Day 284 - Amtrak Train

Thought of the day: The train was late for about five and a half hours at departure.  We didn't check the Amtrak web site before leaving the house so we ended up having the entire morning to spend in Denver's lower downtown (Denver LoDo). One great find was the famed Tattered Cover bookstore.  The bookstore had a dim, aged but comfortable ambiance which was perfect for a bookstore.  With a friendly cafe, intriguing patterns of light and shadow throughout the store and many small places to disappear into, this is a place that you can easily spend a couple of hours in as we did this morning.

Photo of the day:

Everybody was happy when we could finally board the train.

Day 233 - Port

Thought of the day: Today we walked down to the port and had lunch at a popular tavern called Ammoudi. We met the restaurant's owner, a friendly Canadian woman who came here for vacation 23 years ago and never left. After settling down on the island, she fell in love with a cook called Dimitris. They got married and opened the restaurant together. Judging from their reputation and the size of the lunch crowd, they must be doing just fine. The owners of another local favorite, Atlantis Bookstore, are an American and a British who came as tourists 9 years ago and decided to open a multilingual used-book store for tourists. They have a good, tasty collection of English books and the bookstore feels more like a cozy college library than your normal run-of-the-mill bookstore. On a pedestrian street filled with glittering, colorful souvenir shops, this bookstore was a rare find. I spent a good hour there this afternoon browsing the books and took home a few with me. Oia is primarily a tourist town but the tourists are not merely the source of income here, they contribute to the local culture as well, as amply demonstrated by the owners of Ammoudi and Atlantis.

Photo of the day:

The village of Oia is built on top of the cliff.  At the bottom, it's the port which is accessible by a path with a lot of steps and a paved road for cars and tour buses.  We walked, of course.  It was fun to walk and the view was spectacular along the way.

Day 177 - Izzy

Thought of the day:  Borders Bookstore on 29th St. Mall is closing.  It's one of the 200 stores that are closing after Borders' bankruptcy filing.  We went in the store today to take a last look and it was a sad scene - only very few books were left on the shelves as most of them had been liquidated or perhaps shipped away during the past two months.  We visited the store many times in the past and I always made a point of buying something before I left.  A bookstore is a bookstore, whether it's in a chain or not, and it's worthy of our support.  However, I must admit that I am a lot less attached to it as I am to my local bookstore.  It would be a really sad day if something would happen to the local bookstore.  In the era of Amazon and e-books, it's challenging for any bookstore to stay in business.  A bookstore has to be creative, embrace the local population and somehow keep them coming back often.  I think a local, independent store is much better positioned for doing that than a national/international chain.  Our local store is doing pretty well and hopefully it will remain so in the foreseeable future and continue to contribute to the cultural vibrance of Boulder.

Photo of the day:

Lila had a play date with Izzy before heading to Borders with me and saying good-bye to a store that she had visited so many times in the past.