Paddleboarding

From way back in September, but check out Jacob's talent in his first ever attempt at paddleboarding!

Thank You - Merci Dieppe Veterans

70 years ago today, about 5,000 Canadian soldiers took part in the infamous raid on the northwestern French town of Dieppe. Growing up, I read so much about World War 2, and it was a special dream of mine to visit Dieppe and the site of the invasion. We were fortunate to do so last December during our road trip to commemorate WW1 and 2.

It's a small town and there are no massive monuments like at Vimy Ridge or Ieper, but rather lots of small commemorative plaques and monuments. The Canadian cemetery is a few kilometres inland from the beach itself. I rather like that the beach is largely untouched by ceremony. Standing there on the rough shifting pebbles, battered by the wind and waves, I certainly got a sense of the enormity of trying to survive on that completely exposed beach.

Merci beaucoup. Je me souviens.

Biking to the Beach

Approximately 7 km north from us is the town of Bunschoten-Spakenburg. It is a small town on what used to be the coast but because of land reclamation is now the southern bank of a "river" between the old land and the reclaimed area on the North. There is a beautiful old windmill and I am always impressed biking through the town how beautiful the houses are.

There is a small harbor with old fishing boats, and outside of town there is a small beach. We have biked to the beach twice now and the second time we rented kayaks and headed across the river to explore along the other side.

We'll be back with a later post on our visit to the cultural and fishing museum here in Spakenburg...

Beach Day

The same day we went to San Marino, we also visited several beaches in the towns of Cattolica and Pesaro. It was certainly preseason for the beaches but the weather was nice enough for the boys to dig in the sand and for us to walk along the beach. You could see that it would be an insanely popular spot as soon as the warmer weather comes.

Our Tuscan Flickr



Olaf was especially keen to visit Cattolica, as it was the destination of his first international travel destination. When he was 10 years old, he came here with his school band. We found the hotel where he stayed and the arcade where he played video games. The hotel was closed for renovations and the locals were clearly entertained by this ban of foreigners taking pictures of an older, slightly rundown hotel. There's Olaf on the left packing very lightly as always: a heavy backpack full of camera gear, spare lenses, you'd think he was expecting to find Dag-Otto Lauritzen again (inside joke from our visit with Olaf to Grimstad last August)!

Lake Plastira

Pro-ee-oh-min-no Sa-vah-to (Last Saturday), we took an afternoon drive around Lake Plastira, a big man-made lake about 30 km SW of Trikala. It was built in the late 1950s to control the Tavropos River from flooding, and for irrigation, hydroelectricity, and water for the town of Karditsa nearby. The lake and dam are named after Nicolas Plastira, a general and eventually prime minister, who was the main advocate for the dam.

History aside, it's one of the highest altitude dams in Europe, which of course resulted in quite the windy and twisty drive typical any time you try to get away from Trikala it seems! Heading south from Mouzaki, it's a pretty crazy-steep 20-25 km on the west side. It's always amazing to drive right through some of these villages, with the houses spilling onto the main road and barely wide enough to fit our tiny Fiat Punto through!

The weather was beautiful and it was a great day for a tour. At one town, there were paddle boats and hydro bikes for rent. These folks got a bit too close to shore and ended up providing us with some free entertainment while we were having our snack. The mountain goats were another form of entertainment, scattered up the mountainsides and wandering along the roads.

Despite the beautiful warm weather the past 10 days, the high altitude means that there's still plenty of snow on the trails, so we only managed a short hike. There were also piles of snow and mudslides, not to mention road collapses, along the drive. On the right I'm contemplating sticking my feet into the freezing snowmelt stream. Even the rock I'm standing on is cold like a block of ice, and it felt like someone was hammering on my ankles with a hammer!

The boys react to their bout with cryotherapy (cryo comes from Greek for cold - "Kree-oh"). As usual, Debbie's the toughest of us all! 

Beautiful mountain and Lake Plastira view on the left, and there's the Plastira Dam on the right. Quite the beautiful day tour overall!

Unpuffed puffer fish (porcupine fish)

Today we started by going to the aquarium, NOT with the speargun! there were a lot of unusual animals including silver cheeked toad fish(like a puffer fish without spikes). there were also octopus(Jacob thought the fake octopus on the front of the building looked like tentacles with a peanut on top), jelly fish, lobsters and lots more.  when we were walking home we went along the water and it was very wavy so even though we were on a wall we were being hit by the surf.when we got home we went to the pool and packed our stuff because we are leaving tomorrow at 5:15 in the morning. So we hung out with Andreas and stayed up all night. Then Andreas took will take us to the airport between 12:00 and 1:00.

a shame faced crab

sting ray

on the left there is a sand shark and on the left is a sand bar shark

a logger headed turtle

Puffer fish 

us with Andreas' spear gun

our daily gyros

 yesterday at 4:00 we left the apartment with Andreas and went to a beach there we played rackets and then we played canasta with Andreas(daddy didn't play). Jacob and I were on a team and Andreas and mommy were on a team. one turn Jacob took two cars instead of one the extra card he picked up was a Joker(a wild card).

in these pictures we are waiting for our gyros. it was funny because the waiter didn't even speak Greek! after the gyros we had a crepe with chocolate and biscuits this was also funny because he forgot the biscuits.

more Archaeological discoveries!

Yesterday we went to Chania (hun-YA) and looked around a little. at one of the restaurants they were painting something and two geese fell in the paint. Then we went to the South-west side of the Island and waded to the part of the beach on Elaphonisi (Deer Island) there were a lot of sand sculptures such as sand castles and turtles. We also learned that the Egyptians lived on Crete Because we saw some pyramids and and a sphinx and I found another one. It was a great beach with Pink sand! It was also great for the paddles. To get to the beach there was a one lane tunnel through the mountain.
Lots more pictures from Chania and Elaphonisi!

more handstands in an alley and on the beach!

people at the Dr. fish spa with the nibbly fish.

here are the geese that fell into the paint.

this bus is going through the one way tunnel even though the
tunnel has a turn in the middle

on the right is a turtle that some people made out of shells they made the words we can live together. on the left is the sphinx that I found. it is so authentic that it does not even have a nose!

Family photo at the beach.

Leaping Leper Colonies!

Yesterday we went to three towns and a beach. The first town was called Agios Nikolos and we walked around the lagoon there. Next we went to Golden beach. It would have been perfect for the rackets but Andreas didn't come today because he had to do something else and we forgot to ask for the rackets. After the beach, we went to the second town called Plaka. There we walked along the shore. and we could see an Island called Spinalonga, where there was a leper colony until 1957. Here's a picture of the social life in small town Greece.

More pictures from Crete

The third town was called Elounda there we had dinner which was two pita gyros and one gyros portion which had salad, gyros, pita, fries, and tzatiki. This sign shows grilled octopus in several languages. The clothespins are to hang up the octopus, but they must have all been eaten!

On the left some women are trying on furs when it's 39oC outside! There are a lot of fur shops all over Crete, seemingly catering to Russians as all the signs are in Russian. On the right there is a dried puffy puffer fish. We haven't seen any in the water yet.

Here is another handstand picture with the island of Spinalonga behind

Amazing News in Archaeology!

Bet you never knew that the Innu once inhabited Crete! They must have decided that it was too hot here and moved to a cooler climate!

More Pictures from Rethemnos!

Handstands on the way up to the Venetian fortress at Rethimnos. Daddy wanted us closer, but the rocks were WAY too hot!

Yesterday we went to the pool for 1 hour then we went with Andreas to a small city called Rethimno. At a museum we went to, he bought a mouse pad that had the Pfaistos disk on it. After that we walked around the city and went to the fortress and the harbor. After Rethimno, we went to a beach that Andreas has never gone to before. We played with the rackets and there were lots of nibbly fish (there is actually a place where you can go to and pay to have the fish nibble of the dead skin on your hands and feet). Daddy didn't like the fish. After the beach we went up a mountain to Andreas' fathers village and we had dinner there.