Istanbul
Anybody who knows me well will know if there’s one thing I don’t understand above all else, it’s sport. Except, of course, for cricket, which isn’t actually a sport, is it? More of a really big board game. And so …
Category: Travel Writing
Cappadocia
The night bus to Cappadocia was well enough, but we should have caught a rocket ship. Cappadocia is home to one of the most incredible landscapes I have ever seen … almost as if God called up Dali, Gaudi and …
Fethiye & Olympos
After another entertainingly perfumed bus ride, we arrived in the port town of Fethiye to begin one of the most shamefully self-indulgent weeks of my already self-indulgent life. For it was here that we boarded a yacht for a 4 …
Samos / Ephesus / Pamukkale
Samos was the final stepping stone into Turkey, our afternoon there memorable only for time spent with Spyros, our malevolent taxi driver, whose idea of safety was to finger his beads wherever conventional wisdom might have suggested brakes. It was …
Syros & Patmos
An unexpected stopover in Syros, the Cycladic capital, afforded us the pleasure of a swim around the city walls of Ermoupolis, overlooked by staggering neo-classical mansions, rather than the toasted marshmallow bodies of German nudists that so commonly dominate Greece’s …
Mykonos & Delos
Mykonos. The very word inspires palpitations for the repressed. So it was with palpitating heart I said farewell to Yiannis and boarded the ferry to those golden sands of sin and excess. Bill, the guy who made my coffee back …
Naxos
If Santorini (to misappropriate Yeats) has the kind of beauty to “make a stranger’s eye distraught,” Naxos is like a lover whose beauty emerges in conversation, deeper and more enduring. Or perhaps I just find it hard to sleep on …
Crete & Santorini
After one long ferry ride, we spent several happy days in Rethymno and Venetian built Hania, Crete, doing nothing much (bar a trip to Knossos, home of the Minotaur), before excitedly trading the Cretan sprawl of Iraklio for the Cyclades. …
Delphi
It is of little wonder that the Greeks cross themselves so often. With tree-covered mountains conversing with deep valleys and streams that gurgle their way to the sea, one half expects God to step down from the clouds to say …
Nafplio
Today we are in Peloponnesian Nafplio — Venetian built — and formerly the capital of Greece. From here, the plan is to make day trips into Epidauros to visit the healing Temple of Asclepius and the legendary theatre alongside her, …