one more windmill

I actually took this photo near Trapani in Sicily but at the time I thought about Hayley Mills and the Moonspinners -

soon I hope to have Greek windmills for your viewing pleasure....

we're off

again tomorrow- because we have been home too long (LOL) only kidding-

anyway- by this time tomorrow we will be winging our way to Istanbul and by this time Wednesday we will be there.... the more I read in preparation for the trip the more excited I am to see everything.  even the return to Istanbul should be a nice brief review of the highlights.

I am especially excited to be able to see the perched villages with their whitewashed walls and blue roofed buildings- oh and windmills- yes I do actually recall wanting to visit the Greek islands as far back as when I was 9 or 10 when I saw the 1964 Hayley Mills movie The Moonspinners! it looked so foreign and exotic and I was a HUGE Hayley Mills fan-

later I learned that the movie was mostly filmed in Pinewood Studios in Great Britain (how disappointing) but I was already long smitten with the idea of the windmills- I am 90% sure they were supposed to be on Crete (which remains on my "to be visited" list even after this trip) but I think I will still get to see windmills on one or more of the seven islands we have on our itinerary.

here are a few perfect pics - to give you and idea of why I am finally getting to the Greek Islands

something tells me - now that I am more savvy about science than I was at eleven- that the windmills will be found on the hilltops rather than the beach as shown in this photo above- but who knows.... will keep you posted- LOL

here by the way is the plot summary of the complex Disney movie (from the IMDB):

Young English girl Nikky and her aunt arrive at the Moon-Spinners, a hotel on Crete, to a less than enthusiastic welcome. The coolness of the owner is only out-done by the surliness of her brother Stratos, recently back from London. But then there is nice English lad Mark to make friends with, at least until Stratos and his pal take a shot at him one night. When Nikky helps him hide she finds the Greeks are after her too.

LOL and here- I find I am not he only 11 year old that was enticed by the Moonspinners-

check out this blog post of someone else altogether--

http://expect-to-fly.blogspot.com/2011/06/crete-windmills-and-moonspinners.html

wonder who she is... have to book mark it for further investigation- LOL

another dinner

at a disappearing restaurant.  again a place we have been meaning to get to for more than a decade- LOL- no wonder these places go out of business.... only kidding- this one has been in business for 40 years.

anyway- we had dinner on Wednesday at Le Titi de Paris... in - well wherever- that was the problem it was an hour drive away- so you know we have lots of choices with excellent food that you can walk to much less drive in substantially under an hour- that is the luxury of being city dwellers.

anyway here is my thumbnail review- good to excellent food- abysmal service... truly abysmal-

this place was supposed to be high end- gourmet- and here are a few vignettes that showcase how bad the service was- we had a starter of a lovely grilled vegetable tart which was excellent but large enough that it had to be cut with a knife and fork- was definitely NOT finger food- and when the course was complete the waitress (I could hardly call her a server when you hear me out) took the knife off the plate (dirty) and returned it to the table!!!!! - I mean seriously- on a lovely white table cloth she put a dirty knife down rather than taking it away with the plates--- of our table of eight - six people commented on this...

the comment was overhead by another server who brought replacement knives for HALF the table - but the rest of us had to go with the dirty from the prior course---

another telling incident- my husband doesn't care for sauvignon blanc and so asked to skip that wine and instead have additional cava (from the prior course) which we could see on the sideboard there was more to serve and was told that the next wine was being served (exactly the one he didn't want...)

then in perhaps the worst blunder of the evening the main course was served with an appropriate red wine but of eight of us three were served NO red AT ALL-  and on top of that the entire wait staff disappeared from the room (break time?) so there wasn't even anyone to signal- so I got up and went to the sideboard to retrieve the wine and served the three unserved guests. 

mind you this was and $80 a person meal- at an allegedly high end restaurant in the burbs (no wonder we stay in the city to eat!)

anyway- they are closing June 16th- and it just MIGHT have something to do with the HORRIBLE service they have there-  - - seriously!

and as I said in the thumbnail the food was good to excellent- I rank the starter and fish courses excellent and the short rib main course very good and the dessert good but overall the experience was not a positive one.

here is the menu-

I wasn't kidding

I continue on my quest to get  all my photo files moved to portable hard drive storage-

I double checked right now about how many I had accomplished in the last few days of diligent transfer- and it was a whopping 126,000 files!

so to celebrate I am posting a cute photo of Penny for everyone to go AAAAWWWW!

she doesn't understand that the cat is supposed to look like her- LOL

a huge time consuming project

and it has been on my list since June 2010 and going part time - even being in the stage of pre-retirement... was to move all my photo back up files from CDs to a portable giant capacity hard drive.

so I have gotten about two thirds of the way through and have about 100 more CDs to do-

I have been assiduously trying not to get engrossed in actually looking at the photos - and for the most part have done well but I did see one tonight that I couldn't resist posting-

this is a photo I took for Jennifer in 2006 when we were traveling in Venice- she was consumed by the selection at the glove store- this was part of one of three shelves of colors available---

my recollection is that she bought two pair of these lovely gloves

long promised

and not forgotten - the post about the cottage on Anna Maria Island-

my grandfather bought this cottage- known as "the beachcomber" from his brother-in-law (my mom's Uncle Bruce Cox) in the late 1950s.  Bruce had moved to Florida in the 30s we think - he met a gal there who was named Irma (better known to us as Aunt Irma) who was the post mistress of Bradenton Beach - the location of the cottage was in Bradenton Beach along Gulf Drive fronting onto the Gulf of Mexico.

Bruce had built a custom designed home up in the Anna Maria community on Marina Drive - or maybe it was Holmes Beach- anyway both houses are long gone at this point - the cottage property sold to finance my grandfather's purchase of a house on 70th Street in Holmes Beach for his retirement and then resold by the buyer to a condo developer- alas- a common enough story...

it was small- very small- and made of wood- which the termites loved - had two bedroom and one bathroom and a garage that had been made into a third small bedroom. A minuscule kitchen, moderate living room and large screen porch rounded out the room count. No dining room- we ate on the porch.

but you could hear the surf all night long- even if you didn't draw the long straw to sleep on the screened porch-

no AC of course- this was 1960! Water for drinking had to be bought in large bottles at the store because the well water was non potable (and smelled of sulphur- we used to call it "egg water" because it smelled like rotten eggs to us- although I seriously doubt my sister nor I had ever smelled a rotten egg at that stage of life- LOL)

anyway- it was a place full of super memories from growing up- and with all the moving around my folks did when we were kids (I went to seven schools before graduating from high school and lived in eight houses before I was 18) the most consistent place in my life during those years was Anna Maria Island- which is I guess part of the reason I am still so drawn to it- even after I was an adult my parents and grandparents lived there-

basically my direct family had property there from 1958-2008 and that isn't counting Bruce Cox's time there. so next year we are scheduled to rent for the winter less than five minutes drive from the small island that was home to my family for so many decades.

and here are some photos:

above- my parents outside the cottage (license tag says 1961) and below - my grandmother, brother, me and my sister (from left to right) at the front door (which opened from the side of the house)- the Gulf of Mexico is off to our left and Gulf Drive off to our right (you can see it in the photo of my parents just before the greenery across the street....
the photo above is dated June 1961 which would have made our ages 7, not quite 6, and 22 months and I guess my grandmother (ancient to us at the time) must have been in her (aaaaccckkk) mid 50s - yikes!!!!!

with that I have to end- LOL

istanbul photos

as promised I dug up some photos from Istanbul- we had really good weather for late December and were able one day to spend the day on the Bosphorus- a beautiful cruise up the straits- 

some of the things I really liked were - of course the Grand Bazaar and the Topkapi Palace but also the Cistern Basilica was waaay cool-

anyway- on to the photos- first the Cistern Basilica-

then the bazaar-

a view of Hagia Sophia from the Blue Mosque-

inside Topkapi Palace-

inside the Blue Mosque-

inside Hagia Sophia -

on the Bosphorus

a lovely museum with incredible relics- housed in a part of a former palace (detail of tile work below)

we also had a lot of fresh seafood and fish the last time we were there so we are looking forward to the food on this very short return trip-

off we go again

we are getting ready to start packing again- we are off on a small ship (25 cabins) to the Greek Islands- in about ten days

here is the route we are taking- beginning in Istanbul and then going through some of the islands and ending up for exploration on mainland Greece in Delphi and Meteora...

I have been to Athens twice before and Phil and I spent a Christmas week one year in Istanbul (because the year before we had spent time in Rhodes and Athens. I will see if I can find some of the photos from our previous trip to whet your appetite for following this one-

our breakfast in Rhodes and a view from the terrace where we were dining-

below- several of the lovely courtyards:

the holiday lights in old town Rhodes:

the nighttime view of the Acropolis from our hotel:

another view form the rooftop of the hotel:

a view of our hotel room windows from the Acropolis (highlighted in yellow) -

a selection of nuts in the market:

so we are pretty excited to be going back to Greece in warmer weather and to see more of the islands (Rhodes and Corfu having been the only ones seen on prior trips)-

On this trip, after Istanbul and Ephesus, we see Patmos, Amorgos, Santorini, Naxos, Delos, Mykonos, Syros and then go on to Delphi and Meteora on the mainland... I am pretty sure I have some Delphi pics as well from the last time I was there- ah yes- the climb to the top of the amphitheater was somewhat of a hike- LOL-

above-  the view from the bottom of the amphitheater

and then finally - maybe some photos from Istanbul - - nope have to go hunting for those so maybe next post--- back later - as always.....

we leave town for dinner

and head out to Lockport???? to Tallgrass.  it was a lovely dinner but cost $4.80 in tolls and was roughly 100 miles round trip.  we had been saying we would try it for years and finally made the trek. 

a meal easily ten times better than the lunch on Wednesday and half the cost...

here is the menu followed by some courses and some of the wines:

OK so I missed the photo of the walnut crusted trout - falling down on the job but I did get a really good shot of the dessert- which was wonderful!

doubt we will get back there anytime soon but it was a good meal...so anytime anyone is out in that area (???) we can recommend the place... a lovely small dining room paneled in wood with an original tin ceiling and high placed mirrors to give the sense of space.  all in all a plus but for the 60 minute 50 mile drive... :-(