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FeaturedWelcome to Olives and Islands
“It takes a lifetime for someone to discover Greece, but it only takes an instant to fall in love with her.” Henry Miller
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Featured
How I Got to Athens /What I Write About
August, late 1970’s. All cities look better in the dawn, writes Pico Iyer in an essay on Bombay, and dawn was my first glimpse of Athens. From the old airport in Hellinikon around 4 am I get a taxi to the Plaka, where I find a hotel (who made reservations in advance then?), the kind… Read more
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A Journey Through Bologna, Ravenna and Verona: History, Culture and Cuisine
What better way to celebrate an anniversary than an early winter trip to Italy. Our base was in Bologna, a city of “pleasant gloom” as Charles Dickens described it in an 1844 visit in his book Pictures from Italy. Gloom from often grey skies but pleasant from the medieval and Renaissance architecture and from the… Read more
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A Historical Journey of Athens’ Ancient Agora and the area around
On the first Sunday from November to March, the state museums and archaeological sites are free and it’s always pleasant to see how many visitors, locals and tourists alike, are stepping among the ancient stones, especially on an unseasonably warm sunny day (which are getting more and more common). As you stroll among the cypress,… Read more
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Photo Roundup: My Best Travel Moments
A myriad of photos taken over the six years of my blog… I thought it would be fun to publish a blog post with some of my favorite photos. This gave me a chance to look through posts and relive my travels! So this time it’s very little text and mostly photos. If you do… Read more
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Chania’s siren song / Honoring Mikis Theodorakis
Chania whispers in your ear and lures you to its northern Cretan shore. You might feel at times ‘been here done this’ too often. But when you return to a vacation place again and again, you enrich your present memories with those of the past. No matter how often I walk past Semiramis restaurant, it… Read more
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Summer in the City: Outdoor Cinema and a peek at the Herodion Theater
“And babe don’t you know it’s a pity / The days can’t be like the nights / In the summer in the city / In the summer in the city” Lovin’ Spoonful By this time in the summer, I’m dreaming of diving into the Aegean, preferably on a Cycladic island. But there’s plenty to enjoy… Read more
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Cyprus: Divided Country
Not even Aphrodite, goddess of love, who was born as the myth says, out of the sea foam on Cyprus, can heal the conflict in this divided island country between Greek Cypriots (82% of the population) and Turkish Cypriots (18%). We’ll see how the island came to be divided in the last 50 years. I.… Read more
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Salamina, Athens’ neighboring island
I. Historical, geographical background 480 BC. Persian King Xerxes sits on a hill across from the island of Salamina, shaking his head in disbelief as he watches his huge fleet of ships get destroyed by the much smaller Greek fleet. Here in the straits between the mainland and Salamis (Salamina) in the Saronic Gulf, this… Read more
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Moroccan Odyssey
Palm trees, dates, clay houses, desert oases, camels, bazaars, mosaics, spices, leather. I had some pictures in my mind. But what I really knew about Morocco was very little. In the 1980’s and early 90’s, when I used to consider ways to fly back to the U.S. every year, Royal Air Maroc offered a deal on… Read more
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