Best Mowing ExcuseExcuse Me! I Love To Mow!

Dear David, A Series of Letters to A Longtime Friend June 2008

Hersonissos,

Crete,

Greece

June 2008

Dear David

 Kantinas, The Biggest Club in the World, Bougainvilleas, The Other Man's Grass, The Wooden Lawnmower, An Unexpected Trip to Spinalonga, and a couple of places to eat.

 Better late then never, but then things have been a little busy around here, in the house are guests and in the garden the ‘grass' is growing more quickly than I can get to cut it! I use the word grass advisedly as the words ‘grass' and ‘Crete' do not fit well in the same sentence, particularly in the summer months when we do not get any rain between May and September.

 Of course it is my fault it's growing because I water it.

 This is really a bit of a pose on my behalf as I once had cause to fly back into Heraklion during the summer, and as people can tell you, sometimes the flights pass quite close to the house. I was horrified to find that while I had the usual boisterous show of colour from the bougainvilleas, the rest of the garden was scorched earth in comparison to a minor oasis next door.

 ‘Can't have that,' I said to myself, ‘better start watering it.'

 To be fair, not all of it is actually grass, some of it is just green weeds, but at least it's green and at least it is a fair match for the greenery next door! But of course it does grow so quickly in the summer heat and I am afraid that my poor old mower, which is now in its fourth season, is not really up to it anymore. Bits of the plastic body have been falling off for some years already, and it has never collected the grass properly and more recently the front end disintegrated leaving the front wheels lying on the ground no longer attached to the rest of it. But necessity is the mother of invention, and being a bit Greek sometimes, (we never throw anything away until it is virtually useless, ever wondered why there are no antique shops in Greece?),I decided I had better fix it. So with the aid of a piece of 2x2 timber, (planed naturally as we do like to do things properly), I have managed to reconstitute it by mounting the wheels on the piece of wood and then screwing that to the remains of the plastic body, and so it lives to mow another season.

 In the meantime I shall continue to break one of the Commandments (only one?) and covet the Briggs and Stratton petrol-engined, self-powered, lawnmowers in Carrefour, every time I go there!

 Now in my last dissertation, I omitted two other features of the Greek culinary scene, which have an important position in the order of places to eat, and these are the ‘Kantina' and the ‘Psistaria'. These vary in style from a caravan on the side of the road, with a makeshift barbecue next to it, to some quite smart proper buildings. On the menu, which they probably will not have anyway, are usually a number of local favourites such as ‘gigantes', horta, pork chops, chips (an essential part of the Cretan diet) and often fish of some sort. Usually, if the food is not held in a glass fronted hot cabinet, the only way to find out what there is, is to lift the lids on all the pots which are on the hot plate in front of you, or you can always ask! To distinguish a little better between the two, a psistaria is a grill house, whereas a kantina will usually have big steaming pots of things. Particularly good for lunch times, you can often get a main course and a big beer for 6 euros, or less, at a kantina, and, say, a pittagyros, (a bit like a kebab, but we can't call it that because that's Turkish) and half a litre of retsina for 5 euros. Bargain! No trip to the gypsy market is complete without stopping at one of the food trucks where you can usually get 2 pork souvlakia and some bread for well under 2 euros!

 Here at Villa Ralfa the ‘season' is now in full swing and as usual we are receiving visitors from around The World. Someone once said to me that if you are gay, you belong to the biggest club in the World, and certainly running gay hotel accommodation and lodgings means that all of a sudden you have ‘friends' all over the world. A lot of them don't actually want accommodation and are only asking what the weather or the scene is like, but heigh ho, we do the right thing and try to answer all of them. This year I am determined that everyone will put something in the visitor's book, but so far about 6 guests have not written anything because I forgot to give it to them! In spite of economic woes I have more visitors from the USA and for the first time several visitors from Canada, which is nice! They seem to a be a bit more adventurous than the British when it comes to independent travel, as do the French and Scandinavians, and next month sees the arrival of guests from Australia.

 Now as you know it is often difficult for me to do any travelling about during the Summer as I have much to do in ‘the house', so when a chance to go out for a while arose I was there with me bottle of water, sunhat, and insect repellent. Only a little trip but one that I had been meaning to repeat for a while, a trip to Spinalonga, as the last time I went there was years ago.

Spinalonga was originally a military installation but later became a leper colony and a couple of years ago Victoria Hislop wrote a book about it called ‘The Island'. A work of fiction of course, but the added publicity meant that everyone was going to Spinalonga!

 There are various ways of getting there, as you can take an organised coach trip which includes the ferry fares from Agios Nikolaos and the usual ‘pork chop and salad' lunch, or you can do it independently by bus from Hersonissos to Agios and then pick up the ferry, remembering that it goes an hour earlier than the timetable says! Or you can do what we did which is drive to Elounda.

 Leaving an hour late we headed east to Agios and then out to Elounda, intending to go to Plaka a little further along the coast, the trip from the house takes around 40 minutes, usually, unless you did what we did which is miss the turning to Plaka because the weekly street market was on that day.

 Having missed the turning in Elounda and ended up half way up the hill the other side we turned round and decided to go from Elounda instead to save time, on arriving back at the harbour in Elounda we made a managerial decision and drove through the car park to get to the Plaka road as Elounda was too busy, and Plaka is only a few minutes drive and anyway the boat costs a bit less from Plaka! From either Elounda or Plaka the ferries run every half hour or so, which gave us time to have ‘brunch' at a Dutch cafe in Plaka only a stones throw from the quay. Plaka is quite small quiet resort these days, it was mainly built to provide the services for the leper colony on Spinalonga, but now it has a few apartment blocks and some quite nice restaurants along the waterfront. Our ‘brunch' consisted of two tuna and salad ‘baguettes', one BLT baguette, one large Greek coffee, and two colas and cost €17, not unreasonable for some nice fresh crusty bread very well filled as well! Sorry to say I can't remember the name of the cafe but it just next door to the gift shop where everything is blue (and I am not joking!)

 The ferry fare is €8 per person and the trip takes only a few minutes, there is no gang plank to get on the ferry, so you need to be fairly agile to get on the boat although there is someone to help you, smaller children have to be passed over the gap into the bow of the boat and the same with the pushchairs! Getting off at the other end is the same. On the way over there is time to get a few pictures of the island from the boat.

 There is a two euro entrance fee when you get to the island, and there is a cafe there also, we didn't try it because we didn't need to but it is probably very expensive.

 As with many Greek ‘sights' the walk around the island is full of humps and bumps and in a couple of places you need to be a bit sure-footed, although like everywhere there are bits of maintenance going on around the place, but the walk is fairly flat although there is not a lot to see on the ocean side at the lower level. Getting to the inland side some of the ‘village' houses have been restored since I last went there and there are some quite good historical displays inside which cover the military uses of the island as well as the leper colony days, and also give such useful information such as telling you that the bay used to be the stopping point for British Imperial Airways flights to Africa and beyond! Mysteriously you do not seem to be able to walk to the top of the island which I am sure you used to be able to do, but if you poke around in the corners (as I like to do) then the trip is good for a couple of hours depending on how closely you read all the displays.

 Now for a real treat, I have mentioned food quite a lot lately, so I thought this month I would give you an idea of what eating out can cost and a couple of suggestions for when you finally make a trip here. Remember that these are not meant to be any criticism of the food or service and they are not recommendations as such although of course I have eaten in them, and I paid. So, starting close to home, in Old, or Pano Hersonissos, as it is known locally, one old place and one new place.

 Firstly, Lemonies, which is named after the lemon trees, which used to grow in the yard but now appear to be inside. Lemonies opened during last winter after much refurbishment, as really the only building that existed was the kitchen on the corner so is was really a summer only place, which hadn't been open for years. It is situated just off the village square as you head towards Piscopiano and now has a roof over the top and a fireplace so it will also be opened during the winter. It functions as both a restaurant and a meze house as you get given the usual menu on a pad and mark off what you want. Top of the list is bread so you know you are going to pay for it, unlike the places that put it on the table and then charge you 50 cents per person for it!

 Self and dining partner ordered carrot and cabbage salad, tomato and cucumber salad, saganaki, a plate of chips, moussaka, and pork chop along with half a litre of red and a bottle of water. The salads were a good size and we soon got stuck into them, it was only when the pork chop arrived that I realised I had made a mistake because being a ‘meze' menu I expected to get just a pork shop. Instead it arrived plated up with bits of salad, a dollop of rice with veg, and chips so I could have done without eating all the salad to start, and certainly didn't need the plate of chips as well! Good value though as the pork chop with its trimmings was only €6.50 and it was a good-sized chop, more than I could eat, but little a underdone along the bone side for my taste, but the dog enjoyed it! Total bill for the two of us including the wine and water €32!

 One oddity was that when we ate there, her ladyship asked for butter to go with the bread and was told that they didn't have it as she was supposed to dabble her bread in the oil/juice at the bottom of the salad bowl as I was doing at the time, or just put oil on it. This is fine by me but I can't help thinking that this may not suit the tourists in high season!

 Second restaurant in Pano Hersonissos is ‘George's Place', placed a little nearer the main square than Lemonies. Being not right on the square does have an advantage as when they have the Greek music night on Mondays, it is slightly quieter than being right next to ‘the band'. The place is run by George and his wife Idaline, who is Dutch, so they get a lot of Dutch clients during the summer and, of course, they are also open 5 days a week during the winter.

 And if you are thinking that you have heard these names before then it because I used to work for them, in fact I planted the potatoes and onions for George earlier on this year!

 The menu at George's contains many of the things that you would expect, but it is always worth asking what else they have, as there are some dishes they cook which are not on the menu, such as goat! You will also find that on occasions they do not have some things like kleftiko, sitfado, or moussaka, personally I think this is a good thing as these take preparation and cooking time, so when they do have them it means they are fresh. This is particularly so with moussaka, which these days, seems to come in identical single portion bowls irrespective of the place you are eating, if you get my meaning!

  From the menu you can either choose to go the starter, main course, dessert route, or you can mix and match the plates and go for a meze, just make sure you say that when you order chops or they will come out on a plate with garnish and chips! As a guide we recently had tzatziki, horta, saganaki, anthoos (dolmades made with courgette flowers instead of vine leaves, a house speciality), kalimaris, and a plate of lamb chops for a total of €32.50. You also get fresh crusty bread and butter as soon as you place you order and there is no charge for it!

 I have omitted the drinks on this bill because there were rather a lot of them, but at €4.50 for half a litre the wine is very reasonable. If you ask nicely you will get George's own wine rather than the stuff from the box, he also makes his own raki!

 Talking of raki, or tsikoudia another name for it, this is usually served at the end of a meal along with whatever fruit is in season, and is a great aid to digestion and gets rid of that bloated ‘I've eaten too much feeling'. As a general rule you should get offered this, or given it without asking, after you have paid your bill, or when they bring the bill.  Personally I would never go back to a place where you didn't get offered at least a glass of it, or where they charged you for it.

 I will answer your questions about the ‘briki' next month as I have already overrun on this letter, and maybe I will get around to doing a page with average prices as well, in the meantime I have posted some pictures on the web at www.villaralfa.com/spinalonga.html

 Yours, as ever,

 Tim

About the Author

Born in England (in spite of the name!), in the last half of the last century when Sussex was Miss Marple country and you could leave yours door unlocked for days, the author is unashamedly gay and everyone seems to know in spite of the fact that he never 'came out'He moved to Crete in February 2004 and opened Villa Ralfa as Crete's first gay accommodation and lodgings in June 2004. You can find his web site at http://www.villaralfa.com