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Chalki: Less Wind, More Chill
Sophia and her friend, the Greek islands’ answer to Mrs Brown and Winnie McGoogan, are sitting on the steps chatting, as they usually are, as we say our goodbyes and head off to the ferry port. “Always take your key”, she had told us when we arrived, “because I never know what time I sleep”. Such is island life. After the Greece mainland, the large island of Crete, and the pleasant buzz of Karpathos, we are now looking for something more remote, more peaceful, so with our first glimpse of what lays before us as the ferry pulls into the tiny island of Chalki, the smallest inhabited island of the…
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Photo #21: First Light
When we look back at this photograph we can almost feel the cold, not so much because the temperature was spectacularly low but more because the sweep was so stark. This is Tafraout, Morocco, close to the arid Valle des Armandes (Almond Valley) where we spent a few days exploring and hiking the dusty barren ground in very hot temperatures. Yet as the sun went down, the mercury plummeted at speed, bringing extremely cold nights and the need to use the shepherds blankets left by our bed. This photograph captures beautifully the moment the morning sun creeps down the mountains before brightening the town – our breath would have been…
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Photographic Memories #5
As every traveller knows, when you look back through old travel photos, many of them trigger wonderful memories. With no current prospect of travel even domestically let alone worldwide, we will have no new adventures to blog, but we do have many such memories….. Photo #5: Mother Russia What makes this photograph special to us is how it captures the very essence of the way we had pictured Russia probably since childhood: a frozen river, austere architecture, smoke billowing into the morning air from the tall chimneys of factory buildings, it is the Russia of our mind’s eye. This was sunrise in St Petersburg, captured as we made our way…
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Sunsets and sunrises in Molfetta
We seem to have developed a habit of waking very early on this trip. It has its advantages. Our apartment balcony here faces due East, straight out across the deep blue Adriatic and in direct line of the awesome sunrises. Come evening time, the people of Molfetta gather at the harbour, in or in front of Bar Duomo, to watch the amazing sunsets across the calm waters of the inner harbour. Rarely are both so dramatic in the same location. Here’s some examples:-
