Adventures in Greece and Italy

Where has Old Ken been, you ask? Not that anyone has really been asking; but, I'll tell you anyway, friend. I've seen some some places that would knock your socks off. Places where you'd want your glasses to take it all in—but maybe they got stolen (don't worry, I'll get to that story!). First, though, let's start on the Greek island of Amorgos where the missus and I went for a family wedding.



What we're looking at here is the monastery of Hozoviotissa, which dates to the eleventh century.



As the pictures may suggest, we made our visit there on a pretty hot day. And after the steep climb up this paved goat path, visitors (such as myself!) who happen to be wearing shorts or other skin-revealing clothing are required to put on more modest attire. Thankfully, I can't share with you any images of the XXL khakis I was required to wear over my shorts to make the visit ... and encourage you to take on some sense of the majestic views outside instead.



From Amorgos, we carried on to the island of Chios. Unlike the extremely rocky and arid Cycladic islands like Amorgos, Chios is richly agricultual. A key crop—a crop, in fact, apparently unique to the island—is the dried sap of the mastic tree seen above.



The branches of the trees are sliced and the sap that oozes out dries on the ground as these little sugary crystals. Mastic has a flavor something like peppermint or maybe eucalyptus. In any case, it was regarded as a delicacy by the nearby Turks, invading Genoese and others. So the story goes, the southern half of Chios is the only place in the world where mastic will naturally coagulate in this way.



After some sun and relaxation on the lovely, pebbly beaches of souther Chios, we made our way to the village of Pyrghi where the beautiful Mrs. Digby has family roots. Among the many cool things about this literally maze-like village are the elevated walkways used to move between houses (and to pour boiling oil on marauding pirates) ...



... and the ubiquitous geometrical wall painting, visible at right.



Walking around the town, Old Ken was fascinated to see various places where these geometrical forms seemed to be carved in process ...



... and inscribed in materials other than plaster as in the case of the wooden door seen in the photograph above. I'll look forward to sharing some more thoughts with you on the graphic stylings of this fascinating village in the future.



But, from a world of graphic inscription, we were then on to the land of sculpture: the village of Pietrasanta in Tuscany where the marble quarries of Carrara—where Michelangelo cut stone for the tomb of Pope Julius II—loom in the distance.



Pietrasanta itself is a very picturesque and pleasant place; the central piazza in the early evening is visible in the photo above.



From Pietrasanta, we made a brief excursion to the walled city of Lucca ...



... where I found this convenient map of the world.



Also in Lucca, I was pleased to see that they had an important collection of sculptures by Donald Judd ...



... that were finally being asked to do an honest day's work in holding up this old wall!



Mrs. Digby unfortunately had to return home at this point, but yours truly continued on to Florence ...



... and then to Rome. As I did in fact have my glasses stolen there, my vision of the place was a little blurred. So, I recommend that you might want to check out these very characteristic sketches of Roman environs that I happened across in a random web search.



From Old Ken's point of view, this was one of the most pleasant scenes in Rome—walking to the Vatican Museums along the Tiber early in the morning in Trastevere. Maybe a hint of autumn in the air and just takin' it all in.