Above: I’m sure a lot of people will have come across this ‘phenomenon’, but it always makes me smile. What’s wrong with the above photo? I’ll tell you, there’s pepper in the salt cellar and guess what’s in that pepper shaker. Yup, right first time, salt! This was at the Gorgona Taverna on the seafront behind the town beach in Ierapetra a couple of Sundays ago. The meal was excellent, as was the value for money, but one needed to clock what was going on with those shakers before bringing about a ‘seasoning disaster,’ right? It’s something we’ve come across often over the decades that we’ve spent either visiting Greece or living here. I’m not really sure why it happens so frequently, but it’s worth a mention, if only for the quirkiness of it.

Further to the post I wrote about the local cats, These below show just how comfy ‘Ginge’ is with our veranda as a safe place to relax, plus the same goes for ‘White Sock’ on the stairs going up to the upper garden. The little tykes…

Below: A rather nice specimen of Campsis Grandiflora, otherwise known as either Chinese or Common Trumpet Creeper. It’s quite popular in gardens around the periphery of the town and, I have to say, it does brighten up a plain-looking street…

Yvonne, my wife (in case you’ve recently come to the party), is always on the lookout for an opportunity to dance. It’s in her blood I suppose. She only has to hear the right rhythm or beat to break out into a Tsifteteli, or a Kalamatiano, it’s just the way she is. Although we have fallen in love with our new home here on Crete, the only slight downside to living here is that most live music (and almost every weekend there’s some to be had in the mountain villages around us in this area) is Cretan, not Rebetiko, which Yvonne’s much more familiar with. Cretan music is more generally based around the use of the Lyra, a sort of squat violin played vertically whilst it sits on the leg of the seated musician, who then attacks it with a bow which he saws horizontally backwards and forwards. Rebetiko is more often Bouzouki based and Yvonne is familiar with just about all of the various dances that it includes, which are listed under the subheading Rhythms in the Wikipedia article to which the above link takes you.

About four decades ago, when we first used to come to Greece for holidays, and to visit my wife’s in-laws, you could find live music, even if it was only one bouzouki player, but would often be also a guitarist and a keyboard player too, almost everywhere. Lots of tavernas would have a small space cleared for the moment when the ‘Kefi’ would take someone and they’d get up from their chair perhaps to begin with a Zeibekiko. As the decades have passed this has gradually died away as tourism has grown and restaurateurs have covered those spaces with a few more tables to maximise their income. These days it’s very, very rare to come across a taverna where there will be impromptu dancing. So, what happened to us last Saturday night was all the more pleasing.

We had occasion to stay a couple of nights at a place called Ammoudara Beach, west of Heraklion. To be honest, and not wishing to upset anyone who might like the place, we hated it. It reminded us so much of Ialysos on Rhodes, which was a place we avoided like the plague during the 14 years that we spent on the island. It’s tourism at its worst in my humble opinion, full as it is with big hotels, fancy bars thumping out loud music and souvenir shops full of tat. The kinds of tourists you see walking the pavement could never in general be described as Grecophiles, but rather those who simply want sunshine, booze and evening entertainment consisting of karaoke and the like. Each to his own, of course, but it’s not for us.

However, since we were in a small AirBnB apartment for a couple of nights, we had little choice but to wander the main street in search of somewhere to eat that wasn’t a rip-off and would hopefully be reasonably priced. Eventually we wandered into a place called Thalassini Avra (Θαλασσινή Αυρα – Sea Breeze), at around 9.00pm, just when the last of the tourists were finishing their meals. As I’ve often observed, if you go to a restaurant where the locals eat, they’ll only begin to arrive after 9.00pm and often much later. When we got there we were pleased to hear that the music being played was Laika, or Rebetiko. In fact there was a modest band playing and a bouzouki player was wandering among the tables, his instrument connected to the amp by wireless connection. There was also a female singer doing the rounds among the tables too. ‘Of all places to find something like this,’ we thought. Down where we live, where it’s mainly Greeks around you when you go out for the evening, there’s nothing, or at least, usually nothing. Here, in over-tourist-land, we found a taverna with live music, and it wasn’t Cretan. Of course, earlier in the evening it’s a good way to get the tourists in anyway, but the true test of such a restaurant is if it gradually fills with Greeks as the hours approach midnight.

Well, to cut a long story short, the place eventually packed out with Greeks, and here’s the result…

Yes, that’s Yvonne with the fancy pattern on her ‘trousers.’ Here are the photos too…

By the time I took those above, there wasn’t a tourist in the place. Life’s full of surprises, isn’t it?

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