Exploring cuisine while traveling is, if not the absolute best part, at least in the top few reasons I love my travel life. I always maintain that if one eats what the locals eat, food is good everywhere, even if it isn’t what one is particularly used to. And I stand by that. Greek food…
It is incredible just how much is here. It’s a warm day in late August, and the Knossos Palace archaeological site is rapidly getting crowded, even before 10am, thanks to a large cruise ship in port in nearby Heraklion, Crete. I do my best to stay away from the tour groups, winding up doing a…
When I told family and friends - and random blog followers - that I’d be spending a month in Athens, I was met with disbelief. Apparently, Athens is a place people go for a day or two on the way to/from somewhere they perceive as being better, probably one of the Greek islands. Or it’s…
As the myth goes, the ancient king of Athens held a competition between the gods as to whom to worship and name his city for. Poseidon and Athena entered, each tasked with giving a gift to the city that would help it, thereby proving their worthiness of worship. Poseidon, god of the sea, struck a…
It is apparent from the moment my tour bus begins the approach into Kalabaka, a small town at the foot of the Meteora rock formations. Photos and descriptions just cannot do this place justice. They can’t capture the beauty of the monasteries atop narrow rock pinnacles. They can’t give proper scale to the enormity of…
Greece is so very old. And yet, it is shockingly new. Nowhere can this be seen quite like Athens. Here, ruins of temples dating back 2500 years or more stand within a city and country that itself spans barely two centuries. How is this possible? If you’ve been following our Athens content here on The…
I have always been into theatre, from my high school drama days through to now. It almost didn’t matter the genre. Broadway blockbuster musicals, Shakespeare, contemporary comedy a la Tom Stoppard, or even Chekhov and the shockingly depressing Russian dramatists… I was always game to see, read, or perform. It was during this time that…
From the dawn of the Greek world under the Bronze Age civilizations of the Minoans and Mycenaeans, the wisdom of the gods was sought. Would we be successful in war? Would the harvest be a plentiful one? Would one grow up to kill one’s father and marry one’s mother? All these burning questions, and more,…
In the year 86 BCE, the Roman general Sulla laid siege to Athens as Roman conquest made its way across the eastern Mediterranean. He conquered the city-state, destroying most of it in the process, although leaving many of the monumental building projects from the classical period intact. (Click here to read about classical Athens, and…
Editor’s note: today is November 7, 2024. The U.S. presidential election was two days ago, and I am still both sad and angry. And both of those emotions make articles like this one about a Greek island, written back in August, seem meaningless and out of place in the context of my current existence. But…