{"id":3487,"date":"2012-10-29T21:19:22","date_gmt":"2012-10-29T21:19:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=3487"},"modified":"2013-06-07T16:29:14","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T16:29:14","slug":"carefree-days-and-nights-on-spetses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/?p=3487","title":{"rendered":"Carefree Days and Nights on Spetses"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Helen, Costas and Panayiotes in “Boggi”<\/p><\/div>\n

A week today since I arrived back on Spetses and life is a\u00a0very happy and relaxed one.\u00a0 We are blessed with continuing unseasonably warm weather.\u00a0 Some days we meet at Filippos for coffee after Costas has finished his daily chores.\u00a0 Other days\u00a0eating lunch out at Spetsiotiko or Bouboulina overlooking the sea\u00a0… enjoying Horta (edible wild greens) and\/or\u00a0Pantzara Salata (beetroot salad), both of which go down a treat with Barbounakia (small red mullet).\u00a0 At home we have made two meze, to be enjoyed with fresh crusty bread … Tsatsiki – yogurt with cucumber and heaps of garlic (rather hot) and Fava, a puree\u00a0made from yellow split peas.\u00a0 The orange tree in our garden is laden, the fruits providing us with wonderful freshly squeezed juice everyday.\u00a0 The garden and courtyard have also had a tidy up thanks to yours truly … something I\u00a0like to do when I am here in my second home.<\/p>\n

As tempting as it is to take myself off to Bar Spetsa every night of the week, good sense sometimes prevails and I\u00a0enjoy a quiet night at home\u00a0with the four cats keeping me company. \u00a0On the nights when I do go in, we\u00a0generally end up moving on to Balkoni or Boggi, sometimes just the two of us, other nights\u00a0with our friends Ray and Heather, Roland and Panayiotes.\u00a0 On\u00a0Saturday night, we went first to Balkoni, then on to Boggi where the Square was filled with\u00a0motorbikes and scooters …\u00a0Boggi was pumping, the young ones were dancing and generally having a ball.\u00a0\u00a0I recognised many of them as guests at a wedding we had made an appearance at earlier in the evening.\u00a0 Costas likes to request they play “Itane Mia Fora”,\u00a0a song from Nikolaos Xylouris, a singer and Cretan lyra player.\u00a0\u00a0Costas sings along very loudly in\u00a0my ear, then we make the short walk home, from where we can still hear the music continuing into the wee small hours of the morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yesterday was Oxi Day, a national holiday in Greece, commemorating the rejection by Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas of the ultimatum made by Italian dictator Benito Mussolini on 28 October 1940.\u00a0 Every year this day is marked with street parades and seemingly the entire community are out and about.<\/p>\n

Many years ago I read “Attic in Greece” by Austen Kark, a book about his love affair with Greece and the Greek people\u00a0and his ultimate retirement with his wife Nina to Navplion, where they purchased an almost derelict house and faced the Greek bureaucracy.\u00a0 The other day I came across a copy of the book amongst Costas library …\u00a0shortly I will retire to bed and read a few more pages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week today since I arrived back on Spetses and life is a\u00a0very happy and relaxed one.\u00a0 We are blessed with continuing unseasonably warm weather.\u00a0 Some days we meet at Filippos for coffee after Costas has finished his daily chores.\u00a0 Other days\u00a0eating lunch out at Spetsiotiko or Bouboulina overlooking the sea\u00a0… enjoying Horta (edible wild […]<\/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-3487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487","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=3487"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4005,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3487\/revisions\/4005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.itisallgreek2me.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}