1. Learn the Greek alphabet – upper case and lower case.
2. Don’t go in June, July or August. It is hot and crowded. Be prepared to find and drink lots of water.
3. If you like cats you will love Greece. Cats everywhere along with lots of dogs.
4. The colors are every bit as bright and saturated as the photos would lead you to believe.
More later with more photos after they all get sorted out. Plus a bonus of a week in Turkey. What a contrast between the two countries.
After years and years of thinking about a trip to NYC finally made it this summer. And why did I not do this sooner? The city is everything that you hear about NYC and more. Never ran into Kramer but saw familiar sights. Made it to a Mets game and sat in the last row of what they call the picnic section (the bleachers) One of a few fans cheering for the Cards who got plastered by the Mets. Saw Times Square at night with hundreds, no thousands of tourists. More tourists than locals. A lot like traveling earlier in the summer to Athens and Istanbul but this time I could read all the signs!
The city that never sleeps - nor do the tourists!
A familiar sight and a great place for lunch or breakfast!
A tomb fit for a general and his wife.
Grearing up for a day of wet riding.
Just returned from a short trip to the middle of Nebraska on the Goldwing. It was hot. It was cold and wet. It was beautiful. Miles and miles of roads where the only thing moving are the grasshoppers in the road and the corn fields all around. Visited the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Historical Park near Royal, Nebraska. Drove as far west as Valentine, Nebraska and passed lots of bikers headed to Sturgis!
Spent the night in Medina, Nebraska and visited the Harold Warp Pioneer Village.
Mom checks out the bones.
The fantastic free show of the clouds.
Wind power near Ainsworth, Nebraska - power for 19,000 homes.
Glad we were not traveling in one of these!
The north coast of Crete is highly developed. It is one strip of hotels and shops all along the beach. We visited Knossos along with what seemed to be 25,000 other people on a hot day. This was the day all the people that did not want to go to the beach went site seeing instead. The boys held up well.
The line for the Throne room was long and when you got there they let you stand and look for the amount of time it takes to take one photo.
Go there early and go sometime other than June.
From there we went to the museum in town. It was under construction (as with much of Greece) and only had one small room filled with the best pieces. Small but good.
We maintained the no McDonald’s rule throughout the entire trip.
From Iraklio we traveled west to Chania, an old Ventian port city. It took hours to find our next hotel as all the streets in the old part of town are one way, always the wrong way, and tiny. Got lost, got yelled at by more than one Greek driver but finally found the old harbor.
Finally a free internet connection (wireless) in Greece. Had to travel to Crete to find this.
Day 1
Long, long day of travel from Orlando to Athens. Late leaving JFK in NYC just as the pilot predicted. But once in Greece everything became easy. Well, not exactly. Just the little thing of language. Can’t read the signs, don’t understand what we hear and in spite of that we broke into the country just fine.
Day 2 – The Acropolis
When in Rome…well when in Athens do as all the tourists do – go to the Acropolis. Hired a guide and he turned out to be a real gem. Had this habit of writing out dates either on his hands or on his hat as he explained the place. Plus kept sticking the hat over his face as he talked. Hot. Very hot. Note to self: Bring more water!
Day 3 – The adventures in bus travel in Greece
Simple. Give directions to the taxi driver to take us to the B bus terminal in Athens. Right. First driver took us to Terminal A. Then from there the taxi drivers had no idea where Terminal B was. Aren’t they supposed to know where things are? Took the bus eventually to Delphi (after almost getting on the wrong bus) and enjoyed the day in Delphi at the fantastic museum and site. But the town in one tourist shop after the other all selling exactly the same stuff. What’s with this.
Day 4-5-6- More travel.
Left Athens and traveled to Peraus to catch the ferry to Crete. A long day of waiting for a 9 pm ferry. The cheap seats put us on the top deck with one large room and a tv set running all night long. Impossible to sleep. Arrived Iraklio at 5:30 pm, walked to our hotel and had no room. They gave it away. So we rented a car, had breakfast, walked around town, went back to the hotel and finally checked in. Slept for 2.5 hours and then we got to drive in Greece!
Day 6. Driving in Greece.
Nothing can prepare you for the experience. Nothing. Imagine a huge container of marbles that spills out on the floor. Now drive through that, staying on the street (although it sometimes appears to be no more than a sidewalk) and hit nothing and be hit by nothing. Do it fast with people honking at you and with absolutely no signs that you can read. And at the same time have countless scooters and motorcycles swarming around you like bees heading home to the hive. There you have driving in Greece. Something everyone should experience.
Swimming was the easy part.
More later when I can get more free wi-fi time. All for now.
Why stop at making just one book? Or just two or three? Why not publish a new book every week? The latest book is a collection of images generated in Adobe Illustrator. Starting with one sphere I repeated and modified the sphere to fill the page. An exploration of color, shapes, depth, and movement. Enjoy.
Finally completed a book I have been working on for months. Have had the images for over twenty five years and never knew just what to do with them. When my wife bought a slide projector years ago in Detroit at a yard sale they gave her a big box of slides. The slides, all neatly organized, show a family or families lives starting in about 1948 while in Europe. No idea who these people are or if all of the images in the box are of the same family. The book starts with slide one and goes up to slide sixty. This is book one in a series of books that will be produced. When I run out of slides that will be the end of the series.
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