That's not Olympia!

Well spotted. It certainly isn't the ancient site of Olympia, it is in fact the pool at the Best Western Hotel in modern Olympia.

I have a chronic health condition which flares up now and again (well more often than that really but let's not dwell) and holidays tend to trigger it. Which explains why, while the rest of the group were exploring the site of the original Olympics, we were resting by the pool in the hotel for the morning. It was a nice way to spend time; the gardens were beautiful, it was warm without being too hot, it was restful and the hotel even opened up the bar just so that someone could  make us some coffee.

 

While I would have preferred to see Olympia, since I'm not expecting to go back to mainland Greece so won't get another chance, if I had to be ill this was the place to do it. The staff were exceptionally good and even gave us a lift later to  the restaurant where the group was having lunch so we could rejoin the coach.

 

If you're ever looking for a hotel in the area, I'd definitely recommend this one!

And She Did It!

This photograph landed in my in-box late last evening

 

 

sister's first pair of knitted socks, complete and modelled.

 

Impressed? I am.



And then it was Delphi

I've wanted to visit the site of the Delphic Oracle since I was ?about 8. Ever since I first heard about it anyway and I can't imagine that would be much before I was 8 and reading about the myths and legends of Ancient Greece. So often when you've wanted something for a long time the reality is a disappointment, and I suppose overall Greece fell into that category, but Delphi was a shining exception. It was fascinating. It helped I suppose that we had a brilliant guide who wasn't hugely bossy and loud voiced, as all our other guides  were, and was prepared to tackle the philosophical tension at the heart of the site; the apparently opposing claims of 'Know Thyself' and 'Nothing in Excess' ( which is definitely not, as I was always taught, Moderation in all Things)

 

A few pictures

 

 

the view from our hotel room balcony in Delphi

 

the lady in the orange T-shirt is our excellent guide. The woman in the denim skirt and checked shirt I had to take to task for slandering Alex Salmond to a large group of people in the middle of the street. and at the top of her Daughter of the Empire Voice. She was not amused, although ironically enough she accused me of having No Sense of Humour,

the theatre. I am immensely proud of managing to snap this when there was absolutely no-one in shot!

a general view of the site, including the Athens Treasury (the building in the background with the pillars)

 

Supposedly the site of the Omphalos, the exact centre of the earth, according to Greek mythology and the reason that it because home to the Oracle.

 

Delphi was definitely the highlight of the holiday for me and it you're at all interested I would definitely recommend a visit. Well worth it. 

 

Oh Look! It's the front

of the Dornoch Castle hotel!

Little did I know when I did my recent blog about it that we would be staying there within a very short time. It's all to do with Ph D supervisors changing times, and neighbours wanting cats looked after and getting through the flat hunting quicker than we thought. We ended up needing a one night stay somewhere  that we could get to at a reasonable time after leaving Glasgow at 1.00 pm and that we could leave after breakfast and get to the north coast in time for the lunchtime ferry. There are various small and charming towns on the A9 which fit this description but as the OH had never been to Dornoch and as I had told him that they had a really nice  kitchen shop there, it was Dornoch we opted for.

 

We had a lovely stay, including once again a beautiful evening meal and here for good measure is a picture of my dessert. This time I went for the chocolate mousse.

 

I think on balance I preferred the strawberries and cream from last time, but you know - tough choice! And at least this plate doesn't look like it has measles.

Sadly the kitchen shop didn't open the next morning before we had to head for the ferry, but maybe another time.

 

Athens and the Parthenon

We started our tour of the Peloponnese in Athens. We stayed in a very nice hotel but I have to say that Athens itself went straight to the top of my 'Disappointing European Capitals' list, displacing Madrid which had held the title for several years. A lot of the older bits of Athens  have been torn down and replaced with what I assume is less interesting architecture. I can't know that for sure, but its hard to believe that any of the C18 and C19 century buildings that they pulled down could have been inferior to the oddly coloured concrete blocks that replaced them. And those concrete blocks are not improved by the ubiquitous graffiti which was to be seen in every small town and village wherever we went as well as Athens.

 

Anyway we spent a morning being shown the Parthenon. This wasn't a particularly enjoyable experience because:

 

the site was very very crowded

 

it was very very hot

 

you are not allowed 'into' the building, but can only shuffle around the outside. And I use the word shuffle advisedly

 

the building is full of cranes which are being used by the restorers to clean it; given the level of smog prevalent in Athens I suspect this is a job with a roughly similar end date to the painting of the Forth Road Bridge

 

I discovered that I have an allergy to something within the combination of bright sunlight, high elevations and olive trees. Not sure what but I developed an unexpected runny nose here and it became a feature of subsequent site visits, although at least after this I was prepared for it.

 

Still at least I've seen it. We carried on to the Parthenon Museum but my back objected to the guided tour so we did a quick individual visit and had lunch.

 

And that was as much of Athens as we saw at that point, as later that afternoon we all had to clamber back on the coach for the journey to Delphi.

 

And here are a couple of pictures - note the cranes, they're impossible to avoid

 

 

 

Project 60 - Number Two

That's a very dark picture - well it was a very dark day - so you may not be able to tell but that is Lemon Curd in those jars. Home made lemon curd. Made by me. As a baker but a non cook there are lots of things that I've never made along these lines; really anything that means I have to pay it undivided attention until it's done  rather than being slung in the oven on a timer. Anyway Project 60 seems a good opportunity to try and catch up on this sort of thing and Lemon Curd was the first one.

 

I asked around for recipes and finally decided to go with the Delia Smith, goodness knows why because I have had issues with her before, and I have to report that if I were to make lemon curd again I would go with a different one. When a recipe says 'whisk continually in the pan over a low heat until the mixture thickens (about 8 to 9 minutes)', then when I have done exactly that for 22 minutes and the mixture still shows no sign of thickening then something is wrong. To be fair it may be me that's wrong rather than the sainted Delia, but even so, it was disheartening. I was tempted to throw in a bit of extra cornflour but the OH started twittering on about how if I did that I would have to mix it with a little liquid, and given that the problem I was trying to solve was that the stuff was too liquid to start with, I decided against.

 

In the event the mixture sort of thickened (very) eventually, and once in the jars it set. Which was a huge relief, after all the time and effort. The OH who, unlike me, actually likes lemon curd, pronounced it lovely and graciously gave me permission to do it again. Don't hold your breaths.

A Trip to Greece

This is probably not the place to rehearse the bitterness of not going to Greece for my honeymoon. There again, on the off chance that it might be, and in brief, we wanted to honeymoon in Greece. As we do not cope well with very hot weather this meant getting married in April or May. My mother was a teacher and refused to countenance talk of weddings in any month other than August - so that she had 'time to organise'.^ As the temperatures in Greece in August would have been unbearable for us, we went to Italy instead. And somehow or other we've never made the time to go since. In 34 years. We must have been really desperate to get there!  

 

^Strange to relate my sister got married just nine months after I did. Which meant that she got married, with my mother's total approval,  in May. Go figure.

 

Meanwhile back to Greece - metaphorically speaking.

 

We weren't actually planning to go to Greece this year, any more than we have planned to go for the last thirty odd years. We had a River Cruise booked for the end of April through the  Low Countries; basically art and chocolate, what's not to love? But we cancelled it when Peter was diagnosed at the beginning of the year.  We asked the travel company if we could transfer our deposit to another holiday later in the year and they stuttered a bit and then said yes, if we decided within 24 hours. We weren't really in the best of states to make that sort of decision under time pressure to be honest but we opted for this trip to the Peloponnese, arranged the transfer and then promptly forgot all the details. So right up to when we left for the holiday, when people asked whereabouts we were going I would say I didn't have a clue, I was just going to fall on the bus and let it take me wherever it felt like.

 

More detail and photos to come later, but the overall verdict once we got back was basically 'Glad we've been, won't rush back'. One of the reasons being that the landscape all looked like this

 

 

 



Picturesque for the first fifteen minutes. After which it gets a bit dull.

It's All About the Socks

As I mentioned I was teaching my sister to knit socks when she came to stay recently. As she was only here for 4 days and we did quite a lot of things other than knit sock I was impressed that she managed to get one completely finished. And here it is.

The photo is rather over exposed, but never mind. Basic sock pattern but with contrast toes and heels, I don't know how keen she was to do those, but I thought it was a good idea to get her used to doing something a bit different right away. Anyway she couldn't take her needles home with her because she was flying, but I posted them on yesterday so I hope it won't be too long before she has a pair of socks to wear and show off.  It pains me to relate that neither her husband nor her son were at all impressed with this when she showed it to them. Perhaps if they tried knitting socks they might be more appreciative.

 

Talking of first socks, I recently bade a very sad farewell to these

 

 

 

 

These are the first socks I ever knitted. Done completely on 4 dpns, because 30cm circulars hadn't hit the UK at that point. My friend Elaine had to coach me in their use and I never really got on with them. I cast on one cuff far too tightly which meant that that sock was tricky to get on, and I followed the pattern slavishly not realising that really the cuff was far too short for my taste. Still, they started me on a very enjoyable journey and it was hard to say good bye.

 

And finally for today on the sock front there are these

 

I made these for Son No 1 knowing that they will need warm socks ( and hats and gloves and scarves ) for a Canadian winter. He really liked them, which was pleasing as they were time consuming to knit. The pattern on the instep was fiddly in the extreme. Anyway the idea was that they combined two of his favourite things; wolves and Terry Pratchett. The wool was called Oook, a reference to The Librarian at Unseen University who was turned into an Orang Utan in a magical accident. And the pattern is called Wolf Pack with the twisted cables up the sides representing single wolves coming together to form a pack.

 

I am busy just now with a huge and secret project for Christmas which means that my sock knitting is at a standstill. Have to say watching my sister work her way down her first attempt, I was jealous. I so wanted to get out a little 30 cm circular, a skein of 4 ply wool and just cast on a sock.

 

Project 60 - Number 1

So many of you might recognize that as a photo of green olive tapenade. I wouldn't, but then I'm not terribly interested in food, or a very adventurous eater, so faced with it in the normal way of things I'd have registered it as green mush and moved quickly on.

We were on our way home from the Central Belt earlier this week and while we were waiting for the first course of our dinner we were served some home made bread, with chive butter and some green olive tapenade. I tried the bread, and the chive butter (which was lovely) and fully intended to ignore the tapenade as per normal. After all I don't like olives.

And then a light bulb went on in my head. Wasn't I just trying to challenge myself to do sixty new things before I was sixty one? Wouldn't trying this stuff be a new thing to give a go to? What was the point in deciding to do new stuff if, when new things presented themselves, I didn't recognize the opportunity?

I took up a spoon and heaped some tapenade onto a piece of bread. Then before I could have second thoughts and without pausing to put myself off by trying to see what it smelled like, I popped it in my mouth.

And of course I hated it. I have since googled the stuff and see that it is basically made up of three ingredients; capers, anchovies and green olives. As I do not like any of these three things separately the chances of me enjoying them when they have been pounded together into a paste were basically nil. But that is not the point. I tried it.

 

One down, fifty nine to go.

Project 60

My sister was here recently for a (very enjoyable) few days, and while she was staying I taught her to knit socks. Well, a sock to be precise, but she went home with the makings for the second of the pair....It turned out she had asked me to teach her to do it inspired by a friend of hers who had decided to do fifty new things in the year she was fifty. So my sister had decided she should take herself out of her comfort zone and do some new things too.

For some reason this caught my imagination as well. It could be something to do with the fact that my 60th birthday is in view. It's not hugely imminent, but it is visible on the horizon, and I have rather picked up and run with the idea.  So sixty new things between now and turning 61 (because some of the ones I've thought of involve long range planning and a lot of travel and I don't know that I could fit them all in before I'm sixty, but I've got more of a shot if I give myself that extra twelve months.)

 

I haven't written down a list; partly because I don't think I could get to sixty all at once and I might put things on it for the sake of getting to the right number. Then when I come across something I'd like to try that isn't on the list I might feel too constrained to do it, since it's not there.

 

I've got a few starting ideas though. Apparently the trick is to include some small stuff along with the huge things. I have to admit that the large (and expensive) things come to mind more easily.  We'll see how we go.