this is david...he was so serious and deep...yet even with all the pain from the broken ribs, his sense of humor pervaded everything!!!

some people make you laugh and laugh and laugh...david is another of those people....witness barney in the photo below....between david, barney and chris, the majority of my photos came out too blurry to be salvaged...yes, i was laughing that hard for my entire holiday!!!

this is barney....he's from croatia and lives in london....he just laughed and laughed and laughed the entire holiday!!!

my attempt at green graffitti...you know, rock art that didn't hurt anything but still showed i'd been there....

can you see the sailboats...?

i thought it was clever of me...of course i'm biased...but when i looked out of the bedroom and saw the cascade of sheared off rocks coming out of the cliff side, i couldn't help but want to leave a mark that i'd been there....as have hundreds, maybe thousands of goats and probably tens if not twenties of monks and possibly sailors as well....no matter who was there, they couldn't help but be in awe of the simple yet overwhelming splendor of the sailboats entering and exiting the port....this is my tribute to the greeks, the romans, the phoenicians, the turks and the egyptians who all traded and trod upon this particular sea route since before recorded time....

even bright and early, as barney and david slept in, christopher and i, along with a pantheon of strangers were out and about.....

this absolutely idyllic scene is a little cafe about 30 or 40 minutes from the house by car...up and over the mountains....

first morning, eager to explore, i asked if chris wanted to go to town with me, never thinking it would be thriving....needless to say, this is where he navigated us to as i drove the little wind up car....how exciting....turns out this is near the secret steps leading to the heart of the town which was astounding when i finally had the chance to walk them and explore on my own....this day, i was on a hunt for a bakery....where the loaves whole wheat free formed loaves were just coming from the oven...too hot to hold without wrapping in brown paper first....too delicious and fragrant not to rip into it immediately - sans butter or preserves...and i'd carried the best lime marmalade ever found on the planet earth all the way from london just so i could eat more of it on vacation...that says a lot about the bread (and the fortnum & mason jams!)

breakfast in the sun on the front of the house, steps from the entrance of the chapel of the monestary....

christopher and i were up bright and early every morning in sifnos....sometimes it would be barely 6 a.m. greek time, but the sun would already be burning fiercely over the mountains behind us, even though it wouldn't cast a shadow for hours...

i really enjoyed the early mornings with christopher the most, since he would make a pot of fresh greek coffee (so finely ground that you couldn't help but either toss out the bottom of the cup or drink the grounds...tradition says you don't swallow the bottom of any coffee drink here....) as we sat and talked, or more likely laughed riotously (can't even tell you what we laughed about so much...) we were sure we were waking up barney (in the bedroom right behind us with the windows shuttered) or david, in the bedroom right behind barney...alas, they weren't bothered by our good time....

this is a series of photos to show you the scale and scope of height from the house to the swimming hole in the aegean sea below......

this is the path behind the chapel and the monastery leading away from the old donkey shed and dove coterie to the well house (corner barely visible just above on right corner of picture)...see how the house looks all flat and tiny??? it's not...it's actually high ceilinged and very airy inside...which shows that i've taken this from a distance...

i particularly love the series of pictures of this one black and white wild mountain goat...


as i managed to figure out the telephoto feature on christopher's new digital camera even as the wind blew up his fur....










what you can't see from this series is that even though he's perched (yes, i was able to verify on his departure that he's indeed a he....!) atleast 300 feet above the aegean on a huge boulder with nothing holding it up, there were like 50 more of his friends and family bleating him on....which may be what he's turning and looking for, but i chose to believe he's looking to see what moron (i.e. me,) was bleating from the house trying to get him to laugh and/or smile for the camera without running (or worse, falling into the sea!)

the view from the monestary over the aegean sea to the port of kamares where we got off the high speed ferry and walked the donkey trail.....