Get TIO in your Inbox!

Lifestyle

Editor's note: For eight years, Telluride local/mountaineer Ben Clark and a few friends/professional colleagues have made Spring treks to the majestic Himalayas. Follow his adventures on Telluride Inside... and Out, including links to his regular podcasts. If you have missed any of Ben's posts, just type "Ben Clark" into Lijit Search to find them all.

-2 We made it, we skied it, we are done in under two weeks with one ascent and one amazing descent. Our goal, to follow our noses to some of the best snow in Nepal, has been a success. Our summit day on Thorung peak occurred four days ago and we now sit in the comfort of Pokhara Nepal, 19,000 feet lower.

 

09 November, 2010 /

by Lisa Barlow

Tomato PIes2 My favorite all time surprise present wasn’t a big fat check or anything shiny under the Christmas tree. It was a pizza…a large clam pizza that had traveled 75 miles in the trunk of a car to reach me, stiff and cold in a grease-stained box. I couldn’t have been more happily startled than if it had been a bouquet of roses or a string of pearls. My dad, the inspired giver, knew exactly how to cheer up a housebound new mother with a colicky infant.
 
Pepe’s Pizza, for those of you who have never been to New Haven, CT, is the Holy Grail of tomato pies. That’s arguable, of course, and I’ve had many a heated discussion while rooting for my team pie. In fact, in the old days when I was a student in New Haven, one of the great distinguishers was “Sally’s or a Pepe’s?” I was a Sally’s girl then, with a favorite booth and a favorite Frank song on the jukebox. Sinatra had his favorite booth there too. Though I never saw him in the restaurant, a laminated photo of Ol’ Blue Eyes was framed above the seat closest to the cash register.

09 November, 2010 /

(Ed. note: Susan and Clint are now back at their desks in Telluride. This is a delayed post)

IMGP1997 Telluride Inside... and Out returned from Greece last night  but there are still a few loose ends to tie up regarding our three memorable weeks on the road. For those who might be considering following more or less in our footsteps all the way through the doors of our hotels, here's the bottom line: There were places to rest and places to nest, all hits, no misses and a few homeruns.

The places to rest were mostly boutiquey, (read relatively small, including several family hotels our driver,  Nikolas, on the mainland found for us) very good, with comfortable rooms, high speed(ish) Internet and helpful, courteous service from a caring staff (or owners in the case of the family-owned places).

07 November, 2010 /

IMGP2351 I woke up in my own bed in Telluride this morning, wondering where I was, taking a few moments to calculate the best way to the bathroom. Susan and I left Athens November 5, the end of three fascinating  weeks on mainland Greece and Crete. We have stories, photos, memories of beautiful places and a number of new friends. (Also a few more wrap up posts.)

IMGP2352 Our last night in Greece was in Glyfada, now an upscale suburb of Athens. I remember Glyfada as a quiet seaside village from my time living there while on temporary assignment flying with Olympic Airways in 1972. I tried unsuccessfully to find the street where we lived; the small houses set in spacious yards with grape arbors and lemon trees have been replaced by blocks of new apartment buildings. The one small harbor with a few sailboats and mostly wooden fishing craft has morphed into three marinas with mostly pleasure craft. Time marches on, and it had been 38 years since I lived there. The morning of our departure our driver, Nikolas, seemed genuinely sad to see us go.

07 November, 2010 /

IMGP2325 (Ed. note: Susan and Clint are back in the US and will be at our desks in Telluride starting November 7.)

It's Sunday. Since Sunday is the traditional day of worship in America, Telluride Inside... and Out thought it might be a good day to write about a place of worship.

The place is not one of Greece's many awe-inspiring monasteries, including the majestic sextet we viewed at Meteora. It is not a church, such as the 10th-century Church of Dormition in Kalabaka, a quick stop, thanks to our driver Nikolas Vogiatzakis' local knowledge about hidden gems. The little church was built on the back of a former temple to Apollo, which was  torched by the Nazis in revenge for Greece's very brave and stubborn resistance during WWII. (The Nazis' thumbprint remains in the blackened frescoes on the church walls.)

05 November, 2010 /

Deboned birdsBy Lisa Barlow

Why did the turducken cross the road? Probably to outrun its reputation. Just saying “turducken” out loud has me smirking. And recollecting “The Daily Show” a while back when it was suggested that the Kurds, Iraq and Turkey should gather together to form a new nation called Turducken.

Picture the turducken and you imagine a mythical creature that might resemble a cross between the Harry Potter hippogryph and the hapless dodo, a bird that lumbers around not really sure of what it is.

04 November, 2010 /

IMGP2223 (Editor's note: Susan & Clint arrived back in the US November 3 and will be home in Telluride later this week)

After two wonderful weeks on Crete, Telluride Inside... and Out was back on the Greek mainland. Our driver, Nikolas Vogiatzakis, picked us up at the Athens airport early Sunday morning and we headed north, bound for Meteora.

What you first need to know about Meteora is that the region once hosted about 20 monasteries, each perched on top of its own rock monolith. There are now six monasteries one can visit, and as we look at them from below, one question comes to mind: "How did they do it?"

04 November, 2010 /

IMGP2160 Telluride Inside... and Out headed out of town at 4:30 a.m., the dark time when Rethymnon turns its streets over to cats stalking scraps from bags of garbage put out for collection, and a few stragglers, mostly guy gangs, done stalking women, ready to turn in just ahead of their alarm clocks.

Clint and I made our way quickly through the narrow, winding path leading to the car park, grateful, in the absence of string, that we had rehearsed the route, reminding ourselves what our guide Joanna Kalypso Glyptis, had told us about what the town planners had in mind. Rethymnon's  variation on the theme of labyrinth was intentional, designed so that its denizens with local knowledge could easily elude invaders or pirates in hot pursuit.

Joanna feels most guidebooks and guides talk the party line, not the facts. For example, Knossos was never a palace. Palaces have kitchens. No places to prepare meals were ever found on the site. The dolphins in the queen's room, the ones our guide told us signified music and harmony? The illustrious Welshman Arthur Evans who excavated the place did some redecorating. The dolphins were transplants from another location. Heresy?

01 November, 2010 /

IMGP2140 On the road in Greece, Telluride Inside... and Out has found the good far outweighs the bad. And even the bad tends to be not so bad in the end.

It wasn't easy, but we finally managed to extricate ourselves from the womb of Casa Delfino and head for the next big town on the north central coast of Crete, Rhethymnon. En route, Jenny, our ever helpful concierge, suggested a stop at Aptera, an ancient site not even mentioned in any of our guide books.

Aptera lies at the top of the Palaiokastro hill overlooking Souda Bay, the site of a major military base, which Clint visited in his Marine Corps days.

30 October, 2010 /