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.....

this was our first day out on board the "doris"....a new power boat named after a sea nymph of ancient mythology....or so we're told.....

the second table from the left is us, christopher in bright teale, david and barney in the straw fedora...i of course and making nice with the lobsters in the harbor....this is how you decide what's for lunch.....

if you go out for lobster and they ask which one you want....

if the lobster aren't sitting in the ocean with net, you aren't actually getting the freshest seafood of your life....that said, the lobster consumed on this day after taking the boat out of port in kamares and anchoring in couple of little harbors over, was succulent, larger than life and just the right accompaniment to greek salad with sifnos cheese, hummas, house wine and tziki...why don't i eat greek food every single night? this does make me wonder....and now, i've got a hunger that must be sated!!!

this is christopher with the sunsetting over the aegean behind him.....

we were on our way out to dinner and i just happened to think to snap it in passing....the little dome topped chapel is immediately behind Chris to the right (just at the top of the steps) with the house straight back from there to the edge of the earth....

my homage to the sea faring ways of the ancient greeks....little sailboats....

the cliffs around the house were sliding into the Aegean at such a clip that at one point as i was rock climbing and dangling a good 100 or so feet above the jagged waterline below, i felt the rock in my hand above me give way and pummel through me to crash and bounce over everthing in it's path to the sea...luckily, i had firm footing and was able to cling into the rockledge for shelter and dodge the majority of the impact...i did however eat silt, sand, goat-poo and god-only-knows what else as the dirt drifted into my nose, mouth, ears, bathing suit and anywhere else it might fit....oddly the rocks tumble and break into almost uniformly symetrical pieces that i found made lovely sailboats when balanced on themselves....to give you an idea of the size, again, the base of most of these rock boats was about a foot in length and 5 or 6 inches wide....i left a trail of boats from the top of an out cropping down to the edge of the aegean, in all, there were 9 flat surfaces that i put them on, cantilevered and cascading from several hundred feet above the water to just where the waves became petulant....i'm curious to see future pictures from this area so i can see just how stable the arts community is.....

barney, david, christopher and myself in the late afternoon heat....

this photo captures us almost to the top of the kastro....we've had a very rough day of it so far in this shot....without a single complaint from david (it's now 3 or 4 days since the boat incident caused by very high and choppy waves), i found that the on-going pains in his chest around the heart area have slowed him down considerably and find myself insisting that we take him to the doctor for some medical attention...only then do i discover that he's been concerned enough with the discomfort to have already scheduled an appointment for a week later once back in london....why is it men won't stop for directions and seldom can admit they're in pain??? the medical attention here was fantastic - that is once we climbed through the language barrier and got to the second floor of the clinic instead of waiting for another 2 hours with all the village children who were apparantly having their eyes tested....note to self, buy a greek phrase book so i can distinguish between eye exam and chest exam...

david got some lovely pain meds as well as two souvenir (not to be confused with souvlaki, also greek!) xrays of his chest....one broken rib and atleast 2 fractured on either side of it....turns out that doris, the sea nymph (and speed boat) is one with a vengeful take on foreigners on her high seas!

a "small" 3 masted schooner laid anchor on it's way into kamares...later we would get up close and learn it had more than 150 passengers on board....

just to give you a sense of scale between the arches and the distance down to the water and across to the boat...all very grand and very wide open...it's the kind of sight that makes a person fall in love....no matter if it's a boat or a goat....when you're standing right here and watching this day unfold, you know in your heart of hearts it's love like no other!!!

the back terrace, overlooking the swimming hole, far ,far, far below....

the shutters were to one of the front bedrooms....this back terrace opened out from the living room and the bedroom i was staying in on the back of the house....quiet except for the non-stop bleating of the goats as they trekked along the ridge of rocks making up the cliffs...every once in a while, you could hear a lone boulder dislodge and crash it's way from it's pediment to the sea below...the rock scape was something to behold...and every day it offered up subtle changes that only the most observant eye could discern....i tried unsuccessfully to document the shifting landscape through my camera lenses, but even with christopher's new 35 mm digital camera, i was unsuccessful....

a late night view from the house at the monastery looking back down over the harbor to kamares

sunset over the aegean reflecting off the white of the monastery

this is the sun coming up over the chapel at the monastery....bright and early....

some of my favorite folks from sifnos.....

left to right: kate mailor, lady jeanne campbell, peter & cusi hirsch, normal mailor....

this is the wedding photo from cusi and peter's wedding about a decade ago. they live in nyc. lady jeanne passed away last year after a long illness....normal mailor, if i'm not mistaken, also died in the last year or so....kate is just huge and makes the bride look slim....this was in a copy of "hello" magazine in lady jeanne's private apartment in sifnos...

we uncovered it while looking for the lease she had signed on behalf of the smallwood family when they took over possession of the monastery we were staying in...we didnt' find the lease but i'll be darned if i don't adore lady jeanne after the search!

this is the front door of her "villa"....i've never in my life walked into a space and felt so immediately and immensely charmed and overwhelmed with wanting it to be my home....i now understand first hand how a person can say they love their home....for someone who doesn't get attached to material possessions generally, this space, on this island, at this time in my life, really threw me for a loop!!!

you can't imagine the scope and size of this cliff and our swimming hole below.....

telling you that we had to hike down 75 steps carved into the cliff's facade (or was it 175?!) to get to a flat-ish rock over an incredibly deep tidal pool where we could dive in and still manage to get back up from the Aegean without stepping on the spiny sea urchins and maybe worse, the poisonous blood red sea anemones...yet somehow i did manage to de-goat-poop the steps upon arrival, over-heat while still dressed and strip to my undies and dive in all without even thinking about the fact that i didn't know how to get back out or what i might be stepping in as i did so....another braniac moment!

the harbor on sifnos....behind the fishing boat and across the inlet is the monastery we were staying in....

you may notice that there is a severe lack of roadway to it...just to the right of the photo frame is wear the chip & oiled roadway runs into a red clay/dirt pathway which in turn becomes a parking lot which has 2 unmarked but easy to find GOAT paths....this is how one treks from the big boat, the small town, the windup car and the glaring sun....at least 1/4 of a mile to the oil lamp lit monastery we called home....