Mon 28 Aug - I've been asked many times now not to delete photos from festivals and weddings etc. Please be assured, not a single photo is deleted once it's been uploaded to the site. If you look at the top of this page for instance, you'll see the navigation menu. From there select hOMe ithaca greece > Summer Lodown or Winter on Ithaca for another drop down list of all the years the site has been up. To see your favourite festival or to relive the wedding of a loved one, just select Summer Specials 2006 for example, click and wallah, you'll be transported. For further instructions on getting around ithacagreece.com, please see NEW and click on Getting Around hOME ithaca greece website, near the top of the page on the left. So good luck with whatever pic you're looking for. Just remember, if it was here in 2003, 2004 and 2205 it will still be here now in 2006 and here next year in 2007.
Fri 1 Sep - An Archeological team has been at the Homers' School site in Platrithia Northern Ithaca these past weeks on a dig, and there have been some exciting discoveries. They will be divulged soon. For those lucky enough to be on the island now, they can go walk to the site to see for themselves.
Chez Manu Restaurant, behind the Square in Vathy, is holding a 69 party on September 6th. The word is there will be free souvlaki and a hole lot of fun, so if you're on the island, get down and enjoy yourselves before Summer time is over. If you've been to a Chez Manu party before, you'll know just how wild the party can get.
Sat 2 Sep - More great finds at the Homers School site. Some very excited locals and archeologists. It seems that there is more to be dug up here than first imagined. amazing what a bit of funding can turn up. Hopefully we'll have details of what was excavated, soon.
Frikes nights are a little quieter now that the ferry from Lefkada has stopped its' night run. Schedule is back to the winter one with only one ferry a day to the small port village.
In case we've all forgotten (not), elections are imminent. Posters are going up and candidates are beginning to visit the villages of the island, talking the talk.
Sat 9 Sep - It's been hell trying to get a line on OTE again over the past weeks. Why? Who knows, but getting online with OTE is a challenge to say the least. While in Vathy some are logging into the radio waves without paying and others are lucky enough to have ADSL, in the north we pay through the nose for the luxury of a conventional phone line connection which gets us as far as paying our connection fee. After my 60th attempt to get connected past the username and password verification, yeah I'm mad.
Yesterday planes were flying high over head leaving jet streams across the entire skyline. Some watched all day as these jet streams widened and joined to create a cloudy day. Far fetched? Well not really. It's no secret that experiments with weather control take place all over the world, but how many more things that are no good for us, or our planet, will the governments of the world inflict on us. One Lahos local stated this has been going on for years, but it was the first time it had been so blatantly obvious that there was someone up high messing with the weather...and it wasn't God.
Something that is good for us are the new EU health and hygiene rules being implemented on the island over the past year, as seen in the new kitchens in Vathy. By next year there will hopefully be no restaurant or food bar on the entire island left untouched by the health inspectors stamp of approval. Some things are worth joining the modern world for.
This year walkers have enjoyed the newly cleared and now esthetically pleasing path from Yefyri to Exoghi. Stone steps on the slopes and stone walls along the boundaries. Throw your machete away. It's easy walking from now on.
Rumors are that next year a group of qualified mappers will mark all the paths on a detailed map of Ithaca. Now that's great news for the avid walkers of the island.
The new finds at Homers School by the Archeological team working there this Summer, will once again reaffirm that Ithaca is Odysseas Ithaca. Good news for the Ithaki community. We have heard that the finds qualify this, but have no specific information we can share just yet, although if you go to www.arsenis.info the web site of Spyros Arsenis, President of the HOmeric Society, I'm sure you'll find news there. Unfortunately it's all Greek to you, so take along a translator.
Mon 18 Sep - Yesterdays' miserable weather wasn't too welcoming for new arrivals to the island. Cloudy and rainy most of the day. Typically locals too feel a little melancholy coming on at the end of the Summer season. It takes a little adjustment from 10,000 people down to a handful again.
Below - Some pics from the Vault. Taken with my Olympus 2 (non-digital) camera, now sitting in a cupboard gathering dust. People always ask if Ithaki has changed much. It has of course, like everything does, but it still feels like nothing has changed.
