can sometimes be very different to the perception. Visits to tavernas aren't always the idyllic dining experiences you imagine. There are the annoying touts who try to get you in. The menus in four different languages. The menus with pictures. The 'traditional' Greek menus that feature hamburgers and schnitzel. The poor and disinterested service once they've sat you down. The extras added to the bill (and not the kind we like). And I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. As we wandered by this taverna in Chania yesterday the female owner was making her small son lunch. As soon as she saw us she stood and started to call us in. Her voice was desperate. She was pleading almost. But the place was empty. Locals were heading to the tavernas on either side of hers. Tavernas with plain wooden chairs. I felt sorry for her and wanted to go in. But as a travel writer I knew there was a reason for the lack of local patronage (always the best indicator of where to eat) and it had nothing to do with her seating. A couple of hours later when we strolled by after eating an excellent meal at a nearby restaurant that was crowded with locals we saw that her taverna was closed. Sadly, I regretted not giving it a go. But in the end, it takes more than blue chairs to entice.
Two missions, between 1991 and 1994, sealed Biospherians inside the glass enclosure to measure survivability.
You love those little extras as much as I do, don't you? You know what I mean... a refreshing welcome drink (when you arrive hot and sweaty at a hotel), chocolates on the pillow with turn-down service (just when you're craving something sweet), an amuse bouche before dinner (when you're feeling hungry or just keen to have your appetite whet), or a liqueur after dinner (when you're in the mood for one drink more). Those small gestures of hospitality, whether they're innate to the culture as they are in Thailand or the Middle East, or whether they're a value-adding service, I don't care. I just appreciate that the host has gone that extra mile to make customers feel special. Whether it's about making us feel genuinely warm and fuzzy or about securing repeat business, it doesn't matter if it works and makes us happy. One independent family-owned hotel that recently impressed us with their attention to their guests was the Four Seasons Hotel Limassol, Cyprus (not part of the Four Seasons chain). On arriving in our room we found an enormous platter of fresh fruit and a bottle of Cypriot wine, the next day a small box of sublime chocolates and jellies left on our table, and on our last day, we were presented with a box of aromatic virgin olive oils (thyme & basil - yum!). We did return. And on our second visit, the departing gift was a delicious jar of local honey. The hotel's high rate of return guests is no surprise. In Crete, we've been eating at traditional tavernas and enjoying the complimentary little bottles of tsikoudhia (a clear raki-like brandy... ah, liquid travels can be so pleasurable...) and generous servings of plates of sweets at the end of each meal - preserved figs, oranges, and quinces, fresh local yoghurt, and tasty cheese pastries with honey. Can't help but love those little extras. Sweet.
Now make sure you click on the photo for this last one, because you can see the after math of the powder, it actually looked more yellow than what it shows in the photo.But you see that reddish hue?
The most memorable meals don't have to be Michelin-starred dining experiences, and I like to be reminded of that every now and again when I travel. Having said that, we've enjoyed some long leisurely lunches in fine dining restaurants where every dish is so divine it's inspiring, where every mouthful of food is something to be savoured, where the food is matched so well with the wine it's a revelation, where the decor perfectly complements the style of cuisine, and where the service is so good, so intuitive and efficient yet warm and friendly, that you leave the restaurant as if you're leaving a friends, and you're already planning your return. I love those occasions but they're all too rare these days unfortunately. And sometimes we just want a simple meal. But when those deceptively simple dishes - like this deliciously fresh Greek salad smothered in virgin olive oil which we enjoyed yesterday in Chania, Crete - please us as much as a seven course gastronomic tasting menu, you wonder why eating has to be complicated. And why we don't appreciate the simple things in life more? Because sometimes the simplest meals are the most memorable. Don't you think?
Sometimes scenery we come across when we travel can be so breathtakingly beautiful that they stop us dead in our tracks and make it hard to move on. It may not even be that the particular scene is something that is always stunning, like a natural landscape, but rather at that minute the play of light and colour are just so that the scene we set our eyes on is, at that moment in time, sublime. We grab our cameras quickly hoping to capture it forever, to be able to return to that special place and time some other day. Or perhaps we just stop in that spot and gaze a little longer than we ordinarily might in an attempt to imprint it firmly in our memory. Because we know that it can just as quickly disappear, perhaps with the appearance of a cloud or two, as quickly as it came. This is what happened the other morning in the Venetian harbour in Rethymno, Crete. I'm thankful for that moment, because it's the opportunity to enjoy scenes like these that really make travel cool for me.
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