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Questions About Travel
Travelling the way we do, in regular lengthy stretches, is not something everyone is fortunate enough, well enough or even inclined to do. Whatever your chosen style of travel, there are some questions which all of us who do so are asked on a regular basis. Like… What do you miss about home? Answer: very little. My stock answer is “proper English ale” which is true, I do find myself craving a good pint sometimes. Michaela meanwhile goes straight for the roast lamb and mint sauce. With both of our families being scattered around the country, we always make a round of visits on our return and probably don’t see…
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Greek Island Hopping: What’s Changed?
Guaranteed sunshine; hot days and balmy evenings; unbelievably blue seas and crystal clear waters; blue and white houses and cloudless skies – the Greek islands are still a beautiful sight with a huge feelgood factor. But these islands have changed. Island hopping has changed. These are still beautiful places to visit, make no mistake, nobody can change the dramatic scenery or those intense colours, but just a little bit of the magic has perhaps gone and the old pioneer spirit of island hopping is no longer really there. Let us explain. Over the last few weeks, and indeed over our last few visits, we have reached the conclusion that there…
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From Paros To Sifnos
“They are very bad people. Dirty money”. Isabella, the hugely likeable matriarch of our host family on Paros, is holding court. “Too many bad people at the top”, she says, “this is how Greece is”. Isabella always has time to talk, by her own admission she likes to get to know her guests, and our late afternoon ferry means we too have time to kill today. Now, the subject has turned to the recent summer fires across Greece, and Isabella is, disturbingly, the third person we’ve met on this trip to expound the same theory. There seems to be a widespread opinion that when the heatwave came, significant money changed…
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Paros In Perspective
Our conclusion after spending a few days on Paros and touring most of the island via hire car is that we probably chose the wrong place to stay. Exquisitely picturesque as it is, the truth is that there are some lovely little corners of this island away from the fat prices of fine dining restaurants and Gucci stockists of well heeled Naoussa and away from the quasi-city buzz of port town Parikia. Tucked away elsewhere are the beautiful hilltop villages of Lefkes (yes a tourist trap but wonderfully quaint) and Kostos (much more still a locals’ village), but take a drive around the coastline and you unearth some seaside getaways…
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Pricey Paros
Anyone who has used island ferries knows the drill: you place your bags in the rack labelled with the name of your destination, settle on deck or wherever, then return to pick up your bags just before disembarkation. So picture our reaction when we return to the car/luggage deck and find what looks like several hundred bags piled where our backpacks were and, when we pull and throw loads of them to one side, ours are no longer there. Just as panic sets in, Michaela spots hers, on a rack marked for a different port, several racks away from the correct one. Mine is even further away, and the two…
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Schinoussa & Iraklia: Further Down The Line
Schinoussa Whoever invented retsina deserves a medal. Whoever had the idea of drinking retsina to accompany fish was inspired, and deserves a medal. If the two were the same person, they should be made a saint. A few short hours after arriving on Schinoussa we are not only doing both, but we are doing it in a sun drenched beach bar where the tamarisk trees border the sand, the sun glints on the surface of the water, and just a handful of people share our space. There can’t be too many better feelings than this. Not long ago when we were being windswept on Astypalea and needing sweatshirts to deal…
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Sapphire & Emerald; Donoussa & Koufonissi
Donoussa On the first of our two mornings in Donoussa we are awakened not by revellers from last night’s festival still up, nor by the usual cockerel calls, but instead by the sound of …….wait for it…..rain! This is the first sprinkling of rain since we saw a shower through the train window on July 24th, some 51 days ago. This one has passed through and dried up before we’ve even had breakfast. The port village of Stavros on the island of Donoussa is the first of our quick stays in the Lesser Cyclades. Donoussa is one of the smallest inhabited Cycladic islands with a total area of just 13…
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Hopping Mad: The Lesser Cyclades
Here it is again, that feeling. It’s 7am and the sky is turning a blazing shade of tangerine as the sun raises its head above the mountain peaks. We chug out of Katapola and leave the beautiful island of Amorgos behind, and the feeling is here again: that heady mix of sadness at leaving and excitement at moving on, somehow even stronger when the leaving is early morning. As we bid farewell to Amorgos we have a distinct feeling – unusual for us – that we will return one day, not a reaction which we have commonly felt on our travels. Ahead of us now though is some old school…
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Amorgos: The Big Blue
We’ve only been on Amorgos for a few hours when we first start talking about it. So instantly attractive and with so many things to do and see, Amorgos quickly asserts itself into needing more than the 4 days we have allocated to it on our schedule. By morning we’ve extended that to 6 days after poring over the changing ferry schedules and finding ways to re-jig our forward moves. After a 5:15am ferry departure from Astypalea, we have made the crossing, driven over Amorgos’s mountains and down to our new base in Katopola before the menus are out on the breakfast cafe tables. Katopola is one of a trio…
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Thomas, King Of Katopola
All we knew when we first made contact was that our next host was named Thomas and the apartment was in a building known as Thomas Villas On The Beach. Maybe this should have been a clue. Our logistical problem on arrival on the island of Amorgos was going to be the fact that the ferry sailed at 5:15am and made port at Egiali at 06:40, far too early for anything in Greece to be open. And our apartment was booked for Katopola, some distance from Egiali. Thomas offers a solution via WhatsApp. “I can organise a hire car at very good price”, he texts, “you can collect at Egiali”.…
