Photo – Villa Arenia on Meganissi Most people’s prerequisites for a relaxing Greek island holiday will include being close to a beach. Fortunately there are ancient laws within Greece to restrict building close to the sea and “private” beaches do not exist. It is not easy therefore to find an island retreat above the sea,…
Spring has sprung in the Ionian – temperatures are nudging 20 degrees. Greek Easter is late this year, May 5th – Easyjet and Ryanair April and May flights provide the perfect opportunity to see how the Ionian islanders celebrate it. Easter in Greece or “Paska” is THE most important (and loudest) celebration of the year….
Photo – East coast Paxos The winter rainstorms in the Ionian are over and there is now an explosion of colour as the Spring sunshine turns warmer and warmer. Olive grove terraces are filled with fresh bracken, wild gladioli, asparagus and freesias. Roadsides are lined with white convonvulus. Flowering myrtle bushes crowd ancient donkey paths….
Photo – The Elgin Marbles Browsing in a second hand bookshop in Sherborne I came across a book: “Through Greece and Dalmatia” – published in 1912 to show “a diary of impressions recorded by pen & picture by Mrs Russell Barrington.” When Mrs Barrington was in Athens she wrote: “The most glorious jewel in the…
Photo – Villa Aphrodite’s view over Mon Repos Edward Lear is well known for his limericks and nonsense rhymes such as “The Owl and the Pussycat”. Lear however dedicated more of his time as a landscape painter. He travelled on foot and horseback through 19th Century Greece, Albania, Southern Italy and the Middle East making…
Photo – Villa Artemis Zeus, the “big cheese” God, was God of the Sky & Thunder. In Greek mythology he was named as Dias the “Divine King”. It is said that when he created the world he threw his last remaining building stones into the seas of Cephalonia and that one of these stones became…
