Cretan-homes, Crete property estate agents

A Grand Day Out

by Ann Lisney

The archaeological museum in our local town opened late last year, and Rob and I were extolling its virtues one evening in the kafenion. None of the locals had visited it, so we decided to round up a posse of elderly ladies and take them to have a look.

Now a visit to town (4 kilometres away) is a real event to our village elders. Few of them own a car, and for one or two the favoured form of transport is still a mule. So, when we loaded up the car and set off for the museum, we were unsurprised to learn that there were one or two other errands that they would like to do while they were in town.

Rob went off to visit his favourite hardware store and I took the ladies firstly to the health centre to have their prescriptions renewed.  Here they all sat to wait their turn, chatting to allcomers, asking where they live and what the names of their parents are. (This is to find out if they are in some way related – they invariably are, which is the cue for a lot of kissing). From the health centre, we processed on to the pharmacy to get all their pills and potions dispensed. Now everyone knows everyone here as well, so what with all the chat with the assistants, the pharmacist and the pharmacist’s mother, this took some time. Then one of my ladies remembered she had to pay her telephone bill, so off we zoomed to the OTE office, and while we are in this end of town we might as well all pay our electricity bills as well….

All this may sound fairly straightforward (if a little time-consuming), but you have to remember that Greeks don’t like to have to walk anywhere, and if you are elderly as well, that means a parking space has to be not more than ten steps from the door in each case. Fortunately, the gods were with me on this occasion and I managed either to find a space or was able to double park and loiter without being given a parking ticket.

Some of the party - me included – were flagging a little by this time, so we adjourned to a café for a pick-us-up. While we were sitting there, I glimpsed Rob walking past outside, so rushed out and flagged him down to join us for a coffee.

Coffee and cheese pies downed, we headed for the museum. Naturally enough, the man on the desk turned out to be the son of the brother of the best man of one of my companions, so much kissing and news exchanging had to be accomplished before we even got through the door.

The visit was a great success. Many of the exhibits had been discovered in Polyrinnia, which was where one of the village ladies had grown up. Her eyesight was not good enough to read the captions by the exhibits, but in most cases she knew exactly what all the items were, and was able to explain to us all what they were used for, and how many of these things were found in the fields when she was a girl.  We generated so much excitement that the curator came in to see what was going on, and my elderly ladies explained that one of them had lived in Polyrinnia as a young girl. The curator asked her family name, and it turned out that many of the exhibits from there had actually been donated by members of her family.

Everyone marvelled at the beautiful old mosaic floors and exclaimed in wonder at the magnifying device that enabled them to examine the ancient coins in close detail. But I think the highlight of the visit was going up in the lift to the first floor. It must have seemed like a space shuttle to my friends, as their eyes grew huge and round as we started to move upwards….

I hoped the visit had been a success, but was very taken aback when, in the car on the way home, the three ladies said that the outing had been “the best day of their lives”.