Amalia Discovers Her Greek Village with Fountains, a Manhunt and Ice Cream

On July 19, Amalia went with her Mommy, her Yiayia Joanie, her Papou Nick and her honorary Yiayia, Eleni Nikolaides, to the village of Lia in Northern Greece, which her grandfather Nick Gage wrote about in the book and film  "Eleni" and her Mommy wrote about in the travel memoir "North of Ithaka."

This is the house where Nick was born and, after his mother was imprisoned and then murdered by Communist guerrillas, it fell into ruins and Nick's daughter, Eleni Gage, (now Baltodano) returned to the village for a year in 2002 to oversee the rebuilding of the house, just as her grandmother Eleni had known it.

Nick introduces granddaughter Amalia to the house.

Amalia was more interested in the outdoor fountain.

Where she played with her sand toys.

That night everyone gathered at the Church of the Holy Trinity for the beginning of the annual festival of the Prophet Elias--the village saint.

Papou Nick, Mommy Eleni and Amalia waited outside the church.

After the church service, the icon of the Prophet Elias was paraded through the village, with people joining the parade as it passed their houses. Father Prokopi carried the Bible.

That night everyone gathered in the open space called the Goura to eat lamb and dance and sing. The clarinetist and singer and the rest of the live orchestra came from Albania but sang in Greek--Epirote music.

The next day Papou Nick introduced Amalia to the courtyard of the Inn of Lia.

The courtyard was abuzz with news: two Albanian convicts, who had broken out of a Greek jail months ago, and were presumed to be heading toward Albania where they could not be extradited, had encountered the Greek police at 4:30 this morning in a gun battle in the small town of Vrosina, just at the foot of the mountain road that leads to Lia, (where we stopped yesterday to get provisions)  and one of the two was killed, while wounding a soldier, but the other one escaped.  Now our village was crawling with police, stopping every car to look for the fugitive.  The road over the Kalamas River that divided our mountains from the rest of Greece was being periodically closed and opened.

Amalia distracted herself from the excitement by discovering the spring in the Inn's courtyard.

Where she spent the afternoon floating flower "boats" over the edge into the deep blue sea, with the help of "Yiayia Eleni".

 Nick chose to keep calm and carry on by playing tavli.

While Yiayia Joanie and Amalia put on our sunglasses and drew pictures on the tablecloth.

Later, when Mommy Eleni took Amalia to the nearby playground, it was full of police holding rifles and stopping every car up the road into the village.

As of today, there's no news of the last escaped Albanian, who may be hiding in the famous hollow tree below our village which has sheltered fugitives in the past, including a saint, but while the village waits with bated breath and is both terrified and thrilled to be featured in every news broadcast, Amalia has much more earth-shaking news:  here at the Inn she discovered the Ice Cream Cone.

P.S. If you want to read a much funnier version of these events, check out daughter Eleni's latest blog post at http://www.elenigage.com/lockdown-in-lia-larger-than-life-days-in-our-tiny-village/

Amalia Does Hydra, Greece

When you return to places where you were happy in the past, you want them to be unchanged.  I've been visiting and photographing the island of Hydra, Greece, for 45 years, and love that it remains the same, with its patient donkeys (no vehicles on the winding, stair-step streets) and dozens of cats waiting for handouts in the tavernas

Visiting it now with granddaughter Amalia, only 22 months old,  made it all better--seeing her delight in everything.

The donkeys were still waiting to take our bags up the hill.

and to deliver them to our hotel, the Bratsera, which used to be a  sponge factory.

The cobbled streets were still filled with art and cats.

This taverna window with its ship and beautiful curtains has never changed over the years.

We had lunch in a nearby taverna, the "Dry Olive Tree" (Xsera Elia) where Amalia  discovered the joy of Greek tomatoes

As well as the only-in-Greece fish the Barbounia (red mullet)

In the Bratsera pool she played with her Nemo characters

Walking along the harbor, some shops had closed but Loulaki was still there.

Amalia got an ice cream on the harbor.

And passed the old sailors watching the ships come in.

The next day we took a boat to a beach called the Four Seasons, where the changing booth said it all.

We chose lunch from the taverna's menu.

Amalia took a nap after lunch.

That night we walked to our favorite sunset bar, the Hydronetta, 

where we saw several tourists leap from the wall to the sea far, far, below.

Then we continued along the water to the next little town, Kameni, where 

we had a wonderful meal of seafood before Amalia fell asleep.

Amalia’s Jungle Adventure

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On Saturday, 19-month-old granddaughter Amalia paid a visit to Florida’s Jungle Island in the heart of Miami, where she had her first chance to get up close and personal with animals she had only read about in story books.

Right inside the door, employees handed her Mommy a royal blue parrot and perched two other parrots on her Yiayia Joanie and her honorary Yiayia Eleni Nikolaides, and then they took a photo.  This did not make Amalia happy, perhaps because the parrots were so much bigger than her beloved Tonia, the green parrot who lives in her complex back in Granada, Nicaragua.

 Amalia  brightened up when she saw giant iguanas and agile little monkeys inside the first gate.  The monkeys followed us around, hoping that some food would come out of Yiayia’s purse, but it didn’t.

 Amalia was amazed to see children riding “paka-paka” on top of Judy, the elephant, just like people ride on horses back in Granada, but she said decisively that she did not want to go on such a ride (nor did her grandmas.)

 She was equally worried by the sight of some alligators and their big teeth, and wished that her Papou (Grandpa) was there to go “Da! Da! Da!’ to those alligators and drive them back into the swamp.

 After passing waterfalls, caged tigers and lots more parrots,  they came to “Dr. Wasabi’s’s Wild Adventures”  which was Amalia’s first look at live theater.

They met a pot-bellied pig

And a lemur

And a bristly porcupine.  Most of the animals came around so that you could touch them if you wanted.  But not the porcupine.

Next they came to the petting zoo where Amalia fed grain to a little billygoat

And Yiayia Joanie fed juice to another goat from a baby's bottle.

 And Amalia got to touch a furry little monkey

And watch two bigger monkeys who were showing off by swinging all over, like Tarzan.

She marveled at  huge tortoises, much bigger than the tortugas in her garden in Nicaragua.

 On the way to the restaurant, they passed a giant alligator that had its mouth open, and Amalia demonstrated one more time what Papou would do if he was there to beat up the alligator.  She didn’t realize it was only a statue.

 In the lunch room there were paintings of some of the animals they had seen and Amalia had a delicious lunch of pasta, but she fell asleep in her carriage before the Key Lime Pie.

She  didn’t even see the Flamingo Lake outside the windows.

The male flamingos were flapping their wings and running around aggressively while the females glided by and pretended to ignore them.

 Amalia slept all the way home to South Beach, and when she woke up that afternoon, she couldn’t stop talking about all the animals she’d seen, especially the elephant and the alligators.

 In fact, she was so excited that she woke up at three a. m. that night and stayed awake until 6 a.m., driving everyone else crazy while reliving her jungle adventures and recounting what Papou would do to the scary animals if only he was there.

Her Mommy said that it had all been too much excitement for Amalia and they probably shouldn’t take her to see Disneyland until she was about five.