Beautiful Greece again--or in this case, Crete. Our tour guide assured us that Crete was able to support itself (unlike the mainland).
We started the tour singing patriotic songs to celebrate the Fourth of July, but soon settled into enjoying the mountain scenery. Our tour avoided all the other tourists and went up to the village of Roustiki (I hope I'm spelling that right--never did see an English translation and I don't read the Cyrillic.) It is not much visited by tourists, but we were made to feel at home and got to visit the small museum, the church, and one of the monasteries. It was so relaxing to just sit on the veranda in front of the taverna, watching traffic (not much), and watching the bus drivers play backgammon.
For lunch we were taken up the hill to where a family has opened their home--and their kitchen. The whole family is involved. They put on a wonderful feast for us, starting with tsiki, bread and cheese, tiny stuffed grape leaves about the size of the first joint of my thumb, little meat balls, round turnovers filled with spinach or cheese with mint. And a huge platter of the most tender roast lamb and a bowl of pilaf (pretty runny, but good). Then we had the salad of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and onions dressed with olive oil. Just when we thought it was over they brought out platters of goat and french fries. After the dancing we were served excellent watermelon.
Entertainment was provided by two musicians on stringed instruments and four young dancers who are training at one of the traditional dance schools. They did several dances and then got the whole crowd up and dancing. You should see the video of Mary, who was practically the first to hop up to dance. (Video will be posted when we can get to faster access to the internet--ship access is about a half-step above dial-up.) [I was pulled up by two dancers. Maybe it won’t be posted, since I am in charge of the computer stuff. ml ]
The little children in the group enjoyed the pool. A few of the adults wished they could too.
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