G & B

On the road between Vatera and Mytillini we have passed a small roadside stand that has among other things dried gourds and baskets, (G&B) plus herbs, hand made pottery and a few other items. On our way back from Mytillini we decided to stop in and look at the wares. Barb found a nice hand made crockery jug for seven Euros and the kindly old lady had to get her husband to cut the wire that was displaying the jug higher than we could reach. She took the jug and we thought she was going to wrap it but instead she brought it back full of water, we had no idea what to think of that since we only had the most basic of communication skills between the Greek and English. The husband motioned for us to come back behind the roadside stand and at first we were not sure if this was some sort of Hanzel and Gretel rerun where we would disappear never to be seen again.

But he took us to a white wall with faint paintings, and kept saying “Theophilos”, then he took us to a very large old tree (1600 years old) about 30 feet in diameter that was hollow inside but still alive. The inside of the tree was at least 11 feet in diameter and 30 feet high with a couple of openings in the top. He told us Theophilos lived in the tree and we were not sure of the rest. The property was quite large with a nice sized restaurant, a large spring (that is where the water came from) and there were lots of geese, swans and ducks in the ponds fed by the spring. So as Forrest Gump would say, “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what is inside’.

So, I did a bit of research and came of with this:

Theophilos Hatzimihail (born ca. 1870, Vareia, near Mytilene, island of Lesbos, Greece; – died, Vareia, 22 March; 1934), known simply as Theophilos, was a major folk painter of Neo-Hellenic art. The main subject of his works are Greek characters and the illustration of Greek traditional folklife and history.

He actually had a more interesting life than this but his biggest contribution to life is a large number of painting on Lesvos.

We did a video of driving in the narrow steep streets of Polichnitos, and embedded it below. In this video we enter the village driving through the narrow cobblestone streets, at one point we pass the grocery store, you see a guy walk in front of the car and then a woman with a red vest, the store is on the left, the final turn goes up the hill although it is difficult to tell how steep the streets are. Every road has small side roads and cars are everywhere on the small streets.

We are in Santorini today, absolutely beautiful, more information and pictures to follow.