I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to notice this, but the other day, as we were walking through town to get to the beach for our regular freddo espresso and a swim (tough life, I know), I read a couple of those blue signs that are usually affixed to a corner of a building and that tell you the name of the road or street that you’re on. It suddenly struck me, after 47 years of either coming to Greece or living here, that almost all of them are some person’s name.

I got to thinking, how many street names in Greece do I either see or already know that aren’t named after some dead person or other? My home city is Bath, UK, and I began trawling through the names of city streets there that I can still recall. You’ll find Barton Street, Lower Borough Walls (and Upper too), New Bond Street, Milsom Street, Wood Street, Argyle Street, The Paragon, Hay Hill, Belmont, Guinea Lane, Upper Hedgemead Road and so it goes on. Regular street/road names in the UK are things like Acacia Avenue, Hill View, Church Close etc. 

Here, though, I’d say that 90% plus of the streets and roads are called by the first and last names of someone who’s died. Next time you’re walking around a Greek locale, take a look and see if you don’t agree. You’ll see streets with names like Adelfon Hana (Brothers Hana), Nikolas Anagnostakis, Stamatis Kokinakis, Georgos Papadopolis etc., in fact they’ve almost all got both the first and surname of whoever they’re named after (occasionally abbreviated in order to fit the name onto the sign, owing to the fact that Greek names do have the tendency to be rather long and stuffed full of syllables, don’t they) on them. Seems like not many are named after females, though, wonder why?

I just thought it was interesting, that’s all. 

The top photo this time was taken on Sunday at Gra Ligia, where we’d just been for a swim. When you live somewhere like this, it’s hard to imagine what it must be like to be among the hordes in the more over-touristified places, it really is. Couple more shots from Gra Ligia (on July 21st no less!!)…

In the previous post I mentioned that we finally got to eat at the beach taverna in Koutsouras called the Kalliotzina. Here are the photos I took during our wonderful meal there on Sunday evening July 14th…

The choccy pudding with ice cream, BTW, was the freebie! Definitely going to go there again for lunch some time. The menu shot shows the system that a lot of restaurants have adopted here these days, and it works really well. Instead of them bringing you a menu from which you verbally list your order to the waiter/waitress, you get a personal catalogue on which you write the number of whichever items you want (they give you a pen), before the staff take it to the kitchen and your food gets prepared. It works like a dream.

Finally, last night (Sunday 22nd) as we sat at one of our favourite waterfront restaurants, L’Angolo, where Nikoleta who runs the place and takes all the orders knows what we’re going to order before we even open our mouths these days, all the diners were enjoying the blood-red moonrise as the full moon crept over the horizon when a vibrant thumping sound began to emanate from further down the promenade. At first we thought that the Aperiton Café had a live band in, as they often do during the summer months, but no, it couldn’t have been, because the sound was growing louder. Something was making its way along the seafront in our direction. We soon found out what it was…

It did become a bit ear-splitting when they passed right by our table, but it was great fun and all for a very good cause, apparently. The crew wore t-shirts and vests emblazoned with the logo ‘Keep the Spirit Alive,’ so I Googled it today and found out that it’s a youth movement to keep alive the memory of a local man, Giorgo Kouvaki, who was a local physiotherapist, acupuncturist, musician and photographer who died prematurely a few years ago. Details about him can be found here. Below are a few stills from the occasion too…

In the last few frames you can spot the moon between the drummers as it had by this time lost its red hue and was climbing higher into the sky. It’s also visible in this below shot of Yvonne, as we’d just left the table and begun our walk back to the car…

I’ll be rambling on about our recent coffee with the neighbours in the next post (probably!).

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