Out and about

Various photos from the holidays.
The crème caramel turned out well - I'll try to remember to bring the book upstairs tomorrow and post the recipe. On Saturday C had been very suspicious when I described it as a sort of Crème Caramel, and he'd seen the coffee beans infusing. But he didn't notice the coffee flavour at all on Sunday, and only knew it was there this morning because he was looking for it.


This was in the town, loved the colours in the striped curtain. One of the BIG problems with trying to take pictures is the amount of telegraph wires trailing across everywhere. Even up in the hills - if there are houses, there will be wires that you just can't crop out of the picture you want to take.


This was on the walk up to the Venetian fortress (ruined)


Typical terraced olive trees.


Greek Still Life - this was just a little alcove in a wall near a gate, on the way up to the Venetian fortress.


There are whole calendars devoted to Greek cats. They're thinner than ours, and what I think of as Egyptian looking. This one was enjoying the sun and the smell from the skip!


Old cannon in the ruined Venetian fortress above Zakynthos town. It was a steep walk up. Near the top we went through a belt of pine trees, and the sound from the cicadas was almost deafening. A lot of the ground within the fortress walls was also wooded, but it wasn't as noisy. Rather, it was very peaceful and quiet; the carpet of dead pine needles was so soft underfoot. There were quite a lot of ruined little churches, an old Venetian prison, old British barracks and sports ground, German fortifications from WW2 - and fire hydrants everywhere you looked. It must be a real fire hazard, there were big No Smoking signs as you went in, and just outside we saw two firemen sitting in their car. They were still there when we left, so presumably it was a duty post. There were nothing like the fires we'd been hearing about in Athens, but we did certainly drive through several burnt-out areas, smelling of wet charcoal.


This was just near the old Venetian bridge that I kept trying to get sunset photos of. Hardly anyone tried to take pictures of either these or another beached boat...


This was when we were walking around the marshy area with the bitumen ponds, at Limni Keri. Someone had been clearing, and there was a lot of dead reeds, grasses and bougainvillea lying on the ground.