Ioannina, last days

After our music binge, we went the next day to the Zagorohoria, villages in the mountainous Zagori region made of stone with slate roofs, kinda in the middle of nowhere, very lovely. I had wanted to hike the Vikos gorge, the deepest canyon in the world according to Guinness, but you need to stay overnight there, or get up at 4 to take a bus, or arrange with an expedition company. The latter couldn’t do it, so maybe next time. The part that we saw was impressive enough.

We went to Monodendri and spent the day there. We found a traditional handicrafts center that also had an exhibition space which was showing some very nice phtos by Willy Ronis, whom I’d never heard of, but is apparently becoming big in France. During part of our walk we ran into some Italians. We knew they were Italians before we heard the language because they were all talking at once, really loudly, and moving their hands. It got so one of them even put her hands over her ears and said, “Shh!.” But remember, I’m half Italian and grew up with this. So, one of them asked us where we were from, and when they found out I was half Neapolitan, it was another talk-fest (they were from Naples, too!). A nice moment.

The next day we went to Zitsa for a long-awaited tribute to Petro-Loukas Halkias, one of the last great clarinet players of the region. It had been advertised on the radio and tv, and we thought, wow, this is going to be something. It turned out to be false advertising, as they left off the part about only students up to 18 years doing the playing. But he was there, and played a little. It was a bit sad, as he’s slow moving, and I don’t think he has much playing time left in him, or much time at all, actually. A few of the kids had great potential, so I’m glad we went. Of course when we got back we had to go out for dinner at midnight. I don’t know what I’m going to do when we return to Seattle and at midnight on a work day I’m supposed to be asleep for 2 hours already. I’ll just have to adjust.