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Lawrenzzz
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Name: Clark
Country: United States
State: New York
Birthday: 2/10/1977
Gender: Male
Interests: Foriegn Language, Film, Musical Theater, Eastern Religion, Pizza
Expertise: Actor
Occupation: Other
Industry: Entertainment
Message: message me
Member Since:
12/15/2003
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| For the longest time I have had 3 different blogs going.. and that meant basically that I had no blogs going. There is something to be said for streamlining your life.. as a blogger, and otherwise.
So unfortunately, Xanga, you've been downsized. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.
The GOOD NEWS is that I am blogging frequently now that I only have one blog. And thanks to my brother Zane's artwork I have a spiffy new letterhead.
PLEASE STOP BYE AND SAY HELLO | | |
| This is what all the old women in Greece look like.
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|  I have already described to you the amazing Samaria Gorge. Now I have to tell you about the rest of my time in Crete. Unfortunately I am already 2 islands behind, but I don't want to shortchange Crete, especially since it was extremely surprising. First- look at C's parents' home: Tucked away just outside of a little town called Afrata.
The first great surprise that Crete has to offer are some incredible beaches. Some of the "beaches" that we have seen so far on the trip are not the kind of beaches I am used to enjoying. For instance, some of them are not sandy beaches, but with stones of various sizes instead. The stony beaches are interesting in their own right, but then there is nothing like a fierce good old fashioned huge sandy beach. The 2 nicest beaches of the latter kind that we visited are called Marathi and Falassarna. When Constantine was little his parents always took him to Marathi. There is a big peninsula just across from where the beach is located, and there are small sailing and fishing boats scattered in the harbor. It was a really fun beach, but Falassarna took the cake among Cretan beaches. Expansive and gorgeous, we had such a fun day swimming and playing in the crystal clear water and frolicking in the sand.
After a day of sightseeing, Constantine and I drove out to this remote Monastery where Constantine went as a child. It is a unassuming church at the top of a hill, and there is a great hike down into (another!) gorge, but a much smaller one. The hike was SO fun. Along the way we started playing with the color highlight feature on C's AMAZING camera. These were some of my favorites of me.
We also spent some significant time in Hania, which boasts a very charming old port with lots of shops, restaurants and quaint little streets. One night there were even fireworks to mark the occasion. 
But our most oft visited place in all of Crete was a favorite restaurant of Constantine's, Koo Koo Vaya, called incorrectly by me the first night when trying to recall the real name: Koo Koo Roo. This restaurant is owned by a family friend of the Germanacoses, and we went there I think 4 times during the 6 day stay. Or maybe it was just three, but in any case it was really great food, a very happening hotspot, and a spectacular way to see an incredible view of Hania.
More to come! | | |
| One of the main attractions that Crete has to offer (second only to the 3000+ year old Minoan palace of Knossos- which I also went to!) is the Samaria Gorge. It is the longest gorge in Europe. That might not sound that cool, but just wait till you see these photos.  The trip through the gorge is a full day event, and quite an experience. The day begins by taking a bus up to the very top of the gorge to the village of Omalos. This is about 1 hour from Hania and 1250 meters above sea level! Once there, and faced with the majestic site of Mt. Ida (where Zeus is said to have been born and kept hidden from his jealous father Kronos) you hike your way down into the gorge, which takes about two hours descending on rocky paths and steps. Along the way, there are curious rock stacks that people have made-- almost like little zen gardens to say "I was here" without etching "I was here" tactlessly into trees or stones. It was really cute. As you see above, I fit in well with the rock stacks. The views on the way down are absolutely breathtaking. 
There is never a dull moment while hiking the gorge because of the ever shifting scenery that unfolds before you and arouses your sense of wonderment. Because of reports from Constantine's sometimes pessimistic father that we would never make the trek in under 5 hours (which is perfectly realistic goal to set), we sometime found ourselves wanting to stay ahead of other hikers that we encountered. After identifying some of the other hikers and their nationalities, Constantine exclaimed, "This totally feels like the amazing race, or the Olympics, or both!" We had the American team (us), an Italian team, a pseudo-Rasta Canadian team, a German team, and a late emerging Lithuanian team. That is the "Olympics" version of our race. The "Amazing Race" version was the gay couple (us), the total yuppies (the italians), the stoner hippie Rastas (Canadians), the older under-dog couple (the Germans), and the Euro student travelers (the Lithuanians). VERY FUN. As if the rocks were not enough, we had these games to keep us motivated to push past our slowly forming blisters and keep the pace. In somewhat of an upset, we took the silver medal (or the 2nd place in the amazing race). No matter how you slice it, we are not going to get the big endorsement deals, or the million dollars. Ti na kanoume? (what can we do?)
At the halfway mark, there is a picnic area where everyone stops and rests for the final (and most impressive) section of the gorge. In the picnic area there is also a charming little chapel and an old venetian fort for your edification. After that you go right into the "gorge" part of the walk.  That is where I started freaking out.  You come out from a thicket of trees and suddenly this enormous gorge appears before you. It was just so majestic walking through these huge towering rock walls which had been eroded by years of wind and water and have the appearance of marble-ized paper.  Pointing the way there is also a trickling brook (which I'm sure pales with how it looks in the height of winter) serving as a quiet companion. It is quite impossible to describe how awesome it is. The giant stone hewn walls gradually close in on you until they reach about 3 meters at their narrowest. It was a truly a spiritual experience!
After about 9 miles the nature hike is suddenly over and you find yourself walking through a series of restaurants (Don and I would call this being "Disneyland-ed" aka forced to walk through stores or shops after a ride) on your way to the tiny port town, only accessible by boat. On the way we also passed some sheep and goat herds, a beautiful whitewashed forlorn church, and a seriously dilapidated bridge sitting in a dry river bed that looks like its about 200 years old. Speaking of dry, the last mile of the path is on hot concrete with no tree cover. We passed through the small port village of Ayia Rumeli and stopped briefly to buy our tickets to the ferry boat out of the village, which would leave in just over an hour. By the time we got to the port, we were sweltering. As if by design, just when you are at your hottest, you reach this black pebble beach with inviting cool water from the Libyan sea (!). We ravenously threw on our swim suits and sunk our swollen feet into the heavenly water. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! After such a long and beautiful hike it was something like a catharsis to sit in the water with the tide drifting over us and reflect on all of the beauty of the gorge. We rested from our labors.
Too soon, we saw the flocks of people drifting toward the ferry boat, the one and only way to exit the village. Our deserved beauty rest continued as we slowly moved through calm blue water toward Sfakia, where we could catch a bus back to Hania. The whole day had proceeded without a single hitch in our plans..
Knowing that it might be somewhat crowded finding a seat on the bus back to Hania, and Constantine knowing the demeritorious nature of Greek public transit, we made sure that we were the first people (team?) off the boat. We hurried out of the port past small tavernas and gift shops up some stone steps to the landing where the buses stop. As we reached the top of the stairs we saw a group of probably 200 stringy-haired, exhausted and wary-looking travelers standing in a clump trying to talk to a man who was shouting in Greek. I mean this in the most polite way: it looked like a refugee camp, and we were joining. As our champion Greek speaker, Constantine ascertained that the bus was not here yet. But was there really only going to be one bus back to Hania? How in the world is this going to work? Who is going to get on this bus?! The refugees seemed restless as the Greek shouter walked away. It was still sunny and everyone was seeking shade and trying to keep their bags and knapsacks in organized piles. Suddenly a bus rounded the corner. Like a starving pack of vultures everyone lunged toward the bus. Constantine and I held back, noticing that the bus did not say Hania. The bus, seeming unaware that it was the subject of so much fervor, simply made its way past the throng and then merrily reversed into what seemed to be its normal parking place. Then another bus came, and confusion increased as some of the first vultures could not decide which carcass looked meatier. This bus also pulled forward past everyone, then reversed into position parallel to the first. More mayhem. Among all the chaos of the two arriving buses, a third bus quietly appeared. Constantine saw that it said Hania, and then I noticed it as well. My eyes got big, and just as I was ready to lunge for positioning Constantine said, "Don't look at it! Everyone will know!!" Assuming (correctly) that the third bus would follow suite, we waited patiently exactly where we predicted the 3rd bus's door would end up-- we were EXACTLY in the right spot, and the 3rd bus was indeed the bus to Hania. As the bus pulled into position, we felt like we had outsmarted all the other refugees. Gratified, we showed our pre-purchased tickets and with a prideful sigh we boarded that vessel or victory.
Maybe we had taken the silver in the actual event finals, but we felt like nothing less than gold medal winners as we settled into the spacious front seats of the large air-conditioned bus which took us on what seemed to be our glorious and exultant road back to Hania. | | |
| Yes, I am doing part 2 first. Now that we got that out of the way.. our second day of museum trekking took us to the most famous of Athenian museums: the Athens Archaeological Museum. This is me in front of it!  Inside are some pretty famous pieces, although honestly the rest of the world has some of the more famous works of art from the Ancient Greek world. The Louvre in Paris has probably the most famous one, the Venus de Milo. But of course there is also the infamous Elgin Marbles, which are currently at the British Museum in London. The Met Museum of art in NYC also has a HUGE collection of Greek sculpture and many Roman copies as well. Just so you can see some of the art that the Athens museum has to offer, I am going to offer you my favorites smattered along the way here.  One of the more interesting things at the beginning of museum is the collection of the Kouros, which is the depiction of the ancient Greek ideal male. There is also the Kure, which is ideal female (basically Beyonce's body).  I mean.. as you can see I am pretty close on this one. I wanted to strip and really see how I measured up, but I was told that would be "inappropriate". For anyone who knows about Egyptian art, this might look very similar to some Egyptian statues from around the same period. However, as you can see from what is inside museums all over the world, the Greeks took things a lot farther than the Egyptians ever did. The Greek sculptors quite quickly developed more imaginative and created much more unique, specific, and realistic works. There were quite a few other neat sculptures, and we spent the majority of our time walking through and examining them. And as usual I clowned around a bit.
After we walked through the neolithic section, as well as the Cycladic art, we visited the Egyptian collection. It was pretty good, although not as large as the Met's collection in NYC.  And of course I saw a lot more, um, in Egypt. Anyway, on our way out of Egyptian, we witnessed this tourist posing next to a mummy case, and just as her friend was about to snap the picture, the room attendant stopped her and said something in Greek and motioned to the way her arms were crossed, as if to tell her to uncross them. After the young lady apologized, I asked Constantine to ask her why she had stopped them from taking the picture, just out of curiosity. The woman explained that the mummy was a statement in itself, and that the young woman didn't need to comment on it by mimicking its pose, and that it was disrespectful to the art to do so. The woman explained that the mummy alone was worth photographing. I was perplexed. So this wasn't a museum rule, I thought, just a preference of that woman in that particular room. After all as you can see I imitated the Kouros just downstairs and nobody stopped me. I voiced my objection and Maria said, well, it's that woman's room to watch over and she has the right to do what she wants in her room. I then thought to myself.. oh really? So if I am the room moderator of a room can I send away people wearing blue because it reflects onto the statues and disrespects the color the artist chose for the originals? Or can I tell people they are not allowed to speak in front of the art as any talking disrespects it? We got in quite a discussion about it and Constantine pointed out that maybe this young woman was merely trying to make a connection to the art, and after all one should be grateful that a young person wants to come to a museum to see where she came from, and how the people from a different time have chosen to be remembered. Maybe she SHOULD be mimicking the art, in fact, as a way of understanding herself better. I still thought it was kind of lame that this woman would try to make up some random rules according to her own criteria, and not the museums. It annoyed me. So I started breaking things. Expensive things.. no I'm kidding, but Constantine and I did become sort of delirious at that point and started making fun of everything.
We had seen nearly everything the museum had to offer, but we had not seen any of the pottery on the second floor yet, and it had already been over 3 hours. The pottery collection is absolutely huge, from the older geometric pottery, to black figure pottery and then finally to red figure, so we knew we had to go up and at least walk through.  When we got upstairs, we started entertaining ourselves in ways which we thought were pretty funny, although Albertina and Maria didn't quite feel the same about it. OK so I'm sure you know how we always say, "yes queen" to someone who is living their life to the fullest, or wearing a really extravagant outfit, or freaking out in public over something. Well, sometimes you can say yes_______ if you want to.. for instance Karen was watching TV and this woman was drinking Vodka and living for it so Karen said, out loud (even though she was alone) "Yes Vodka!". Or, when Karen and I were watching the Olympics we kept seeing that Claritin commercial with Shannon Miller, the former Olympic gymnast. It was clear that she had had a very significant rhinoplasty since her younger years, so every time we saw her commercial we just shouted out.. "Yes nose job!" I think you get the drift.  So Constantine started looking at all the vases that had really long and complicated names and saying things like, "Yes Attica red figure Bell-krater depicting the return of Persephone to her mother, the goddess Demeter.. get it! You are fierce! Live!" It was so funny and became even funnier the longer the titles became. We were laughing really hard. And then Constantine became even more hilarious because he was looking at the pots and saying things like, "Well, this one is OK but its just giving me weird colors and its too busy-- I prefer sleeker and cleaner lines.. like Calvin Klein home decor stuff-- its just a little more streamlined and simple, which I like. I mean what are these people on here giving me? Its like I don't know what I am looking at. I am sure this is just a trend that will go out as quickly as neon colors in the 80s." It was so so so so so funny. At that point we realized it was time for us to go home, and we did. | | |
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