It’s a meme?? As Barbara Weibel at Hole in the Donut Travels says, Remember playing tag when you were a kid? Slapping someone on the back and yelling, “Tag, you’re it!” Well, I’ve just been been ‘virtually tagged.’

My friend and fellow travel blogger, Donna Hull, My Itchy Travel Feet was ‘tagged’ to participate in the meme known as My Three Best Kept Travel Secrets, and after telling us secrets about Tucson,  she tagged me.

In Barbara’s blog she explained (a meme, which rhymes with cream, is a catchphrase or concept that spreads rapidly from person to person via the Internet). This particular one was started by Katie of Tripbase.com So here goes.

My 3 Best Kept Travel Secrets in Greece

Mani village

The Mani Peninsula. The Peloponnese Peninsula of Greece teems with variety. The ancient sites of Mycenae (where Agammemnon hung out), and Olympia (where you can run on the ancient track–but not in the ancient dress style, that being nude), beach towns, Kalamata olives, mountains and rushing streams–and the strangest bunch of domiciles I have ever seen. In the Mani, you will spot clusters of tower houses–square, one room atop another with no door on the ground level.  It looks like a medieval attempt to protect against another kingdom, but in fact it is 19th century attempts to protect against neighbors.

Keriamakos Cemetery, Athens

The Kerameikos Cemetery in Athens.  Starting in 1980, on-line friends suggested I go there, people who lived in Athens said it was one of their favorite sites, and still I hesitated. Not that I have anything against cemeteries, but there is SO MUCH to see in Athens.  Last year, on my fifth trip, I finally walked the short distance between my Syntagma area hotel, past the Monastraki metro station (you can take the metro from Syntagma to Monastraki if you’re a real wimp). Everything they said was true. For 1000 years Athenians were laid to rest here. The ancient  markers include some gorgeous carving. The small museum’s display about the mass graves during the plague brought me to tears. I could not believe my luck at being able to walk in the path of Plato. Okay, Matt Barrett--I finally went. And now I’m telling others and they are probably saying, “but there is SO MUCH to see in Athens.”

Vai Beach, Crete

Crete’s Eastern Beaches. Quiz question of the day. Where is the only place in Europe you will find palm trees? Oh, yeah, you probably read the heading, didn’t you?  Well, it is true.  A beautiful  beach on the east coast of Crete makes like Miami with palm trees and soft sand.  Now you know I love Greece, but, folks, when you go to the islands for the beaches, you are barking up the wrong country–those beaches are mostly rocks and pebbles. Not at Vai. And when you think about it, the next stop south is Africa–across the Libyan Sea, so of course there are warm waters and palm trees.

So time for me to tag someone:

• Jessie Voigts of Wandering Educators
• Craig Martin of Indie Travel PodCast
• Alexandra Grabbe of ChezSven

YOU’RE IT!

Photo of Mani from a web site that identifies it as taken by cantaloupe99 at Flickr. The photo is no longer in that collection. But click on the photo to see a quote from fav author Leigh Fermor from his book on the Mani. Photo of Athens Cemetery by Vera Marie Badertscher, all rights reserved. Photo of Vai beach from tournet.gr–click on image to see more pictures and get more information on eastern Crete.

And what are the secret travel spots that you have not told us about? Time to come clean.

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Zorba dancing

Place: Crete, Greece

Book: Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis (1946)

Movie: Zorba the Greek with Alan Bates and Anthony Quinn(1964) and subsequent musical, Zorba

Several years ago, during our travels in Greece, Ken and I had a marvelous 10 days of driving back and forth across the mountains of Crete and exploring its rough-edged beauty. I was particularly happy to learn that we could stroll on the very beach that Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates danced across to the unforgettable (and in Greece, at least, inescapable) theme song of the move, Zorba The Greek.

The Greek director, Michael Cacoyannis, shot the film on Akrotiri peninsula of northern Crete in Chania . The famous Zorba dance (click for you tube clip) took place on the beach of the small town of Stavros, and these many years later, the town’s tavernas still make a buck off of the honor.

Zorba continued to haunt our travels in Crete, not just because you cannot get through an evening without hearing the song and watching somebody try to do his best Zorba imitation on the dance floor. But also because his spirit so reflects Greece. And why not, Kazanzatkis, the creator of Zorba in the novel also named Zorba the Greek , himself born in Crete, still ranks as one of the most evocative writers about Greece, its religion and thought.

During our journey, we stopped at a small mountainside village hoping for a cup of tea, but the makeshift cafe on the front porch of an old couple had only cafes (The powdered Nescafe foisted off as coffee on Americans.) When she saw I was disappointed, the woman came out with a big bag of gray-ish dried weeds.  By gestures, she told me that she had collected them herself in the mountains above her house, they grew only in Crete, and they cured many things, particularly women’s complaints and colds. (I am always amazed by the depth of conversations carried out with complete lack of the other person’s language.) I recognized it as a sage plant, perhaps a variety that grows only there. Someone told me it was probably dittany, but she used the leaves, not the blossoms, so I still think it was sage. Years later when I opened my paperback version of Zorba the Greek, I was amazed to see it opens with Zorba having a cup of sage tea.

When we sat on the old couples’ porch, we could see the characters in Kazantzakis’ novel and the movie passing by on the street, or peering suspiciously at us from the more populated cafe across the street. The exuberance and love of life of Zorba were all around us.

I remember many images from the movie, but the strongest, most disturbing scene convinced the young scholar (Alan Bates) to leave the hedonistic life of Zorba and return to his studies.The villagers gather at the home of a dying woman like so many vultures, and the moment she is pronounced dead they swoop in and strip her house. The scene disturbs and opens the traveler’s eyes to a darker  side of the carefree-seeming image created by Zorba with his ready smile and willingness to ignore convention.

I truly believe that Zorba and his creator Kazantzakis provide the best guide to the Greek traveler. Despite all his novels about Greek Orthodox religion, Kazantzakis turned to Buddhism, and I have a t-shirt with a quote from him, in Greek: “I hope for nothing, I fear no one, I am free.” Perhaps that is the secret to the exuberant love of life experienced in Greece. If you hope for nothing, you are free of yearning.

The author also said: “Every perfect traveler always creates the country where he travels.”  Let’s hear your reaction to Kazantzakis’ quotes. Please join the discussion.

For other posts about Greece and Crete, see the By Country page.

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On Siphnos, Greece

Siphnos, Greece

Fishing Boat, Siphnos, Greece

Do summer days make you wish you were on an island? See some books about about Greek Islands, and specifically about Crete. And over at Spot Cool Stuff, I wrote about my idyll on the island of Siphnos.

Or journey to the Caribbean with this British travel writer.

St. Lucia, Caribbean

Have a nice trip to the islands!

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Books: The Villa Ariadne, by Dilys Powell  and

• • The Cretan Runner by George Psychoundakis

Destination: Crete, Greece

The Island of Crete, the largest of the hundreds of islands that make up most of the watery nation of Greece, contains as much history, variety of scenery and adventures as many small countries.  Two eras attracted our attention when we visited Crete—the Minoan, 1400 years B.C. and World War II, which was fifty years in the past when we visited. Two favorite books in my traveler’s library reflect those two periods.

Passengers on cruise ships hop off at Heraklion and grab a taxi for the Palace of Knossos. The partially reconstructed ruin with its brightly painted murals (also a reconstruction—the originals are in the National Archaeological Museum in Athens) delights the casual visitor and stirs up controversy among scholars. They believe that Sir Arthur Evans took unwarranted liberties. He first saw Knossos in 1894 and spent the rest of his life excavating and restoring, and perhaps jumping to conclusions.

Powell’s , The Villa Ariadne, book brings to life the work that continued after Sir Evans’ death, as her husband ran the Knossos site in the 1930’s. She brings a personal view of Evans to the reader and lets us see the archaeological site through the eyes of the scholars.

Knossos is the best-known remnant left behind by the Minoans, a mysterious people who did not leave behind any trace of written language, with the exception of one short “shopping list” which archaeologists still puzzle over.  We found Minoan sites scattered everywhere on the island—always in spectacular locations—either on hilltops or beside the sea. They may not have been a bookish people, but they knew how to live.

Driving through the mountain villages of Crete on our way to Minoan palaces, we often saw WWII war memorials.  The Nazis never quite succeeded in controlling Crete, thanks to the rough terrain and the tough mountaineers that hid in caves. Helped by British secret forces, the Cretans managed to make life miserable for the invaders. We learned that in some villages German occupying forces retaliated by killing all the men and boys over 13 years old. The Cretan Runner tells the story of one of those resistance fighters. It is translated and introduced by Patrick Leigh Fermor, who served with the British forces and wrote many wonderful adventure books, some of which I will talk about here at the Traveler’s Library in the future. Just as Powell’s book gives a different view of the Minoan age, we learn much about the forces that have shaped the lives of the villagers when we read the Cretan Runner.

Have you been to Crete?  What parts of Crete were most appealing to you—the beaches, the ocean, the old Turkish/Venetian cities, the villages, the canyons? Do you have another book on Crete to suggest for the library?

(Note: Both of the recommended books are out of print, but available from Amazon or ABE.com.  And don’t forget to leave a comment on the contest post, so you have a chance to win a copy of Walking Boston.)

Photograph of Mural at Knossos by Nenyaki, Creative Commons License, Flckr

See other posts on Greece: The Mani, The Miracle of Siphnos at Spot Cool Stuff; Athens; Greek Islands; Movie on Greek Island; and Museums and Loot. Well, I TOLD you I love Greece.

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