Happy New Year!

the three of us took off to meet some friend in a little town called kastoria. we met up with 5 others (only two of whom we knew) to hang out for a few days. this is the view out the hotel window.

the area is a bird watchers paradise, water fowl galore. my personal favorite  was the white pelican.

it was pretty cold with snow and such all around. we had gone out the day before we left to hook artemis up with some necessary new gear, including this columbia down onesie.

it was so nice to play around with all the reflections, water is so much fun to photograph.

here they are just killin it. kastoria surrounds a lake with a beautiful walking path. we spent an hour or so trekking through the cold and enjoying each other's company.

inside one of the many churches, the eyes of all of the icons had been destroyed. the version of the story that i know is that when the ottomans came, they desecrated the images so that the saints could not look at them.

atemis now joins us at the table to eats with us, it has been a pretty interesting development.

we found a cool pool bar to hang out in, play pool and my favorite table top game.

before we left we had coffee at the top of the peninsula. here artemis is rocking perhaps my favorite outfit.

nelly and koki are the two people we knew in the company. there are good friends with whom we wish we could spend more time.

on the chance meeting of panagiotis from prespes, we lined up an unplanned trip to psarades, the most north-western village of greece. so on friday afternoon we got back on the road and headed north.

artemis is rocking her new car seat that we picked up the morning we left thessaloniki. it is a new tech with a bar system rather than a 5 point strap system. hopefully it doesn't matter and we never have to use it.

wires with snow

psarades has a population of free roaming cows that make driving fun.

the main drag of psarades at night. artemis was falling down in the snow and generally having fun as we went for a quick stroll after dinner.

we ended up at a cool little cafenio (a cafe for the older generation) where we had a hot cup of coffee and played tavli while artemis met the locals. the man furthest to the left turned out to be panagiotis' father, who set up our rooms for us. he is a very nice guy who moved back to his village to retire as a fisherman, we got to see him pull in his catch the next morning.

this was our hotel room; new, clean and complete with fireplace and wonderful breakfast for 35 euros, we felt like we were stealing.

here's the view that you are greeted with in the morning.

in the middle of the lake prespes meet the borders of albania, fyrom and greece.  

the name of the village we stayed at in prespes is called psarades, literally 'fishermen', and is a beautiful little place.

this is our friend panagiotis. we had met him once or twice before, but got to know him better on this trip. he had been skiing the day before and came down to see his parents and hang out with us on saturday.

dad's family portrait project has given us some time to work on our family unit awesomeness; this was one of the attempts.

water and algae frozen together, super cool.

the mountains of the area are just breathtaking, and again the water adds that extra umph. 

we stopped at a picturesque little island called agios achillios where there is a post bizantine church ruin. it also happens to hold one of the few remaining populations of prespes pygmy long-haired cows, they are super cool, but seemed big for pygmies. the area is also a recovering wetland, has a huge bird population, and even some water buffalo i am told.

here are the ruins of the church.

here they are from above, pretty impressive structure.

we had some time to play in good wet snow, artemis dug it for sure. i taught her proper snow eating technique and she did some snowsuit sledding.

one of my favorite shots from the trip.

oh the lines.

purple mountains majesty.

the road home.