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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 “May you feel rich in experiences, grateful for the journey so far, and excited for all the roads still waiting for you.” Elizabeth Villiger Toufexis
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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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Springtime tourists in NYC and DC
When our dear friends Sotiris and Olina suggested last fall that they would love to come with us to New York the next time we visit, I thought oh what a nice idea, but didn’t think it would really happen! But lo and behold, it came to pass. New York City in springtime is a… Read more
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A Conversation with Julian Hoffman, author of “Lifelines: Searching for Home in the Mountains of Greece”
“It’s one of those sharp winter days that make the nights tremble with light. When no clouds conceal the vastness to come, so that the gathering dark is shot through with a cold so deep and clarifying that our galaxy seems sleeved in winter ice. When stars shine with the intensity of fireworks.”from Lifelines: Searching… Read more
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A weekend in Messolonghi: Commemorating the Greek Revolution
The Messolonghi lagoon shimmered in the sunlight this past weekend. Most of us on the trip, influenced by the recent abnormal cold in Athens, shed our unnecessary heavy sweaters and jackets that we had packed. Messolonghi, its name meaning “in the middle of lakes,” is a small town in western Greece where the Acheloos and… Read more
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Visiting Thrace in Carnival Time
Carnival weekend! Let’s go with an organized trip to the northern Greek town of Xanthi, that holds the second largest carnival in Greece, after Patra. Xanthi is in Thraki or Thrace, the northeast province of Greece bound in the east by Turkey and north by Bulgaria. Because of its proximity to Turkey, the area has… Read more
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A Walk Through the Centuries at the Athens Archaeological Museum
Away from the Acropolis museum and archaeological sites nearby, sits the magnificent neoclassical building that houses the National Archaeological museum of Athens. Last Sunday as we approached the museum, we were amazed to see a line all the way down to the sidewalk and around. In the hour we wait, we hear many different languages,… Read more
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Journeys Through Time: My favorite historical fiction in 2025
Trying to find a picture of a woman reading, I was surprised to find that the subject of a woman seated in front of an open book is a very popular one in paintings through the centuries. Matisse adds his version (as seen above) with “Reading Woman with Parasol.” Ahh, reading outside in nature, in… Read more
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Travels 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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