We loved the beaches on Evoia, the tavernas on Crete, almost everything on Paros (especially the view from the house and Naoussa’s harbour) and finally Chora, which means town, on Naxos is also just stunning. So what’s left to enjoy on Astypalea which is the little island where we spent our last week in Greece?

As Nick already mentioned, we learnt about the island purely by chance. We dropped Mon at the ferry on her way back to Cyprus and sat in a cafe trying to decide where to go next. I tried to match direct ferry connections with islands that looked pretty to available Airbnb flats but it was tricky!! We wanted to visit somewhere small and less commercial with a pretty town. Somewhere with enough to keep our interest but not big enough to be busy. The answer came out of the blue; Nick started chatting to an old guy at the cafe who predicted that the island of Astypalea would be the place for us. And right he was! Read more

Combine the two islands’ names and you get “Paxos”. That was to be the name of the blog until I googled Paxo and it turned out to be an English turkey stuffing, it’s also, believe it or not, another Greek island not far from Corfu. Option 2 was to scramble the letters, I then came up with Poxas, that was totally wrong too. No prizes for guessing where we are…
Read more

It drizzled, blew cold winds and for a moment we wondered where summer had gone. We were in Aarhus, Malene’s home town which is half way up Jutland on Denmark’s mainland, we only had four days to catch up with Malene’s mum and friends Tine and Soeren and we are now heading back to Greece.

The meeting point was planned to be at Athens airport below the illuminated sign that says “Meeting Point” in the arrivals hall.

Read more

The story starts after Helen (of Troy) is kidnapped or runs off with cute loverboy Paris. The problem was that her husband king Menelaus of Sparta was brother to another king, king Agamemnon of Mycenae. Agamemnon was not at all cute, he was big, hot tempered, brash and somewhat of a bully, in a nutshell not the type of person you would want to upset and Agamemnon got very upset with what happened to his brother.

Agamemnon lived on the top of a hill and had lions above his front gate, if that tells you anything about him it should be: “Do not mess with me”. In the picture you see Malene, alias Helen of Troy, at the front gate the day we went to visit at their big castle of “Mycenae” located in the Peloponnese just outside Nafplion. Read more

 

We left Athens in our hired car and started our two week voyage of Greece. We had planned our route a few days before using a mix of suggestions from the internet, places we had ear-marked in advance and filled in the gaps to keep distances to a maximum of 4 hours drive, which turn out to be 6 hours with stops, but that’s ok. With my trusted navigator by my side it took us forever to get out of Athens, we just could not get onto that motorway for the life of us.  Read more

Countless islands in the sea below with small villages dotted on each bay was the view  from my window seat looking down into the Aegean on route from Larnaca to Athens, it also helped keep my mind off the bumps and jerks our Airbus was going through. My mind wondered to the WW2 bombers being knocked around from exploding shells but am sure ours was nothing like as bad plus there were no Germans firing bombs at us, or were there?….. Read more