Trip to Greece video - Naxos Part 1 Hora

From Santorini, I went on to the delightful Greek Island of Naxos in my 2003 journey to Greece. Part 1 is about Hora, the island's port and capital.

Hora's sunset views were charming, and they were everywhere around the waterfront and northern shore of Grotta. You hardly had to really look for it. (Really can’t stand the digitalized sun of a square shape in my video.)

Lovely small hotels in Naxos' Hora were abundant, their whitewash walls decorated with blue color details. Most came with a small balcony, and many were equipped with a small kitchen.
The splashing waves were dramatic around the area of the temple of Apollo, from the causeway to the islet of Palatia, as well as the Grotta.

Kastro, the Venetian Catholic old quarter, was the most intriguing part of the city, and naturally the highlight of the video. It's also the most enigmatic and challenging labyrinth in Greece I'd been to. With its endlessly meandering alleyways and passageways, I could hardly fathom out this labyrinth, even after losing and finding my way there for a few hours.

Further up into the Kastro, Tourists were rare. It's interesting to wander around, hearing the chatters of its dwellers coming out of their houses, looking at interesting details of the houses, walking through archways low and not that low… In the uppermost parts, near the museum and the cathedral, the derelict houses emanate a mysterious air that enchanted.

I wanted to accompany my Kastro adventure with music that felt mysterious and joyful but not gloomy. But most music that sounded mysterious I had were pretty gloomy. I happened to find Primal Scream’s "Higher Than the Sun" right for my clip. This is the kind of songs that always remind me how brilliant a song could be, with my ears constantly dulled by the overload of fine but not really impressive music of today.

A little away from the town center, it could be very quiet. Hardly anyone in sight, walking on the road could feel like being in a ghost town. Mind you, it could be a challenge to find a toilet. An area crowded with hotels reminded me of the surrealist paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, as if time was at a standstill. Rather playfully, I've added the overused music of Ry Cooder to exaggerate the barren feeling.

Watch my video:

Trip to Greece video - Santorini trilogy Part 3 Santorini Pastoral

Part 3 of my Trip to Santorini in my 2003 journey to Greece. I took a morning walk trying to get to a certain beach, kind of getting lost in some tranquil country roads.

Most of the video is accompanied with the song Summer Rain by the Primitives. The song fits my video very well. It was summer, I walked alone on the road, and for a while there was drizzle. I tried hard to make DV, clumsily holding an umbrella against the wind and rain.

I wanted to take a walk towards a beach from nearby the guesthouse. No one was on the road except me and a few passing vehicles. So I was overjoyed to see a lovely little dog, which seemed to be a godsend from heaven (but was perhaps the dog from a store of the town). I imagined that I was Tin Tin and called it my Milou. And so it had escorted me on the road for a while. Thanks to my little angel, at the crossroads I followed it when in doubt about which road to take. And Milou was right. It guided me to the right direction.

Yet, no road was really wrong there. It's always fine to get lost in any roads among the fields. In fact, in the beginning I meant to go to beach A, but earlier on I had already taken the road to beach B by mistake. It's a happy mistake though. Much farther away, it's just impossible to reach beach A.

And like a heavenly creature, Milou had mysteriously disappeared while I was wondering about the road to take.

(Milou's story: I was enjoying my usual walk every day to find some good snacks. Strangely this morning there's a fool on MY road walking slowly alone. How dare you! That's rare. Usually clever people would speed through the roads with some gigantic and sturdy monsters. This uncivilized trespasser could not speak Greek. Now and then it mumbled something to me in some barbarian tongue that I could not understand. Yet it seemed to call me by the name of "Milooh" repeatedly. At first I was cautious, as it pointed at me with two weapons in its hands. Fortunately it's harmless, perhaps due to its imbecility. Ah, then I smelled a great snack in the field. Ooh, yummy! Soon I got rid of it, thank God! And I remained the KING of the road.)

Ironically, while I was not fond of beaches I was often attracted to beaches. They seemed like good excuses for a little exploration. Finally when I got to see the beach on the cliff, the waves roared, the wind howled, no one was there, the beach looked gloomy -- it's not for swimming, or sunbathing, not even walking.

For a city dweller like me, it's particularly pleasant to walk on these quiet country roads. Though the scenery was not spectacular, it was delightfully tranquil and scenic. There for the first time I saw scarecrows which really looked like scarecrows (of my childhood impressions).

Though this quasi-MV is so far one of the most unpopular video of my hopelessly unpopular (but lovely) channel, I am very fond of this video. It includes some favourite elements of mine -- walking alone, getting lost, pastoral scenery, lovely stranger (the dog), summer rain, as well as my favourite Primitives song "Summer Rain". I could enjoy watching it over and over, narcissistically.

Watch my video:

Trip to Greece video - Santorini trilogy Part 2 Road to Oia

Part 2 of my trip to Santorini in my 2003 journey to Greece. From Fira, through the cliff-top villages of Firostefani and Imerovigli, I walked all the way to Oia for its famous sunset.

It's a much longer walk than I thought. The island was small and Oia, at the tip of the island, didn't seem that far away. But as I walked on and on, the tip in sight was always STILL somewhere far away.

A DV camera in my right hand and a snapshot camera in my left hand, it did not make me an action-hero, but rather I made a fool of myself. I was too busy making DV and then taking pictures and then making DV and then... With this 3-in-1 role to play, I had hardly a third of the time to really see with my eyes. As in elsewhere, at times I asked myself, "What the hell am I doing here?" -- I wondered if I had looked at things with my own eyes at all. Rather, I just greedily recorded the scenes with gadgets. And then I had to get to Oia before sunset, so I couldn't take my time to walk leisurely as I usually did, though it's hardly a hurried walk compared to that of package tours.

For my inexperience, the camera movement of my videos was often too fast. As well as the sunset deadline, with the limited number of DV tapes available then, I tried to take it all in with as little time as possible. Unfortunately I had mistaken it for a powerful scanner. The truth is, you just get less -- and nowhere-fast -- if you move too fast with your camera, perhaps not unlike the truth about the pace of travel.

In fact, like most other journeys, I regret I didn't have enough time to see the country. I wish to travel around at a more leisurely pace, even though my pace was already snail-slow compared to others.

It took longer time than I thought to get to Oia, partly because of my self-imposed multiple duties, partly because of the illusory nearness of the tip of the island in sight, and partly because of my stupid curiosity. On the road I saw restaurants flaunting their cactus dishes and I was curious. Spotting some cactuses with their red flowers on the mountain roads, I was stupid enough to touch one such innocent-looking flower. Instead of being greeted by a spirit who would grant me three wishes, soon I felt my fingers burning -- stung by the finest possible stings of the flower, which could only be seen when the fingers had been stung all over with! So I'd spent quite some time trying to pick out the tiny tiny stings, worrying that I might die of their secret poison within 24 hours. In the end it's impossible to pick them all out, and the group of German walkers, whom I took as my temporary guardian angels, accompanying me on the lonely mountain roads, had gone out of sight, and I was left alone in the whole wide mountain area. As for the leftover stings, they miraculously disappeared the next morning. And I survived.

The path was harder to walk than I thought. After the easy walk through the cliff-top villages of Firostefani and Imerovigli, a few parts of the path at first sight seemed almost impossible to walk. They were very slanted and slippery footpaths. What I thought at the beginning as no more difficult than strolling around town turned out to be a hiking trip at the countryside. I was not prepared for it. At first I didn't even expect walking all the way from Fira to Oia. It's just that as I walked on and on through the villages, Oia seemed not so far away and I thought why not walking on to get there. With my cheap pair of sandals not made for hiking, I simply ended up with bleeding toes.

While I was in Santorini, often it was quite cloudy and at times there were drizzles. So it was hopeless for me to take photos of the white white houses against the blue blue sea in charming contrast and to boast them to friends afterwards. Worst, there was no famous sunset of Oia to see, and after all the efforts of the long march, the ending was not glorified. Welcome, the good old consolation of "the process is more important than the outcome".

The walk was nevertheless fruitful. At least I had learnt about two edible plants. The bad guy was the cactus (and its malicious flower). The good guy was the fig fruit, which could be seen on many roads in Greece. The best thing was that you could easily pick them and eat them. Isn't that sweet?

Watch my video:

Trip to Greece video - Santorini trilogy Part 1

Overwhelmed by the dramatic beauty of Santorini, I had made too much DV of the Greek island. My own private cut was more than 50 minutes long, and I easily fell asleep midway watching it. It's hard to condense it to less then 10 minutes to put it on YouTube, so I've cut it into 3 parts.

Part 1 begins with the boat trip from Iraklio to Santorini, and ends neatly with the boat leaving Santorini. If you are patient enough to watch till the end, or impatient enough to jump to the end (as I often do when watching videos of others), you will be rewarded with a nice song by Whistler. Strangely, for me, sometimes the most moving moment is to see the ending credits accompanied by songs that I like – the end, unimportant as it may seem, could be the true end of the whole video.

My cynicism about the pictorial beauty of Santorini evaporated soon as I got to the island. Those banal pictures and postcards of the beauty of the island were not lying. The real Santorini was only more captivating, not just with its cliff-top villages but also its endless pastoral scenery.

When the boat arrived at Santorini, I was slightly bewildered by the hubbub at the pier. Never had I seen a port as noisy as this (Yes, I haven't yet been to Tangier), let alone imagining seeing it at Santorini, which is often associated with the rather tranquil and heavenly images of white houses against blue sea. Yet, like other hubbub scenes, I was more enchanted by the drama then repelled by the chaos.

That was the usual tout scene at the port. I guess I was picked up by one of the touts. But it's not that bad, after all I had failed to make a reservation of accommodation, and had been worrying about where to stay. Though the guesthouse was 20 minutes' walk away from Fira and had no swimming pool, the room was lovely and comfortable, and I got free rides from the owner to and from the port. Most importantly, it's cheap. (Although I was envious when hearing fellow travellers staying in characteristic cave-like rooms at hotels at the cliff, without spending much more than I did.)

And what's more, there's a lovely bakery nearby, which is my favorite bit of the video. The mainstay of the bakery was a simple loaf of bread that was fresh and tasty. Outside the shop there were two lovely bakery frescoes, and inside it's decorated with some charming pictures. Many villagers went there to get their daily bread. I followed everyone to buy bread there. It made me feel like I was one of the villagers and I liked that.

Watch my video: