orbiting

I'm sitting in the Philadelphia airport, waiting on my connection to Raleigh.

I can't believe I'm back in the States - that it is all over - that it happened at all.

Our last day went well, albeit tearfully.

And my flight to Philly this afternoon was fantastic - the flight wasn't full, so I had three seats to myself.  I stretched out and fell asleep, then wrote almost 20 pages in the moleskine.  

I'm on to Kentucky tomorrow for the next leg of this summer adventure, never a dull moment, as usual.

~RLM 

On leaving Greece…

Lawrence Durrell wrote in Prospero's Cell, “You enter Greece as one might enter a dark crystal; the form of things becomes irregular, refracted…Other countries may offer you discoveries in manners or lore or landscape; Greece offers you something harder – the discovery of yourself.”

I will be leaving Greece much changed this year; this trip has been revelatory for me and I will be returning to life in Raleigh with a bit of a different perspective. More so than summers past, being here this year has helped me figure out what I want out of life – how I want to move forward in the next couple of years.

I wrote in my moleskine while on Santorini that being confronted with such stark natural beauty forces you to confront your own demons, your own true self – and it is true. The past few weeks of continual surreality have forced me through a lot of self-discovery and I’m leaving Greece feeling much better about being me. And I could not ask to have gained anything better by being here.

I'm flying back to Raleigh tomorrow, leaving Greece for the fourth time in three years.  I am stunned that this trip has gone by so quickly, and also feeling slightly disoriented by it all - it easily feels like we could have just arrived yesterday.  I will have less than 24 hours in Raleigh to unpack and repack for the summer in Kentucky and Indy, as I fly up to Lexington on Sunday to spend two weeks with the grandmothers and cousins.  Its been far too long since I've had this much time for family and I'm excited.  Sad to be leaving my city, my second-country, but also glad to be getting back to home and the people I love.

~RLM

6/11/08

It is hard to believe that the cruise is almost over and that I will be flying back to the States on Saturday. It doesn’t seem possible that this much time has gone by, that I have been in Greece so long as to already be leaving.

We are in Kefalonia today – I was here before, last year, but only for an afternoon. I never really thought I’d return to this island, let alone so soon. We are at a different port this time, a small town called Sami, which is near the famous Melissani Cave Lake. Melissani is an underground lake created by a water system that reaches across the island – it is famous because the roof of the cave collapsed hundreds of years ago, illuminating the cavern and its adjoining chamber, which is full of stalactites. The two rooms are toured by a small boat, but the 10 minute tour cost more than our hour long small boat tour of Palaiokastritsa, so I didn’t feel like it was quite worth the 7 euro or the 10 euro taxi. We ate a very late lunch at a restaurant in the harbor, enjoying the view and delicious food, as there is not much else to do in town.

We stopped yesterday in Preveza, a small town on the coast of the Peloponnesus, for a quiet, relaxing day after the excitement of Corfu. We wandered about town, spent the afternoon on a very humble local beach, and then ate dinner and watched Greece lose to Sweden in the Euro2008 tournament. Each day of the cruise has been so distinctly different, as each place has its own local character and sensibility. The pace here on Kefalonia is much like Preveza, the towns seem sleepy almost, as if they are really taking their time in moving throughout the day. It is not laziness, but more an awareness that life doesn’t have to move so quickly. I liked Preveza, it was cute and quaint, not a tourist town by any means. Walking to the small local beach reminded me of summers at Carolina Beach outside Wilmington, the air scented with pine trees and the din of children laughing. It had the same laid-back vibe as Carolina, lacking the tourist overgrowth of Wrightsville – and the more popular Greek destinations. I was content to nap on a chair in the sun, and then escape under an umbrella to read in the shade.

~RLM

Corfu – Kerkyra

Fresh off the boat this morning, I was not prepared to like this island. The modern town of Kerkyra is dirty, run down, gross even. I hated it immediately. The rain didn’t help. It has been a running joke over the past few years that I have magical weather powers – it has rained every first and last day in Greece of every hellasgood summer. It rained in Paxos on Sunday – as we left Greece for a day in Albania on Sunday – and it rained again this morning upon our arrival in Corfu. But as we were walking through town, thoroughly disappointed with the rubble of the modern city, a most impressive thunderstorm rolled in. We sought refuge in a car rental office, figuring that the best way to see any part of the island today since the clouds were ominous – and showing no signs of disappearing.

As we waited for our car, and for the storm to break, the shop owner gave us roses from his garden, and a lesson on life. He also begged us to return in one piece, as he was dismayed that we had no men with us.

We were headed for Palaiokastritsa, the famed beautiful refuge of Edward Lear – a painter of the area in the 1850s – and Lawrence Durrell, the writer friend Henry Miller describes visiting in the Colossus. The rain stopped as we made our way across the island to the west coast. We found Palaiokastritsa to be as confusing as the rest of Corfu – a strikingly beautiful landscape marred by the developments of the tourist industry. Hotels, cafes, and tourist shops lined each street as we made our way towards the coast – but the view from the road was breathtaking.

Neither of us had planned on swimming today, seeing as how it was raining and all when we left the ship, but there was no way we were going to spend an afternoon in Palaiokastritsa without getting in that water. It was a blue as I’ve seen nowhere else in Greece.

We parked, bought bathing suits from a roadside stand, and decided to take a small boat tour of the beaches and grottos in the area. It was the best 6-euro I’ve ever spent – and quite possibly the most surreal hour of my life.

The photos seem cheap representations of the sheer natural beauty, virtually untouched by civilization. I was struck, at that moment, at the surreality that Edward Lear in 1850 and Lawrence Durrell in 1939 had seen those caves and grottos in much the same manner – and that for all the development and destruction that have occurred in their wake, we would recognize those rocks and waters as the same. At one point I looked at Sonia, us both in complete awe, and said – this is our real life, we are actually here. It is hard to believe sometimes that places like that exist, and being there today was a swift reminder that life is an amazing thing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon swimming or collapsed on the beach, exhausted from trying in vain to take it all in.

On the drive back into town, Umbrella came on the radio and we both burst out laughing. It was as if the guys were back with us, in spirit at least, and we couldn’t help but feel a bit sad that they weren’t here to share it.

Coming back, we drove around the older part of Corfu town, and I fell even more in love with the island. We parked by the old port and wandered back towards the old fortress, stumbling upon Edward Lear’s apartment and a garden dedicated to Gerald and Lawrence Durrell. I was shrieking with delight in the streets, amazed that by sheer luck we had found remembrances of the people who had been guiding us all day. The old fortress was closed, but next to it we discovered the Esplanade, Cricket Pitch and Liston – an area of town that fully enamored me of Corfu. It seemed utterly European, the British style park and the French style row of cafes. We sat in the shade sipping cold Vienna style chocolate, a drink we discovered at a café in Athens, and have been ordering whenever we’ve seen it since. The streets tumbling back from the Liston remind me of Prague, they have old world elegance to them, and I could have wandered around for hours.

The most random moment of the day was discovering that Corfu is known for Kumquats and Kumquat related products; at a small store in town, we were offered dried fruits and liqueur to sample – and Sonia and I both walked away with small bags of random souvenir Kumquat goodies. Who knew?

I am writing this from the top deck of the ship, and have to admit that I am sad to see Corfu go. It is the only one of our cruise stops to have enchanted me so, and I will leave a tiny piece of my heart here. I am determined to return one day to collect it, as there is much left here to explore. It is hard to explain the kind of feeling that overwhelmed me as the day progressed – the island is like no place I have ever been. It does not feel like Greece at all, and despite the Italianate influence, it does not feel like Italy. It is simply Corfu, a wonderfully complex world of its own.

~RLM