After our walk, Erica and I started to get hungry. My cousin strongly recommended eating anywhere in the village, and so I saw out of the corner of my eye a gyros/souvlakeria and decided we should eat there.

The cook was a matronly woman who was very shy, but agreed to let me take a picture of her doing her cooking.

The proprietor or  local gadfly was very friendly and insisted that I drink the local wine. When I tried to explain to him the nature of drinking and driving, he explained the need to take things slowly. After my lessons yesterday, I agreed and drank.

When the gyros arrived, Erica and I were stunned by the size.

The top layer pictured to the left was full of french fries. Once you removed the french fries there was a huge amount of mean underneath.

We were both very happy eating this giant gyros.

As we sat and enjoyed the time passing away, a couple of dogs came around, and I suppose because I do miss my dog,  I snapped some photos of the puppies as they lounged in the sun.

At some point an older dog came around, and the puppies tried to assert their dominance.

The older dog on the right let them bug her and then at some point, just gave up and put the two puppies in their place. The yellow puppy ran away. The black/brown puppy was not as easily intimidated. The owner had to come out and chase the posturing dogs away. Posturing dogs are not great for business. Hard to walk through them… 

I offer this picture from Archanes with no comment

I really enjoyed that Archanes had a real local downtown that had not yet been obliterated by Costco and Walmart or other big-box retailers. There were a variety of small stores selling daily goods. And those small stores were what created the local life.

Although this is not a store it is a center for the soldiers of the resistance against the Nazis.

Here we have a grocer/supermarket

and a jeweler

and an iron worker.

Today my wife had to attend the Eurographics 2008 conference, so Erica, a classmate from Stanford who was here as the spouse, and I decided to go for a quick drive.

My cousin Kostas Tsigaridis who had lived on Crete for many years in Heraklion while he worked on his BS, MS and Ph.D. in Chemistry had strongly recommended we go to Archanes. He said that was the last truly pretty village of Crete.

The drive to the village was made worse by the Piece of Shit GPS system that we used. There is a fine easy to use road that will quickly take one to Archanes. Unforutnately the GPS had stale map information so it took us along one of those scenic Cretan 1 lane roads that are bi-directional with a cliff to one side.

On the positive side it did allow us to take take in some pretty vistas  of the interior of Crete.

The village has a lot of well preserved traditional homes with their traditional colors, and traditional verandas that are decorated with many potted plants. We were able to peak through open doors and take pictures of the interior.

One of the more interesting aspects of the village was that the signs were all traditional hand-painted signs of the form that used to adorn all village stores throughout Greece. This is, in my mind, is another example of Greece in many ways becoming less fawning of foreign styles and prouder of it’s own heritage. Only 20 years ago, the notion of a Greek store with a Greek sign on an island with this many tourists would have been laughable.

Like all villages there were a great many older men who were walking around taking in the sounds or drinking their coffees in the local kafenion.

The gentlemen in this photo were gossiping about the local hotties.

As we walked around the village we took pictures of the small houses

including the only three story building.

When we arrived in Lassithi we decided it would be lots of fun if we went for a hike up Karfi, a small peak with a spectacular view of the plateau and the northern coast of Crete.

The road to the hike began near the village of Tzermiado. The road was a tiny one lane road that winded itself up slowly up the mountain leading to a Stavros Church. We were supposed to get off the road before we got to the church and take a dirt road, but we misread the instructions. We knew we had misread the instructions when we reached a dead end

and I had to do a three point turn in my Nissan Micra (huzzah for small cars!).

The hike began in a small valley near a much smaller church off the main road.

The hike was extremely easy to follow

with lots of goats pointing the way

The guide book claimed that there was plenty of shade on the mountain for a picnic. We found no shade except for this tree:

I suppose if you consider that you are on a mountain top in Crete which was deforested in the Minoan era the mountain looks downright lush with this lone tree providing shade …

There were many pretty flowers, that I could not resist taking pictures of.

We finally reached a fork in the road with a sign that pointed to Karfi

The only problem is that Karfi was in the opposite direction of the arrow (or so we think based on our guide book) and looks like this

Unfortunately we only discovered our mistake on the way down from this other peak.

At the top of the mountain

we took a group photo

Unfortunately, in our first attempt, I tripped and fell before I could get to my spot next to Andrew. Funnily enough the camera was able to take a picture of the reaction of my wife and Andrew to my fall

Which looked more gruesome than it was.

While on the top of the mountain I did put together this 300 degree panorama that looks kinda cool

The way down was uneventful, and after my fall, I wasn’t that interested in taking any more pictures.

Agios Nikolaos is the home of a bottomless lake (60 meters in depth). What’s interesting about this lake is that it has the same urban legend about Jacques Cousteau that Santorini’s caldera has. In both locations, the bottom is invisible to the naked eye. In both cases, there is a legend about some connection to Atlantis. In both cases, Cousteau, ostensibly, came to survey the bottom and was unable to see anything because it was too dark. In Agios Nikolaos, this is proof of the lake’s mystery and connection to Ancient Atlantis. In Santorini, this is proof of the caldera’s mystery and proof of our relationship to Ancient Atlantis…*

So here’s a couple of pictures of the lake:

When we went down to drink some coffee we passed by some old fishing boats, and I could not resist the temptation to take some photos

In the cafe, I took this picture of the lake.

While I was drinking my Frappe metrio me gala, I took advantage of my 10x optical zoom to take this picture of the waiter (owner?)

The frown he has on his face is very similar to the frown’s I saw in Venice on the paintings in the palazzo’s. My wife has this theory that we Roussos’ who have a similar frown, must be descended from Venetians. A book on genealogy in Santorini that my mother read has the same theory. My father agrees with this theory, but adds an addendum, that the Venetians who were our ancestors were originally Greeks who had migrated to Venice and then resettled in Greece! So we Roussos’ are still really Greek …

* Turns out Cousteau did visit both locations…