Dreaming of Mykonos During a Blizzard

 As the snow piles up outside, I'm taking a trip to sunny Mykonos in my mind and re-posting a photo essay first published six years ago.  These photos are going to have to last me through the current blizzard and into next July.

My friend Helen has a son living in a New York apartment with bare walls, and she promised him some "art" for those walls for Christmas.  He loves the Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini --especially the beaches and the waves, she said, asking me to come up with some photos of those two islands so she could choose several that I would have printed in a large size and matted and framed for his Christmas gift.

This gave me a delightful chance to go back through photos taken four or five years ago on those islands to give her a selection to choose from.  The photo above shows a Greek woman meeting Petros, the famous pelican who is the mascot of Mykonos.  It seems that there has been a pelican named Petros wandering the harbor around the fish market since forever.  The original Petros died in 1986, it is said, and the whole island went into mourning.  Then Jackie Kennedy Onassis obtained a new pelican, named Irene, to take its place.   I think there are actually several tame pelicans lurking around the harbor, but the natives will always tell you that the pelican you are pointing at is Petros.

Here is another shot of Petros--or is it Irene?  It's a rather pink pelican, so maybe it's a female.  Helen chose three other photos for her son's Christmas gift, but said she might eventually get this one for herself, as she really loves the pelican.

This church--right on Mykonos' harbor near the fish market, is said to be one of the most photographed churches in Greece.  It's very tiny.  It shows in the background of a painting I did of two men in the vegetable market.  I use that painting on my business card.  And I went back to Mykonos and  showed it to the vegetable seller last year.  He loved it.  He said the old gentleman who was his customer in my painting has now passed away.  Here's the painting.

Here's another photo of Mykonos taken from the second-story veranda of a bar where we always go to watch the sun set.  The row of  windmills at the end of the harbor are the symbol of Mykonos--so this scene is easily recognizable to anyone who has been there.  The  stretch of picturesque buildings on the left is called "Little Venice"

This photo was taken during the "golden hour" as photographers call it--the hour before the sun goes down, when  everything turns a beautiful color, including the white-washed stucco houses of Little Venice.  Fashion photographers often take advantage of the golden hour which makes everything, including their models and their fashions look better.

Here is a view of Little Venice looking in the other direction, when I was standing below the windmills.

While sitting in our favorite Mykonos bar, waiting for the sun to go down, I took this photo of my glass of wine with the windmills in the background.  It was at this same place that my daughter Eleni took the photo of me that I use for my profile photo.

As the sun set, we saw this wonderful view of an anchored sailing ship silhouetted against the sky.

Here's one last photo of Mykonos taken from the beach of Aghios Sostis--Eleni's favorite place in the world.  The beach is fabulous and up the hill there's a small taverna with heavenly food cooked in the simplest way on a grill.

Mykonos is a very sophisticated island filled with international visitors and very expensive stores.  It's all white stucco buildings and shocking pink bougainvillea and narrow, winding streets meant to confuse raiding pirates  The island is known for its hard-partying ways and the significant gay culture there.  There are many nudist beaches and loud nightclubs, but there are also wonderful  isolated spots like this one.

In my previous blog post I showed you the photos of Santorini and told you which ones Helen chose for her gifts to her son.

Santorini -- The Ultimate Greek Island

(Because we all could use a little Greek sunshine right now, I'm re-posting  this photo essay from six years ago.  Soon I'll re-post the photo essay I did on Mykonos, Greece's other most popular Greek island with tourists.  Santorini is a favorite of newlyweds and Mykonos is for party animals.) 

When people say “Greek islands” they are usually thinking of  Mykonos and Santorini, the two most popular (and most expensive)  of the countless islands of Greece.  Both are in the Cyclades chain (which includes about 220 islands, some uninhabited.).  They are  characterized by white stucco buildings that look like melting sugar cubes, winding roads that are often blocked by donkeys and stunning views of the sea.

                                                  Santorini 1

A large majority of the travel photos you see of Greece are taken on Santorini, because  it’s impossible to take a bad photo here.  A tip: If you see a photo with an alligator-shaped rock lurking out in the sea, then it was taken on Santorini.

Santorini 2

If Mykonos is the island known for international jetsetters, divine decadence, nude beaches and hard-partying nights, Santorini is the island known for the honeymooners who flock there, and is often called the most romantic island in Greece. 

If coming by boat, you sail into Santorini’s central lagoon, land on the black sand beach and immediately take either the téléferique--a cable car in a tunnel --or a donkey to get all the way to the top, where the two towns of Thera and Oia perch.  (You can also try to walk it if you are in really, really good shape.)

Santorini 3

About 3,600 years ago Santorini was the site of the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history-- the Minoan eruption, when much of the island sank into the sea, giving rise to the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis. 

Santorini 4

On Santorini there has been excavated a complete prehistoric town,  called the Akrotiri, but unlike Pompeii, no dead bodies were found there.  Evidently everyone had time and warning enough to leave (although they probably were drowned in the tsunami that followed the  eruption).  Today (if the excavation is open to the public—sometimes it’s closed) you can walk the streets of Akrotiri and look in the houses and see the pots and furniture and wall paintings they left behind.

Santorini 5

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my friend Helen asked me to select some photos that I’d taken of Mykonos and Santorini so that she could select three to have blown up, matted and framed as a Christmas gift for her son Nicholas.  I posted the photos of Mykonos on Dec. 19. 

Santorini 6

All these photos show  Santorini, where the views are to die for because everything is terraced down the side of the volcano.  Every night, everyone  on the island gathers outside, on roofs and balconies and in tavernas and especially in a chic bar named Franco’s, where you can reserve a lounge chair, to watch the sun go down with great drama and music and applause, when it finally sinks below the  horizon.

Santorini 7

As for which photos Helen chose—she picked  numbers 2 and 5 above and from the Mykonos group, the photo of the golden hour gilding the houses of Little Venice.

Santorini 8

Stalking Sunsets

                                              The Acropolis, Athens, from the roof of the Grande Bretagne Hotel

Whenever I travel, especially in the company of my two daughters, by late afternoon we usually find ourselves sitting by the water somewhere with a glass of wine, waiting for the sunset.  That’s when I really know I’m on vacation.

Many years ago I learned that Key West has a sunset party on the beach every night, with fire-

eaters and dancers and all sorts of celebration of the beauty of the evening sky. On Santorini, in Greece, every sunset is a party as well.  The white-sugar-cube buildings turn gold and orange and the roofs and balconies become crowded with onlookers who applaud as the sun disappears into the Aegean.

                                                                            Cats at Hydroneta on Hydra

Some sophisticated bars, like Franco’s on Santorini, and Hydroneta on Hydra, cue their music so that it reaches its climax at the moment the sun drops out of sight. (At Franco’s in the town of Thera on Santorini, you’d better reserve a lounge chair in advance—although every spot on Santorini has a drop-dead view.)

                                                                                   Windmills on Mykonos

On Mykonos, the bar called Veranda, overlooking little Venice, is our favorite spot to drink and savor the show.  That’s where my profile photo with windmills in the background was taken by Eleni some years ago.  (She keeps telling me it’s time to replace it with something more up-to-date.) And that’s where this photo  of a sailing ship was taken.

Corfu also has sunset views that could make you weep.  Here’s a spot I always stop to photograph—showing the fortress overlooking the harbor.

As soon as we arrive in Corfu every year, we head for a drink on the roof garden of the Cavalieri Hotel, perhaps the most romantic spot ever for sunset watching as the swallows wheel, shrieking, overhead in a frenzy of bug-chasing, and the retro sounds of Frank Sinatra provide background music.

The most dramatic sunsets I’ve ever seen, night after night, were in Nicaragua, on Playa del Coco, the beach where sea turtles flock to lay their eggs in August to December and the babies emerge to head for the sea in January and February.  Every night on Playa del Coco we’d go down to the beach, sit on the rustic chairs and watch the light show in the sky.  And say, as we lifted our glasses toward the horizon, “Now we’re really on vacation.”

A Resourceful Mom Writes an eBook Bestseller

 

This is a story about how an intrepid Greek-American mom in Alaska tackled economic problems caused by a family health crisis that forced her to quit her job.  She did it by pouring her family recipes and her memories of her mother and grandmothers into a cookbook that she self-published on the internet as an eBook.  Within less than a month, she had an internet best-seller.

This is also a story about how the internet has made it possible for us to reach out to people around the world to find support, friendship and a marketplace for things that we create with our own hands and talents, no matter how physically isolated we may be. 

The first I heard of Demetra Nerantzini was an e-mail from her on Jan. 9 saying that she would like permission to use a photograph of mine – a view of  Santorini that appeared on my blog in 2010-- for the cover of a Greek cookbook she was writing. She told me what impacted her final decision to publish the book:  The last few years had brought an overwhelming sequence of health emergencies affecting her children and her husband, all of whom had surgeries requiring a great deal of home care while recuperating.  During that time Demetra had no option other than to leave her job.

It was her daughter Marina who pointed out that this would be an ideal time for  Demetra to consolidate all the family recipes into one place.  People were always asking for the Greek recipes she had learned from watching her mother and two grandmothers—recipes that were stored in her mind and on scraps of paper tucked into cookbooks.  And once the recipes were gathered into a manuscript, along with the  cherished memories of the women who created them, then Demetra could self-publish an on-line cookbook that would be available not just to family and friends, but to the whole world.  Marina begged her mother to make the book her single New Year’s resolution for 2012 and kept insisting until  Demetra agreed.

                                                       Demetra & daughter Marina

In her introductory letter to me, Demetra said, “This book will be my most requested family recipes.  I don’t know if it will sell 5 copies or 5,000. I’m not an author and I’ve never published anything before, so my apologies for being very green about this.” She offered to pay for the use of my photo, but I told her she was welcome to use it;  I was delighted that she liked it so much.    

It turns out that Demetra was not green at all about internet publishing.  In her second letter to me she wrote “It appears that Smashwords is really the only aggregator that can help me get this first book out into iBooks and Kindle without a lot of up-front charges. My deadline is to have this book submitted to Smashwords on/before January 25^th since my New Year’s Resolution …is to have this in the eBook stores by February 1^st.”

Demetra kept me posted on the ups and downs of finishing the book by her self-set deadline.  “It’s amazing how hard sticking to a schedule can be at times, having lost my Mother and Grandmothers not too too long ago. (Lost all three between March 2001-Halloween 2006). Some recipes/stories I can sit and smile through typing, while others feel like they’re ripping my heart out…Sometimes I can’t see the screen through tears and need to step away.…Even if this book only sells 10 copies it’s done me a wonder of a soul cleansing”

She finished it by her deadline of Jan. 25,  and the next day wrote me: “A Google search for “Demetra’s Kitchen” already brings up the Smashwords page….  Before the book can be submitted to iTunes,/iBooks/Sony/Kobo, I have to wait until Smashwords does a visual review and then they will assign it to their premium catalog. At that point I can obtain an ISBN through them where I am noted as the publisher.“

Despite getting the book done on time, Demetra was soon disillusioned with Smashwords,  “It is driving me absolutely batty every time I see their screen about the ISBN number. It should say, “Click here to give up your publishing rights…or wait an eternity for us to get to your book so you can keep them!”

By Feb. 3, she was more optimistic:  “Everything is good now. The book has been distributed to Apple and all the other vendors, so I ‘m just sitting on pins and needles waiting for them to update their sites!... It, for sure, is going to be on all the Apple stores (available both in iTunes and iBooks), Barnes & Noble’s e-site, Sony, Kobo, Nook, and then somewhere along the line Amazon too. .. If you happen to be on Facebook, I have made a page for the book itself www.facebook.com/DemetrasKitchen.  There’s already 55 “Likes” on it, and according to the exposure statistics…it’s been viewed and translated for countries from Greece to UAE, to Germany, Switzerland and numerous others.”

On Feb. 11 Demetra gave me the high points of the previous week: On Monday she learned from the Facebook Reach Insight Report that people from  21 countries have been “poking around the Facebook page for the book.”

Tuesday she found out that a chef in Mombasa, Kenya wants to feature a couple of her recipes on his weekly show.

“Thurs—we finally appeared on iTunes/iBooks! (note no sign of it still on Sony, Kobo,  Barnes & Noble, Diesel or Kindle as of today.)”

“Friday—some one at Apple read the book and made it one of 20 categorized as “New and Noteworthy”.

On Saturday she went to the Smashwords home page, clicked on “Cooking” and then clicked on “Best Sellers” and found that “It’s Smashwords #1 cookbook. This is amazing.  I’m honestly floored at all the attention this is getting.  I’ve said more thank-you prayers in this last week than I think I have in the last few months…I’m a housewife in Alaska – I must be dreaming.”

By Monday, Feb. 13—“We’ve hit more milestones today.  We made the front page of iTunes cookbooks page and also, when you click through the recent releases (which are default sorted by sales, not release date) I AM #7 AND MARTHA STEWART’S COOKBOOK FROM DECEMBER IS #8!!!  HOLY COW!!!  This is all just so humbling.  It’s very surreal seeing this little thing that I consider my heart on paper being rated well enough to be sold on the same pages as the likes of Martha Stewart, Julia Child and Mario Batali….

“How very humbling this year has been ever since Marina decided this was my New Year’s Resolution.  Thanking God every step of the way for what a miracle this is turning into for our family.”

Feb. 18—“This is just amazing. God’s hand truly is in all this…For days now, when you go to the iTunes cookbooks page there sits the book cover (with your beautiful picture on the cover) interspersed with the likes of Martha Stewart, Mario Batali and Julia Child…God’s hands combined with the power of the Internet.”

Feb. 20—“Your beautiful cover now graces the first spot on the iTunes main cookbooks page and the first spot on the iTunes Regional & Ethnic Cookbooks page.  I couldn’t sleep tonight and thought I’d see where the book was and now I’m just sitting here in a dark and quiet house shaking (also wishing I could wake everyone…except it’s 3:02 a.m. in Alaska.)”

Clearly it’s too soon to write the ending to Demetra’s story of how she used the internet, her family’s recipes and her computer and cooking knowhow to help her family get over a rocky patch in the road.   But whatever the ultimate monetary rewards of “Demetra’s Kitchen”, its success so far has her looking for a hardback publisher.  And she’s now working hard on “Demetra’s Kitchen Volume 2”.

“I’m going to have to set myself a short deadline for Volume 2 and just bury myself in it” she wrote me.  “ Heck, my birthday is April 27^th –why don’t we make that the official “upload to Smashwords” date.  I wrote the first one straight from my heart and out through my fingers (in a hurry).  Might as well try that again, right?”

Santorini –The Ultimate Greek Island

When people say “Greek islands” they are usually thinking of  Mykonos and Santorini, the two most popular (and most expensive)  of the countless islands of Greece.  Both are in the Cyclades chain (which includes about 220 islands, some uninhabited.).  They are  characterized by white stucco buildings that look like melting sugar cubes, winding roads that are often blocked by donkeys and stunning views of the sea.

                                                  Santorini 1

A large majority of the travel photos you see of Greece are taken on Santorini, because  it’s impossible to take a bad photo here.  A tip: If you see a photo with an alligator-shaped rock lurking out in the sea, then it was taken on Santorini.

Santorini 2

If Mykonos is the island known for international jetsetters, divine decadence, nude beaches and hard-partying nights, Santorini is the island known for the honeymooners who flock there, and is often called the most romantic island in Greece. 

If coming by boat, you sail into Santorini’s central lagoon, land on the black sand beach and immediately take either the téléferique--a cable car in a tunnel --or a donkey to get all the way to the top, where the two towns of Thera and Oia perch.  (You can also try to walk it if you are in really, really good shape.)

Santorini 3

About 3,600 years ago Santorini was the site of the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history-- the Minoan eruption, when much of the island sank into the sea, giving rise to the legend of the lost continent of Atlantis. 

Santorini 4

On Santorini there has been excavated a complete prehistoric town,  called the Akrotiri, but unlike Pompeii, no dead bodies were found there.  Evidently everyone had time and warning enough to leave (although they probably were drowned in the tsunami that followed the  eruption).  Today (if the excavation is open to the public—sometimes it’s closed) you can walk the streets of Akrotiri and look in the houses and see the pots and furniture and wall paintings they left behind.

Santorini 5

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my friend Helen asked me to select some photos that I’d taken of Mykonos and Santorini so that she could select three to have blown up, matted and framed as a Christmas gift for her son Nicholas.  I posted the photos of Mykonos on Dec. 19. 

Santorini 6

All these photos show  Santorini, where the views are to die for because everything is terraced down the side of the volcano.  Every night, everyone  on the island gathers outside, on roofs and balconies and in tavernas and especially in a chic bar named Franco’s, where you can reserve a lounge chair, to watch the sun go down with great drama and music and applause, when it finally sinks below the  horizon.

Santorini 7

As for which photos Helen chose—she picked  numbers 2 and 5 above and from the Mykonos group, the photo of the golden hour gilding the houses of Little Venice.

Santorini 8

Mykonos and Santorini for Christmas

My friend Helen has a son living in a New York apartment with bare walls, and she promised him some "art" for those walls for Christmas.  He loves the Greek islands of Mykonos and Santorini --especially the beaches and the waves, she said, asking me to come up with some photos of those two islands so she could choose several that I would have printed in a large size and matted and framed for his Christmas gift.

This gave me a delightful chance to go back through photos taken four or five years ago on those islands to give her a selection to choose from.  The photo above shows a Greek woman meeting Petros, the famous pelican who is the mascot of Mykonos.  It seems that there has been a pelican named Petros wandering the harbor around the fish market since forever.  The original Petros died in 1986, it is said, and the whole island went into mourning.  Then Jackie Kennedy Onassis obtained a new pelican, named Irene, to take its place.   I think there are actually several tame pelicans lurking around the harbor, but the natives will always tell you that the pelican you are pointing at is Petros.

Here is another shot of Petros--or is it Irene?  It's a rather pink pelican, so maybe it's a female.  Helen chose three other photos for her son's Christmas gift, but said she might eventually get this one for herself, as she really loves the pelican.

This church--right on Mykonos' harbor near the fish market, is said to be one of the most photographed churches in Greece.  It's very tiny.  It shows in the background of a painting I did of two men in the vegetable market.  I use that painting on my business card.  And I went back to Mykonos and  showed it to the vegetable seller last year.  He loved it.  He said the old gentleman who was his customer in my painting has now passed away.  Here's the painting.

Here's another photo of Mykonos taken from the second-story veranda of a bar where we always go to watch the sun set.  The row of  windmills at the end of the harbor are the symbol of Mykonos--so this scene is easily recognizable to anyone who has been there.  The  stretch of picturesque buildings on the left is called "Little Venice"

This photo was taken during the "golden hour" as photographers call it--the hour before the sun goes down, when  everything turns a beautiful color, including the white-washed stucco houses of Little Venice.  Fashion photographers often take advantage of the golden hour which makes everything, including their models and their fashions look better.

Here is a view of Little Venice looking in the other direction, when I was standing below the windmills.

While sitting in our favorite Mykonos bar, waiting for the sun to go down, I took this photo of my glass of wine with the windmills in the background.  It was at this same place that my daughter Eleni took the photo of me that I use for my profile photo.

As the sun set, we saw this wonderful view of an anchored sailing ship silhouetted against the sky.

Here's one last photo of Mykonos taken from the beach of Aghios Sostis--Eleni's favorite place in the world.  The beach is fabulous and up the hill there's a small taverna with heavenly food cooked in the simplest way on a grill.

Mykonos is a very sophisticated island filled with international visitors and very expensive stores.  It's all white stucco buildings and shocking pink bougainvillea and narrow, winding streets meant to confuse raiding pirates  The island is known for its hard-partying ways and the significant gay culture there.  There are many nudist beaches and loud nightclubs, but there are also wonderful  isolated spots like this one.

Next blog post I'll show you the photos of Santorini and tell you which ones Helen chose for her gifts to her son.