Day One I try to get a glimpse of the Oslo fjord over the shoulder of the elderly Norwegian in the window seat. That should have been my seat, but in a slight outrage over the seat reservation charges of Norwegian, the airline, I only added one extra suitcase to my booking- extra luggage costs…
Category: travel photography
Food to Eat and Food for Thought- Thessaloniki Part Two
Disclaimer: You might expect, reasonably, I should add, that a post centred mostly on food and drinks would contain some photography of said items. I will therefore let you down right at the beginning. While the blog’s industrious co-photographer is an enthusiastic eater, he is generally way too concerned with consuming what’s on his plate…
Alexander the Great, Aristotle, Atatürk and A Monk Getting Pizza- Thessaloniki Part One
The plane’s path from Budapest is straight as an arrow, across the southern Hungarian plain, the whole length of Serbia, the brief interlude of North Macedonia and then one of those quintessentially Greek descents, from the sky you glimpse the sea, blue meets blue and the land seems almost secondary, an unwelcome guest among the…
A Vacation from Myself- Memories of Hydra
The English word vacation comes from the Latin vacans, the present active participle of vaco, which can mean, depending on the context, to be free, to be at leisure, or to be empty. Since Hungarian straightforwardly uses the same word, ‘szabadság’ both for freedom and vacation, and in Romanian you will say ‘îmi iau liber’,…
So What’s the Deal with Spetses
Loukas the taxi driver was interested in my long term plans in Greece. Surely, I was going to the islands, not just staying in Athens. Yes, I was. Which island? Oh! But you MUST go to Spetses. This was the automatic reaction every time I revealed my dirty little plan to just stay on Hydra….
Our Lady of the Hot Mess- Brief Impressions of Athens
Having heard that my boyfriend was Turkish, Loukas, the Athenian taxi driver, looked straight into my eyes, took a deep breath under his mask, and imparted what he felt was a fundamental truth: Greeks and Turks are alike, and would get along just fine, if it wasn’t for meddling politicians. We need to look at…
Vlad Was Here But He Was Not Alone-Journey to the Heart of Transylvania
One of the defining images of my childhood is a Transylvanian village seen from the backseat of a car. It’s not a particular village, it’s a composite of many villages. Not so much a village, but a state of mind. My face against the warm glass, my eyes filled with wonder, the world my oyster….
To the Shire and Back with the Blue Wave Express- A Visit to Szigliget
The guesthouse owner looked incredulously at us as we dismounted from the minivan and it became clear that it wasn’t ours. We’d gotten the same slightly suspicious glances a few years back when we’d arrived in Giardini Naxos, Sicily, in the same carless state. Crazy, crazy folk. We’d approached Szigliget by train, on the slow,…
Greek Cats and Pandemic Travel Musings
There’s no running from the truth. This post, as most of the Internet, was born from cat pictures. I nevertheless felt that the Zakynthian bestiary could not be topped. Perhaps I could go for a more serious topic. Like that moment when you extricate yourself from a ’50 pictures that prove cats are liquid’ collection…
All Them Lovely Beaches- Where to Swim and be Reborn on Hydra
At seven in the morning in early September, the light over Hydra is more of an impression than reality, a fluid veil of burnt orange sneaking over the hills. The port is hidden from the rising sun, like a pearl inside its shell, by the barren, burnished cliffs that run across the island, like the…
Pocket Diary Budapest 