doncronerarchive2

 Update 08 / 27 : USA Today has a story today about Locales Where “Game Of Thrones ” is filmed. Meteora is conspicuously missing. The Greek Orthodox authorities and local monks nixed the idea of filming at Meteora, at least according to local informants (see below). The Greek Orthodox Church has near-complete control of Meteora. Even the Greek Air Force is not allowed to fly over the area below a certain altitude, again according to locals.  Took the train from Thessaloniki south to the province of Thessaly and the town of Kalambaka, located just below the famous Meteora monasteries. View from my hotel in Kalambaka (click on photos for enlargements) View from the town square of Kalambaka View from Kalambaka View from Kalambaka View from Kalambaka View from Kalambaka The 16th century Monastery of St. Stephen, in the middle of the photo, from Kalambaka. It is now a nunnery. Monastery of St. Stephen Kalambaka from the Monastery of St. Stephen Four of the six now active Meteora m...

The train left Athens on time at 7:18 a.m. and arrived at the train station on the western outskirts of Thessaloniki forty-six minutes late at 1:27 p.m. According to my GPS my hotel near the center of the city was nine-tenths of a mile away. I had planned to walk, but that morning in Athens I had checked the weather forecast and discovered that temperatures were expected to reach 100º F. by mid-afternoon. The forecast for the next day was 105º F., which would tie the highest temperature on record for the date. There was a long line of taxis at the train station,  and after being staggered by the heat when I stepped off the train I was sorely tempted to take one, but I finally decided to stick to my original plan and walk. I had this fantasy of entering the city on foot through one of gates in the fourth-century walls around the city, as if I was a humble pilgrim wandering through the domains of Byzantium. Of course if I started feeling queasy from the heat I could always hail a tax...

Update 6/27/17: Improbably enough, Salvador Dali is Back In The News . MADRID — A Spanish court ordered the exhumation of the corpse of Salvador Dalí in order to Settle A Woman’s Claim to be recognized as the daughter of the Surrealist painter. The court said that DNA testing should be done on Dalí’s corpse because no other remains or belongings were available that could allow a proper examination to settle the paternity claim. Pilar Abel, a Tarot card reader, wants to be recognized as Dalí’s daughter, born as a result of what she has called a “clandestine love affair” that her mother had with the painter in the late 1950s in Port Lligat, the fishing village where Dalí and his Russian-born wife, Gala, built a waterfront house. Dali died in 1989. This paternity claim is of some interest because Dali was widely believed to be impotent. See 10 Depraved Secrets Of Salvador Dali . Also see his autobiography, The Unspeakable Confessions of Salvador Dali . If you need still more evi...

Wandered over to Corinth, forty-five miles east of Athens but slightly longer by train. Corinth is located on the west side of the 3.5 mile wide isthmus that separates the Peloponnese Peninsula from the Attica region around Athens and the rest of Greece.  (Click on images for enlargements) My main interest is visiting the site of the old Temple of Aphrodite, located on the top of 1876-foot peak of Acrocorinth, just east of the town of Old Corinth. There is a metro to the Larissa Train Station, which serves trains running to the north, and from here you have to take a train another fifteen minutes or so to a another station that handles trains running south to the Peloponnese.  The trip to Corinth takes about an hour. From the Corinth train station I took a taxi to Old Corinth, the village located near the archeological park that hosts the ruins of ancient Corinth. The modern city of Corinth, to the west of the station, is a relatively modern reiteration of an older city destro...

Wandered up 485-foot Mouseion Hill for a panoramic view of the Acropolis. The hill got its name from the 6th-century BC poet and seer Musaios , who was supposedly buried on its summit. Because of its association with Musaios, reputed to be the son of the legendary minstrel Orpheus , it is also known as the Hill of the Muses. Part way up I passed by the Prison of Socrates, where, according to legend, the great philosopher was confined before he was forced to the drink the Hemlock.  Prison of Socrates (click on photos for enlargements) Socrates was an enigmatic character, to say the least. He was born not far from Athens in 469 B.C., the son of stonemason who aspired to be a sculptor. His mother was a midwife. Socrates too may have worked for awhile as a stonemason before finding his true calling as a free-lance philosopher and teacher. With thick lips, bulging eyes, and a pot-belly, he was a notoriously unattractive figure. He seldom bathed or washed his clothes and went barefooted ...