Time to go to Mykonos

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It really is time for me to leave Ithaca and  these lotus-eating Ionian islands, in their zonked-out September golden haze, and sharpen up a bit…

I realised this as I was moseying along the little country lane to Skinos, leading Daphne the donkey by her rope, and a couple of tourists stopped to take a picture, saying in German, “Oh look, how sweet, the peasant lady with her donkey.” The straw hat, cotton dress and flip flops should perhaps NOT come with me to Mykonos tomorrow,   and I must look for my hairbrush as well….
Daphne the donkey was perfectly happy until Mitso the farmer, who is a genial rascal, roared up on his motorbike and stopped in a flourish of dust in front of me – “May I just compliment you? Every year you look..” at which point Daphne decided that she did not like the look of him, his smile, the motives behind his compliments, or his motor-bike, and made a break for the hills, with me flying behind her on the rope “Another time!” I called back to Mitso, leaving his words “.. younger and more beautiful…” hanging in the air behind.

Daphne looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth

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September in the Greek Islands – Kefalonia to Ithaca

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September 14th.
Kefalonia to Ithaca.

The next morning I visited a very pretty property of two houses set in Tuscan-like countryside but with the sea glimmering beyond the cypress trees. Kefalonia really is a beautiful island. Long sandy beaches are gently washed by clear, pale blue water. Mountains dark with pine trees sun themselves in the pure blue air, valleys spread out below and dissolve into the distance, and cypress trees thickly clothe the hillsides. If only the villages had survived the 1953 earthquake that featured in Captain Corelli, the island would be one of the wonders of the Mediterranean.

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September in the Greek islands – London to Kefalonia

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September 13th.
My heart does not usually leap for joy when I  drive off to Luton Airport at six in the morning, but……

What a fortnight – doctors, surgeons, emergency clinics, consultants, hospital administrators, insurance companies  – I have developed a new Pavlovian reaction: whenever a man in a suit says hello to me,  I wordlessly hand over my credit card… To say nothing of plumbers in dungarees at home, sucking their teeth and saying “Well, to be honest, if you had told us before that you wanted us to merge and Earth bond the thermostatic trip wires rather than you doing it yourself, we would have done it before sealing the grouting. Now we will have to knock it all down and start again.”

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Mamma Mia! This is what a Villa Holiday is all about….

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No, it is not a chewing gum advertisement, nor one for toothpaste, air-freshener, deodorant or Coca cola – though it could easily sell any of those – It is a genuine, spontaneous, home-movie from dear clients staying in Mitzella,  just below the Pelion peninsular. We feel it has star quality, and are very grateful to … Read more

Not so Five Star Greece…

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One Star Greece today – The worm’s eye view.

Today’s blog is courtesy of my 20 year old son, just returned from a rather grubby island hopping trip to Mykonos, Paros, Santorini and Naxos, with which Five Star Greece had absolutely  nothing to do at all…

Mykonos:  Lose the telephone numbers your well-connected mother gave you for trip. Stay out all night and go to bed in your basement apartment at 07.00. Wake up at 15.00, head for an ATM machine, and go to the beach for breakfast. Lie on the sand as you can’t afford a deckchair and get sand blown all over your face, and into your mouth, nose, hair and all other hard-to-reach parts. Go back to town and find another ATM machine. Find an eatery not filled with Italians in skimpies and scarves, have supper at 23.00, squeeze onto the packed party bus playing bad music out to Paradiso to go clubbing again, hear Laid -back Luke, do not get upset if some rich guy in the club lures the girls in your party away by telling them his grandfather was Prime Minister of Greece and he has a VIP table with champagne for them. They will be back once the Prime Minister’s grandson starts putting his hand in the wrong places, which won’t take long. Find another ATM machine, go to bed at 07.00, wake up at 15.00, find another basement apartment as yours is reserved for more scarf-wearing, skimpy-clad Italians from Bari, and so on…

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Spetses, Proust and almond cookies

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An invitation dropped into my mailbox to visit the famous confectioner’s Kardiasmenou on Spetses for Greek coffee and pastries. A picture of their speciality almond cookies, “Amygdalota” was on it. Like a Proustian madeleine, a slow, sweet, torrent of memories starts flooding in – No Greek would ever turn up to dinner, tea or any social event without a beribboned box of goodies from a confectioners or bakery. Baklava and kataifi in the evening, and Amygdalota at any time.

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Angels From the Holy Mountain

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The journalist from CBS who produced the Sixty Minutes programme about Mount Athos a couple of months ago (see our earlier blog) travelled back there to deepen his rapport with the monasteries he had visited, and kindly took my two sons with him, who were soon dubbed Agents of the Devil by the monks – one filled out the entry visa form  declaring himself to be an Atheist which was a first for the Holy Mountain visitors book…

Getting them back  from Mount Athos to Ithaca was not straightforward,  even for Five Star Greece, and involved a ferry from Mount Athos, a taxi across Greece to the island of Lefkada and then a speedboat to cross from there to Ithaca. No word was heard from them for four days, and on the day we were to meet them, Captain Tasos started to get seriously annoyed. “Why do they not call?” he asked me, “How am I meant to know when to cross over and get them? Suppose it is the middle of the night?”

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Is it safe to go to Greece?

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We have been asked this question quite a few times  now by clients either thinking of renting a last-minute villa, or else checking up on the situation before leaving to travel to their villa, and the answer is yes. It is safe. The media love a good picture of rioters and  we do understand your concerns, but  a little counter-balance is maybe needed, so this weeks’  blog is all about safety.

Unless you are planning a demonstration in Syntagma Square  and a spot of rock-throwing at the police, you can leave your gas mask at home and just pack your sparkly kaftans, fitflops and suntan oil as usual. A Mykonos colleague and I were chuckling over a recent Mykonos cancellation where the client cited “riots in Athens” as a reason for cancelling. We tried to imagine a SWAT team storming N’Ammos beach restaurant. First of all they would be told by the elegant bouncers that as they did not have a table reserved they could not park their cars there.

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Ithaca – Odysseus’ palace and Psycho-archaeology

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Honestly, how could one ever leave the important business of locating Odysseus’ palace to archaeologists? With this report, I would like to introduce you to the new discipline of Psycho-archaeology.

I escorted a group of friends and relatives up to the new found site of Odysseus’ palace on the side of the northern part of Ithaca, that I had also not yet seen. The friends and relatives included a lordly bunch of aristocratic, landowning, castle-residing, serf-owning (not really, just joking,) nobles. They strolled up the hill to the cyclopean walls and trenches dug by the predominately proletarian team of archaeologists from not very noble Yannina University, sniffed the air, scanned with hunters’ eyes the horizon for prey/enemies/convoys of visiting relatives/royalty, conferred amongst themselves briefly, and then pronounced the site to be quite clearly a dud.

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