Proving a Point

In the recent post "A Surfeit of Suggestions" I mentioned the fact that most Greek homes seem to have their own blood pressure apparatus. I also said how weird that would be to most of us Brits. I don't think I've ever known anyone in the UK to have their own blood pressure monitor/machine, whereas here, you only have to mention your health during a leisurely coffee morning with friends and they'll whip it out of a drawer and have it strapped around your upper arm before you can say Doctor Kildare (or maybe these days "House"?).

I shall proceed to prove the point with the photos below. Take a look at these, peeps...

Now what's that all about you cry? I'll tell you. Those snaps were all taken during a recent episode of ΜΗΝ ΑΡΧΙΖΕΙΣ ΤΗ ΜΟΥΡΜΟΥΡΑ, a popular sitcom currently running three nights a week on Greek TV. That title translates into something like "Don't start grumbling" - or as we'd probably say in current UK-speak - "Don't START!"

Actually, I still have to say that most Greek TV is awful by comparison with the quality of drama and comedy in the UK. "Mourmoura" though, is the exception. It's excellent, brilliantly well acted and also extremely funny. It's basically three different couples, each of a different generation, who never actually meet eachother, in fact they don't even know eachother, but the viewer is a voyeur into their domestic situation. 

There's the young twenty-something couple (Vaso and Hari), living together in an Athens apartment. She works as a nurse and he's basically a house-husband with vain aspirations of becoming a successful musician. There's a retired couple (Mina and Voula) who constantly disagree over the wife's desire to travel and the husband's reluctance to do so. The third couple is the one I photographed above. That's Ilias and Marina, she's a neurotic houswife who's basically going through a perpetual mid-life crisis and he's an accountant with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He also constantly chides his wife Marina over the credit card bills he receives. What makes it sharp is the writing, since it is really keen observation of every couple's regular niggles and narks and thus every viewer watches and squirms, seeing their own lives played out by the three couples. How often when my dearly beloved significant other and I are watching it do we cast surreptitious glances at eachother along the sofa as we see ourselves in the scenes we're watching. Squirm city folks, trust me.

The episode we were watching just last week, though, really had me shouting "THERE! See? What did I TELL you?" at the screen as Ilias is all wound up about something and so Marina flips open a kitchen drawer and whips out the blood pressure machine and takes her husband's blood pressure, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

If that doesn't bear out what I said in the other post folks, what does, eh?

Word Gets Around

I did say in the post "Sunday Lunch at La Strada" that I'd report back once we'd made a return visit and I'd ordered the Tsipoura (Sea Bream). Well, last Sunday we arranged to meet a few friends down there for a repeat visit, since the weather was once more great for walking.

Those dining with us went for various dishes containing chicken (one of which is chicken done with a yogurt sauce (which does sound very nice) and the two of us almost had a duplicate of the previous lunch from a couple of Sundays ago except for the fact that I ordered the Tsipoura, chargrilled, as in my humble opinion it always ought to be. 

If you know anything about ordering fish in a Greek restaurant you'll know that very often the menu will only show a price per kilo for most fresh fish. This does put some people off, since they'll read something like €40 in the price column and don't realise that it's the per-kilo price and that they just need to get the proprietor to weigh a fish of their choice and then negotiate a price which will more than likely be something like €10-15 for the selected fish, which often will feed more than one person anyway. One reason why I very often go for the Tsipoura is because it's invariably priced by the individual fish on the menu from the 'off' as it were and thus you already know how much you're going to pay for one, without the need to barter, which can be intimidating if you worry about the language problem, which shouldn't really be a worry since the staff almost always have enough English to make that a straighforward process. I go for it anyway simply for expediency and the fact that I really like that fish.

Over the past few years the price for Tsipoura on most menus has risen from what was about €9 - €10 Euros perhaps four or five years ago to anything from €12 - €15 these days. In La Strada at the moment, the price for Tsipoura on the menu is surprisingly a very acceptable €10, a price which I haven't seen for this fish in a very long time. Of course, one could thus expect it to be a disappointment when it arrives, perhaps owing to it being a bit smaller than you'd expect, yea? Nope, no sirree bob.

The food arrived gradually, as before, and once again was all cooked fresh. My Tsipoura was the last to arrive, which is as you'd expect since it's being grilled over the charcoal and can't be rushed. Even though we'd been well impressed by our previous lunch here, I admit to being a little expectant that the fish would be slightly below par, whilst probably being OK for this lower price level. I'm delighted to report that this was most definitely not so. I'd enquired when I ordered it from Eleni what it came with, and was told that it would be served with a side salad and fresh 'spitika' [homemade] chips, so that meant I'd probably not have to assist my wife in her attempts to get through what she'd ordered as well.

When it came it looked wonderful and appearance-wise most definitely as good as any I'd ever ordered anywhere. Plus the accompanying chips and salad arrived on separate plates and were both good-sized portions too. I didn't take any photos this time folks, sorry, but take my word for this - my fish was excellent. It was done to perfection, so I squeezed a little fresh lemon over it, ran my knife along its length to enable the extraction of the main backbone and ribs and tucked into the perfectly cooked succulent white flesh. I am not just saying (well, OK, writing) this and I have no previous acquaintance with Eleni or Mina, this is straight up. That Tsipoura was as good as any I've ever had and at a price that would have been about right four or five years ago. You can't say fairer than that, right?

Of course, ever the gentleman, I still found myself expected to help my dearly beloved polish off what she'd ordered as well, so ever the martyr, I obliged. We once again had the house white and were brought a modest lttle freebie at the end. Our friends had ordered red wine by the glass and all ate to satisfaction and agreed that we'd had a splendid lunch. Our bill (for five of us) came to €70, so we split it at €15 a head to give a €5 tip and concluded that we'd well and truly had our money's worth.

Interestingly, the place was much busier by the time we were ready to leave than it had been a couple of weeks ago. Apart from one couple, the rest of the clientele were all Greeks, which has to tell you something, right? Right. It does appear that word is getting around and we were extremely happy to have made a return visit and still enjoyed the food as much as we had the first time. How often do you eat somewhere and then go back, only to be disappointed for some reason or other?

Our friend, who we'd bumped into the first time we'd come to La Strada, has also since told us that she's been back too and once again had a very good lunch there. Looks like we may just be getting into a habit here, albeit not a weekly one, yet regular nevertheless.

April in January

Before I proceed with this post, I simply must share with you a little ditty that my Dad used to say when I was a young nipper. I still remember it word for word and as yet haven't ever met anyone else who remembers it, so I've no idea where my Dad got it from. Anyway, it goes like this:

In the middle of September
In April, last July
The sun lay thick upon the ground
The snow shone in the sky
The trees were singing gaily
The birds were in full bloom
When I went down to the cellar
To clean an upstairs room
I looked out of the window
And had a fearful fright
For there, 10,000 miles away
A house stood ...out of sight
Its doors and windows open
Its front was at the back
And believe me when I tell you
its walls were whitewashed ...black.

So, why did I think of this? Well, the answer has to do with the fact that here on Rhodes we so often get the kind of weather that the UK experiences in April, only in January. This current run of weather is a good example. It's a changeable week, with heavy showers and rain, then bright sunshine in equal measure. When the sun's out it's pushing 20ºC, when its cloudy it's the lower teens. 

My Greek friend Mihalis, who features regularly in the "Ramblings" books, and lives in Kalathos, has often told me that he wishes it would rain for the entire winter, November thru March. The fact is, we always need whatever rain we can get to avoid running out of the ever-dwindling water resources we have here during the summer months. As I've often said, and at the risk of boring you on this one, we've never in 9 and a half years of living here had more than 9 rain-days in any one calendar month during a Rhodean winter, but of course it comes in fits and starts, never all spaced out like it was scheduled for regularity. This week, then, it's like a British April, as stated above, with lots of cloudbursts and then bright sunshine. We had to go to Arhangelos today for a few odds and ends and so I decided to drop by Haraki on the way home to snap a few shots (especially for you, Porridge Oats!) so you can see Haraki on one January weekday. On weekends, of course, some of the bars are open, but during the week, it looks more like the photos below will show. 

All the way from home on the way to Arhangelos it was raining, occasionally heavily, but as we got out of the car it stopped and by the time we were taking some well-earned (well I think so anyway - and whose blog is this?!) refreshments, the sun was shining brightly. It shone, in fact, all the time until we got home, locked the gate, parked up the car and let ourselves in, wherupon the clouds gathered and the rains began again. Fab! Couldn't have timed it better.

Inside the nicest café in Arhangelos, the Greco

The view from the café's window while the 'fish-man" was out there doing a brisk trade, double parked as you'd expect!

It's amazing how the most unexpected occasions can make you feel like a "real Greek". For instance, just as we were opening the car doors to get back in for the drive back, a friend from another local village honked and drew up alongside, effectively blocking half the street in the process. She wound down her nearside window, oblivious to the chaos which was starting to ensue, so that she could have a nice little chin wag with us. It's an essential you see. Of course, my car was neatly parked up alongside the kerb in a completely legal manner (I couldn't be a real rebel if I tried), but there we were having a nice little chat as though we had all the time in the world, while the whole street was becoming a war-zone around us. 

Boy did I feel like a local then! Not that this didn't prevent me from getting rather anxious about the situation, but when she was good and ready - and not before - our friend bade us cheerio and proceeded another couple of hundred metres along the street to the bank to which she was intending to pay a visit, once again stopped right outside, alongside the cars that were legally parked, switched on her hazards (ah, so that's all right then) and shot into the bank leaving the rest of the road users on her side to tear their hair out yet again.

Ah, don't you just feel assimilated when that happens, eh?

So to the Haraki shots...

There you go folks. I'm off to learn a Gene Kelly routine...

Just The Ticket

Sometimes things go so well you have to pinch yourself. From experience you kind of expect the worst. If you've read chapter 2 of "Moussaka to My Ears", you may recall the story about the UPS that went wrong. It's not entirely unusual, when you buy an appliance or a gadget here, for there to be all kinds of complications if the damn thing goes wrong. In the case of the UPS I took it back to the shop and they gave me the old "Well, it'll have to go back to our service depot in Athens. Once they've had a look at it they'll say if we can replace it with a new one or not" routine, which is not uncommon here.

So, it was with some dread that we took our brand new kettle back because it was leaking. Only a few days ago we finally laid to rest a really good and not particularly cheap electric kettle by accidentally placing it back on its cradle wtihout any water in it. Oops. It had lasted us 7 years, which we reckon is pretty good going nowadays. So, not at all happy with trying to rustle up a cuppa using a saucepan to heat the water, not to mention getting piping hot water all over the place while trying to fill a hot water bottle, we remembered that our local branch of Carrefour Express, literally five minutes away by car, sells electrical appliances.

Of course, we weren't going to buy something by some unknown manufacturer, you know, usually the ones with serif typefaces for their logos. We've all seen them, names like Royale and Tra Shie, Crown Ningglory or suchlike. Nope, if they didn't have a known brand it would be the saucepan for a few more days before we got the chance to go to town. As it happens, in we walked and saw that the store carries kettles by none other than Black and Decker, a tried and tested brand familiar to all of us Brits, right? Right. Thirty six Euros lighter we headed home eager to make our first cuppa with our brand new kettle. Which we did. No problems there then. We congratulated ourselves on having thought to look in the store just along the road. A result. Great. Super.

Now, those of you that read these mumblings with any degree of regularity will know that I'm a bit of a nightbird, often not sleeping too well, If I were a better sleeper, this blog would be only half as big and informative as it actually is, truth be told. So, during the first night after we'd bought the new kettle I was in the kitchen at 2.30am and I thought to myself, I'm gonna make myself a nice hot cup of green tea with lemon and eat a slice of my dearly-beloved's really nice moist cake. Anticipation at unheard-of heights, I lifted the kettle to facilitate refilling it, only to find a lake of water beneath it and all over its circular cradle, which was still plugged into the wall socket. Yipes and all that, yea? Yea.

Sure enough, rocking the kettle this way and that I saw a steady drip, drip, coming out from the bottom, and this from a kettle less that 24 hours from the shop. Out came the trusty saucepan - again.

Next day,after having dried the kettle out and re-packed it in its box we trotted into the store, fully expecting a hassle about it having to be sent back to Athens and envisioning weeks of boiling hot water for our Earl Grey tea in a pesky saucepan, and approached Georgia, the girl who'd sold us the appliance. Well, she'd taken the payment at the till, let's put it that way. To be fair, she's a cut above yer average supermarket checkout girl in the IQ stakes I'd wager. She's very erudite and evidently doing this job purely from the lack of any other to which she may be much better qualified. No sooner had I explained the situation she'd taken the kettle back, rustled up some exchange paperwork and told me to nip over to the relevant shelf and help myself to another one, same make and model. Minutes later we were driving back home after having received the assurance from the very helpful Georgia that if this one leaked we were to bring it back right away and we could do yet another swapsies. We congratulated ourselves on having bought it locally. Imagine the hassle if we'd had to take it all the way back to town, an hour's drive away, to see about a replacement. It would have made it a very expensive kettle by the time we'd done two trips.

Like I said, sometimes things go so well you have to pinch yourself. Life's full of surprises.

So, there we were relating our positive experience to a couple of friends and they told us their recent experience in one of the banks over here. I'm sure you've come across these ticket systems. You know, you walk in and there's a little machine, you have to press a button and it spits out a numbered ticket. You then sit for about three years waiting for the digital display to flash your number and then you bolt for the teller, arms flailing in all directions to fend of competitors. By this time your bladder's full to bursting and your car is parked somewhere where it's now due a parking fine. Either that or it'll have perished tyres when you get back to it, it'll have been parked for so long. 

Well our friends said they they entered the banking hall to an almost unheard-of scene. Probably owing to some wormhole having opened up in the space-time continuum, there was not one single customer in the hall. Plus, there was this teller chap, sitting there with no one to serve!! No one to keep hanging around while he stared pointlessly at his monitor for five minutes, or got up and walked away carrying a sheet or two of paper before returning to his seat with a frappé on the go. Nope, he was sitting there with no one to be miserable to.

"Well," thought our friends, "this is our chance!" heading straight for the staff member in question they reached his position and spoke through the glass screen. He just stared back and said, "Ticket?"

They looked this way and that, as if to remind him that there was no other customer in the place, before looking back at him and saying, "We didn't see much point, since there's no queue anyway. There's no one to worry about queue-jumping, which would be why we'd have needed a ticket, wouldn't it? You know, to prevent any disputes about who's turn it was."

He just stared back and, lifting one arm and pointing to the ticket machine with his finger, said, ...well, nothing actually. He just disdainfully made it clear by gesture that no ticket - no service. Take it or leave it. After a couple of exasperated sighs and lifting of both arms, palms out, our friends trotted back across the hall to the machine near the entrance door and dutifully punched the button and tore off the little ticket that spewed out. They marched back to the friendly (not) teller and thrust the ticket under the glass  at him, whereupon he lifted both hands in non-acceptance, assumed a frown and said, then pointing downwards, "In there."

Sure enough, at their feet was a metal waste bin, into which he wanted them to drop the ticket. "What's the point of that?" they cried? His answer was a shrug of the shoulders. He then sat there and waited while our friends, well one of them in this case, looked at the hand holding the ticket, back at the teller, then at the ticket again, before dropping it into the waste basket as directed.

No sooner had the numbered ticket floated down into the mouth of the bin than the man behind the counter assumed a smile and said, "Now, what can I do for you?"

Of course, they knew exactly what they'd LIKE to have told him he could do at that point, but thought better of it. After all, they wanted to get out of there on the same day as they'd gone in, didn't they.

A Surfeit of Suggestions

Something that never ceases to both dismay and amaze me about the locals, and I rather think that this applies nationwide too, is their preoccupation with things medical. Not health, oh no, don't try getting most Greeks to think about eating healthily, giving up smoking or exercising, but as soon as the slightest ailment rears its ugly head they're simply delighted to get into the subject of how to treat it.

I've mentioned on a few occasions how it first bemused me to find that most Greek housewives have their own blood pressure machine. C'mon guys, you know what I mean here, can you imagine your average regular household in the UK, or anywhere else for that matter, having one of those in a kitchen drawer? The conversation has only to veer in that direction, maybe someone (or their child) locally has come down with something, is feeling a little below par, maybe planning for their diabetes years (you know how the Greeks love their sweet cakes and syrupy stuff, don't you) and the householder, quicker than you can say "snap elections" has whipped open that drawer and is strapping that thing you pump up on to one of the neighbour's arms, or perhaps her own, just to check if she's about to peg out. She'll be vigorously pumping at that rubber bulb-type thingie while she's saying something like "You must have the πίεση' [the pressure, meaning blood of course], I can see it in your cheeks."

I'm not exaggerating when I say I am quite sure that local women gathering for coffee in someone's house probably have regular blood pressure parties.

Something else which every home here has is a medical thermometer. Now, if you've read the "News and Stuff" page lately, you'll know that I've had a touch of the - I hesitate to say it - flu. I don't know what these bugs really give you, but I do know that, when I was a kid, if you had a cold you had a snotty nose for a few days, during which time you still went out to play and carried on with all the normal stuff, but you did it while sticking your tongue out and licking that snot from your top lip that had run down from your nose while you were playing football, right?

Now that was a cold.

What I've had this past few days has been a "rocking" head, a sore throat and chest, catarrh (is that how you spell it? What a ridiculous series of letters…) and an intense desire to stay in bed with a hot water bottle. Of course, you may still class that as a cold. I certainly, as stated above, would hesitate to describe it as full-blown flu, but it's certainly somewhere between the two.

Anyway, my other half, being as yet unsmitten, has been out and consequently talked to a few of our Greek friends, who, of course asked, "Where's Yianni?" Once the response is, "Well, he's in bed ill, he's got a…" you generally don't get much further than that before the suggestions begin pouring in.

In fact, last night a good friend from Rhodes Town called on the phone to ask how I was. Nice thought, granted, but it does seem like there is an official list of things you have to cover if you're a Greek and someone you know isn't well. So, if you wanna be like a Greek and someone you know is slightly unwell, this is what you have to cover:

• Have you a temperature? [Whaddyamean you don't know? How can you not know? You WHAT? You don't have a thermometer? Poh Poh! …and so on.]

• What did the doctor say? [What? you haven't been to the doctor? It's amazing you're not dead already…]

• What are you taking? [Now this one of course is often connected to the "Doctor" point, since they're dying to know what he prescribed, so they can tell you that they wouldn't take THAT if they were on their own death bed. What he SHOULD have given you is… and so on. It also gives them the opportunity to tell you all the things you really ought to be imbibing if you expect to live. These things include a lot of pills I usually can't even pronounce, plus a whole raft of herbal things. My friend who telephoned asked, "Have you got plenty of oranges?" for example. That's OK actually. Then there's the dreaded "chai voonoh" (Mountain tea), which is made out of a selection of herbs you pluck from the mountainsides out here. The main ingredient is sage, but there are a few other leaves in there too. Each time I drink it - and you simply HAVE to have honey in it to avoid gagging as you sip - I fully expect to begin hallucinating quite soon afterwards. Add to the foregoing a whole cornucopia of other drugs that every Greek friend will insist you need to help you get through this and you begin to get the general picture.]

• Assuming you've fended off most of the above, they then crank it up a gear. "If still you have a temperature (assuming of course that you know you have one) after a few days, you make sure you get to the doctor's," And that's said in a manner that suggests that they believe if you don't get there quick enough then you'll run the risk of dying in the car on the way.

See, now, maybe it's just the way I was brung up, but I was always led to believe that if you had a heavy cold (let's settle on that as a description, yeh?) you sweated it out. There is no cure. The best you can do is alleviate the symptoms and wait for it to pass. That's why, despite the constant insistence from well-meaning Greek friends that I'm quite mad not to be taking a cocktail of drugs and also visiting the doctor several times, the only thing I've done by way of acceding in the past few days is take a couple of soluble aspirin in a glass of water to ease my throbbing head, once. Of course, to each and every Greek friend I know that's exceedingly reckless.

Going from past experience, next time I do get out and about and visit with our Greek friends, they'll be astounded to see that I survived. Of course, they'll still want to take my blood pressure no doubt.

Sunday Lunch at La Strada

Some years ago we had lunch on the beach wall at La Strada taverna, just down the road from our place. It was during a lovely weekend in the summer of 2009 when a couple of friends from town came down to stay, go swimming and generally chill out. In fact it was the very weekend when I went looking for our supper in the sea and discovered the "wonder of toothpaste", which just happens to be the title of chapter 2 of "A Plethora of Posts", where the story - about the toothpaste that is - is related in full.

Since then we haven't been back to La Strada. That isn't because we didn't enjoy a lovely lunch, it's more to do with the fact that we don't go out so very often and, when we do, we tend to look for somewhere new. The fact is, we've now eaten at all of the restaurants on Kiotari front, from the Petalas [formerly the Paralia] through La Strada, to Stefano's, The Pelican's Nest and finally Il Porto [formerly To Steki]. a few hundred meters further south and standing alone is the Lighthouse, and we've eaten there too.

A few weeks before the end of the year we'd noticed a lot of work going on at the La Strada. They were having some new windows installed, to close in what had before been a dining area that was open to the elements and consequently not suitable for dining out much of the time during the winter months. As you'll know, me and the better half walk this stretch of beach very often, in fact probably on average twice a week during the winter and so we keep a wary eye on developments, which was how we'd seen George's progress with the renovations at The Pelican's Nest during the months of the previous winter. I snapped this photo just as the La Strada job was coming to a finish...

La Strada, November 21st 2014

This made it pretty likely that plans were afoot to open the place during the winter, at least on weekends, so we made a mental note to remember it as and when we were planning to have Sunday lunch out.

Well, yesterday we finally got around to it. In fact, since the extremely cold snap was finally over and Sunday dawned brilliantly sunny and considerably warmer, we said we'd like to eat beside the sea. At first I'd had the idea of going down to Gennadi, but it was my dearly beloved who said, "Why don't we combine eating out with a nice walk? After all, it's pushing 20ºC outside and there isn't a cloud to be seen. What about La Strada?"

Of course I instantly concurred (we do fellas, dont' we? makes for a much quieter life after all), on the proviso that I call them first to make sure that they were definitely open. It's a 20 minute walk from our front gate to the taverna's front door, so it would have been a disaster to have arrived famished to find a locked door and no quick way of going anywhere else. I did a quick Google and found them on TripAdvisor (which you'll probably already know if you clicked that link back there in the paragraph above the first photo). Seeing the phone number I called and a lady told me that, yes they were indeed open for lunch today. "Right," I said, "we'll be down there within the hour", and indeed we were.

By the time we were within five minutes walk of La Strada we remarked on the fact that we've never lived anywhere before where we could walk to a restaurant without having to set foot on a surfaced road, except for a quick dash across the main road from one dirt track to the next on our way to the water front. Good eh?

By the time we walked into La Strada we were feeling hot from the walk and well ready for a traditional lunch of simple Greek fare. I have written about another traditional taverna here in Kiotari too, Angelaki's, which is on the main road through Kiotari down to Gennadi. It features in the post "A Tale of Two Tavernas" which was written in August 2012 and that's a fact that really scares me because I was thinking that it was only last year!! That taverna is very popular with locals and ex-pats alike and for good reason, but to be frank, when we eat out on a glorious sunny day, the view, or outlook, from our table has to be a major factor. It's the one way in which Angelaki's falls down, it's on a road and the view isn't anything to write home about.

La Strada, on the other hand, is in the perfect location for dining out on a bright, warm sunny day...

We walked into an almost empty dining area. There was one table occupied and one of the diners was a close friend from Pilona. Small world. After a nice little chat and a couple of introductions, we chose a table near the door and along came the young man to leave us a couple of menus. His name is Minas and he and his mum Eleni were running the show today. That aside, the place is really cosy, very nicely done out and we really liked the traditional feel of the decor. 

Something else which pleased us immensely was the kind of guy Minas was. As you'll also know we don't eat meat and so often get by on a few starters for a meal. We ordered their special "Yiortini Salad" [lit: Celebration/Celebratory Salad] which comprised lettuce, rocket, Graviera cheese, walnuts, dried cranberry pieces, little squares of toasted bread (homemade croutons), onion with a vinaigrette and oil dressing. We also went for the courgette rissoles, fried potatoes (chips guys - here we go again, eh?), two grilled pitas and a half a litre of the house white, which to our ecstatic delight came in one of those aluminium jugs that you always used to get house wine in years ago and have sadly become much rarer these days.

You know what Minas did after he'd taken the order, he retreated respectfully. THAT'S why we took an instant liking to him. So often you get some smart-assed waiter who'll say "anything else? The most expensive fish perhaps? " No. No pressure at all, the very polite young man retreated with our order and an "evharisto poli". Looks-wise he reminded me of a younger Prince actually (you know, his royal Minneapolis-ness himself. Hope Minas won't mind me saying that).

The food arrived gradually, as one would expect when it's freshly prepared and, well, here it is folks...

Everything was superb. the kolloki'tho-keftedes [courgette rissoles] were among the best we've ever eaten, not too oily at all. The salad was absolutely splendid (if you haven't tried Graviera cheese, which is from Crete by the way, you haven't lived!), the chips home-made and very fresh (piping hot when they arrived, so much so that the first few had to be extinguished in the mouth with a generous swig of the very acceptable house wine. That's my excuse anyway). All in all the perfect light lunch on a perfect day in a perfect location.

I asked for an Elliniko to round it off and Eleni, who'd just the once approached us as we ate to ask if everything was OK, brought us a freebie of syruped dried grapes with crushed walnuts and a complimentary glass of water to clean our palates with...

This place deserves to do well. Eleni and Minas are a delight and in case it matters to you, they speak good English too, a fact we learned because our friends on the other table communicated with them in English the whole time. We had kind of expected it to be much fuller than it was and I put it down to the fact that it's only their second month of being open during the winter time. Word needs to get around. So, if anyone living in the south of Rhodes reads this, get on down there folks!! If your meal is anything like as good as ours, you'll be glad you did. In fact, our friends on the next table agreed with us and they'd had meat dishes too. Plus the location is superb. 

Know what? Our bill came to around €22 and we were full. Next time I'm going to order the char-grilled Tsipoura [Sea Bream] because I haven't seen it at that price for a long time. When I do I'll report back.

Not long before we reluctantly asked for the bill and prepared to leave, a Greek pal of ours from Asklipio walked in with another man. Manolis, pictured below right, had his brother Panayiotis down from Rhodes town for a visit and they marched in, asked for a table to be set at the beach wall and ate their meal out there. Wish we'd done the same now...

Not bad for the 11th of January is it?

Manolis introduced us to the very affable Panayiotis, who told us that he was a hairdresser with a salon in town. We asked him for cards and he didn't have any on him. Never mind, he did have some merchandising ballpoint pens with the salon's name and contact details on them and he not only gave us one each but he gave me a couple to give to our other friends too. I joked that, since he's in town he'll be expensive and Manolis jumped to his defence and assured us he isn't. The salon's name is Figaro and it's on Konstantinou Palaiologou Street, no. 17. Phone number 22410-20914. That's the least I can do since both men agreed to me shooting them (photographically, of course) enjoying their al fresco lunch beside the sea in what is surely my favourite beachside location on the island. Haraki is gorgeous, yes, but quite different. Comparisons of the two locations would be pointless.

And I live right here too folks! Sometimes I just have to pinch myself. Sorry, but after a day like yesterday it's hard not to!! Details of La Strada will soon appear in the alphabetical list on the "Play, Eat, Visit" page. I'll be posting a scanned card (both sides) there too.

No Brass Monkeys

Well, this past three days has been very cold, in fact, record-breakingly cold. Our old friend Kostas, who's Rhodes born and bred (notwithstanding the fact that he lived for about ten years in Canada, so he knows about cold!) and is now around seventy, told us on Thursday night that he'd never experienced cold like this on Rhodes - ever!

We had a flow of air-masses down from the Balkans and beyond that took our overnight temperatures down to around zero C (32ºF) and even to -1 on exposed ground facing the north-northwesterly wind and during the day to around 4 to 7ºC at best. We've lived here since August 2005 and we can vouch for Kostas' estimation of the rarity of these temperatures. Brrr! OK, so in Bulgaria they were down to -18ºC overnight, but that's just nuts - hence no brass monkeys to be seen anywhere, eh? 

And Judy, over there in Alaska, before you say anything - we know we're a bunch of jessies and wimps, OK? Good, I'm glad we got that out of the way.

Fortunately, the temperatures are already rising back to what we'd expect for the time of year. In fact, tomorrow night's forecast is for 13 and during the day Monday it should be back to the upper teens, which means for us, if the sun's out, 20-21ºC, much more like what we expect. I tell you, we've been mighty glad of the log-burner and even had it on all day on Wednesday, something that we never normally have to do.

The great benefit of this cold spell has been, though, exceptionally low humidity and wonderful light conditions. Hence the following series of photos that I snapped just yesterday, when we had to make a trip up to Rhodes Town. Here goes then...

Our friendly neighbourhood Seat Ibiza shepherd brings his flock of a couple of hundred sheep past our gate every morning at the moment and they were just coming past when I got the car out.

The photos are of the stragglers, those mummies who's little ones were getting a bit left behind. I could hear them bleating "Mum! Mum! Not so fast! Wair for Me!!" So the mums would turn around and trot back a way, get their bairns up close and then scamper back to join the flock again. Call me soft, but I can't resist these little mites, who I reckon were also asking their mum's why their feet were so cold.

Quite a few of these shots show the clarity of the view of the snow-capped Turkish mountains off to the North and East. You'll have to click for the larger views, but you'll be able to see them plain enough. They reminded me of the view of the Rocky Mountains you get from Denver Airport, Colorado.

I can't ever remember seeing the Turkish mountains so clearly. We could even see them from Pefkos, almost unheard of usually. These few, though, were taken between Mandraki and the Old Harbour, as seasoned Rhodophiles will, of course, know.

This is right up top near the Lido café (Called the Blue recently too?), which appears to have closed down [maybe just for the winter]. It's the steps beside the Meltemi Taverna, just along from the Elli (that large round building at the top end of the car park above Mandraki Harbour).

The view out from the window of the Viamare Café. I's very unusual for there to be so few outside tables occupied. Inside it was heaving! Note the wooly bobble-hat, bottom right. There was even a head in it. Incidentally, I think that girl in the green jacket may have lost three rolls of wallpaper.

I couldn't resist snapping this because the old fella walking, well, shuffling really, with his stick looked so evocative, poor old soul.

I don't know whether you know the old polar bear joke, but here it is anyway.

A polar bear toddler is playing near his mother on an ice flow in the arctic. He comes up to his mum and asks, "Mum, am I really a polar bear?" Of course, his mother replies, "What do you mean son? 'am I a polar bear?' What colour's your fur, white, right? So you're a polar bear. Now go play in the snow."

Ten minutes later he's back to ask his mum. "Mum, am I really, really a polar bear?" To which his mum answers, slightly irritated this time, "Son. Look, your mother's a polar bear and you've got white fur. So, what does that make you? You're a polar bear, now go play in the snow."

Ten minutes later, back he comes. "Mum, are you sure I'm a polar bear?"

Really ratty now, she says: "Look, your father's a polar bear. Your mother's a polar bear. You have white fur like your parents. You live in the arctic. You are a POLAR BEAR. Why, for goodness sake, do you keep asking me if you're really are a polar bear?"

He answers, "Because I'm ruddy FREEZING!!!"

Now why did I think of that joke? Ask a brass monkey, ...if you can find one that is.