{"id":2183,"date":"2010-09-04T12:57:55","date_gmt":"2010-09-04T12:57:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2183"},"modified":"2011-04-12T16:39:01","modified_gmt":"2011-04-12T16:39:01","slug":"riding-high-with-company-on-skyros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=2183","title":{"rendered":"Riding High with company on Skyros"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Anna, Janet and Dimitris at "Atherinis" - Skyros<\/p><\/div>\n

I was sitting in the courtyard early\u00a0on Wednesday evening, awaiting Anna’s arrival, when suddenly we heard the bus up on the road and Janet and I ran up the drive to meet her.\u00a0 Just as had happened the previous night when I had arrived, Anna literally dropped her luggage in our room and we came down to the courtyard for a few wines and mezes.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Amazingly, Anna and Janet share the same star sign “Aries” and were born in the same year (the one after me).\u00a0 Both women had premonitions of a major world changing event just before the death of Princess Diana. \u00a0Anna’s hero is Mick Jagger – Mick is also Janet’s hero and in fact, some years’ ago she worked as a Girl Friday for The Rolling Stones and The Kinks had their office downstairs.\u00a0 Actually, Janet has met so many music stars from the 60’s and 70’s, including Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull, my favourite band of all time and she says he is a lovely guy.\u00a0 She has the same sentiments of Annie Lennox whom she once spent time with whilst holidaying\u00a0on the Greek island of Corfu.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

There is almost always music playing here in the courtyard.\u00a0 Last evening when I came down, there were candles glowing on every table, Janet said for about only the third time this year.\u00a0 She never does anything unless she really feels it is what she wants to do – you cannot help but feel and be affected by\u00a0the positive\u00a0energy that is here at “Atherinis” – I have no doubt, it is a very special place.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That first night Anna was here, we did not go to bed until the early hours of Thursday morning.\u00a0 Thursday evening Janet and Dimitris invited us to have dinner with them – Lasagna, patates tiganetes, salad and naturally, plenty of wine.\u00a0 Last evening the same thing happened again only this time it was a\u00a0delicious chicken meal with a beetroot salad (including the tops), patates tiganetes and more wine.\u00a0 The best fried potatoes I have ever tasted and Janet shared with us her secret way of cooking them.\u00a0 Today Dimitris arrived home with small fish for tonight’s meal\u00a0which it took Janet 1 1\/2 hours to clean and all the neighbourhood cats turned up looking for their share.\u00a0 A family of very clean\u00a0rats, Ilias, his partner and babies live amongst the trees and on top of the courtyard roof, where they are able to find an abundance of fruit and nuts to eat.\u00a0 They race along the upper railings, sometimes stopping\u00a0for a short time to look and to\u00a0listen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With such a feeling of belonging here, we have not ventured too far, however, on Thursday we went up to the town and found the Statue to commemorate the English poet, Rupert Brooke\u00a0(3 August 1887 – 23 April 1915).\u00a0 Although he never lived on Skyros, he died on a French hospital ship moored off the island\u00a0and is buried here and\u00a0the Skyrians see him as\u00a0some kind of\u00a0hero.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That same day we spent a long time at the Manos Faltaits Museum.\u00a0 Established in 1964, it is one of the oldest\u00a0folk art museums\u00a0in Greece with only the Benaki Museum in Athens being older.\u00a0 The Museum embraces the history and culture of Skyros from the post Byzantine period to the present day and is housed in the residence of the “Faldai” family.\u00a0 In the Gallery you can see a collection of representative paintings by Manos Faltaits, paintings in a unique style which cannot be easily classified.\u00a0 In the shop,\u00a0originals and reproductions are available for sale.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I had hoped that while I was here on the island, I would get to see\u00a0at least one of\u00a0the ancient horses known as\u00a0Skyrian ponies, however, it is not to be.\u00a0 They are a protected species, their numbers are decreasing and although moves are in place to preserve them, it maybe too late.\u00a0 They have small bodies, a relatively large head, big eyes and nostrils and a large, strong neck in comparison to their shoulder blades and chest.\u00a0 With long hair, an arched back and a large belly, they are in various shades of brown and copper or the\u00a0more rare white and grey.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadly, I\u00a0fare-welled Anna this morning at 0600 hours.\u00a0 With the time constraints she has\u00a0and an earlier ferry being available today, she\u00a0was more likely to make\u00a0it to the island of Hydra, without necessitating a night’s stopover in Athens.\u00a0 When I came down to the courtyard around 0945 hours, Janet told me of the\u00a07.1 magnitude earthquake back home in Christchurch and the plane crash at Fox\u00a0Glacier which killed nine, including four persons from overseas.\u00a0 It was and still is very hard to believe – only last night we were talking about the number of Greek islands which have suffered from earthquakes in our lifetime and I had said, not knowing then what had happened in the early hours of Saturday morning, that it was only a matter of time before a\u00a0big one would strike somewhere in New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Tomorrow I leave Skyros\u00a0for a stay of three nights in\u00a0Limni on the island of Evia before returning to Spetses on Wednesday to see my friend Costas and to be part of the annual Armata Festival, celebrations in memory of the sea battle of Spetses – 8 September 1822.\u00a0 As\u00a0I pass through Athens, I will complete a circuit which has\u00a0taken me all the way around mainland Greece and the Greek islands and with just six weeks of my journey remaining.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was sitting in the courtyard early\u00a0on Wednesday evening, awaiting Anna’s arrival, when suddenly we heard the bus up on the road and Janet and I ran up the drive to meet her.\u00a0 Just as had happened the previous night when I had arrived, Anna literally dropped her luggage in our room and we came […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2183"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2592,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2183\/revisions\/2592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}