May 28th Morning visit to a wonderfully professionally run house, great staff, dedicated concierge, terrific cook, 6 bedrooms, and lovely views. Lunch at O’Bata – excellent octopus braised in wine – with a local partner, during which we chatted about which owners were stealing clients, which owners were undercutting the agents, which agents were undercutting … Read More
May 25th – A quiet ride on the small, empty, relaxed island hopper to Amorgos, an island very close to my heart for its wild, broad shouldered, mountainous beauty, hair-raisingly lovely cliff-girt coast, the amazing Hozoviotissa monastery pasted like a white swallows nest into a cleft in the crags, with foaming peacock-coloured sea below, its open-hearted … Read More
May 25th After Amorgos, Mykonos is a real culture shock. I am staying on the Belvedere where the service is fantastic and very good-looking, but I do wonder how people put up with being so squashed and on top of each other with no privacy at all. It does make me realise how much nicer it … Read More
May 24th I love crossing over to Koufonisia from Naxos. Forget the hydrofoil and the Superfast – call Captain Costas Prassinos to sail over from Koufonisia to pick you up in his Kaiki. Koufonisiotes were famous for having being brave and insouciant pirates (until probably not that long ago…) and Costas has the hawk nose, bright eyes and clear, open face … Read More
Five Star Greece still on the road – May 24th We just made our ferry to Naxos – we left the bashed-up car at the Paros car rental with an airy “Magna Travel will pick up the bill” (This is why we love Nasos and Co.) and boarded the “Aeolos Kenteris,” named after the Greek Olympic … Read More
May 22nd to 23rd Evi and I turned up bleary-eyed at 7.00 in the morning at the port of Rafina for the hydrofoil to Paros. By 8.00 we still hadn’t left which is very unusual for the hyper-punctual hydrofoils. “The captain’s car has broken down and he is waiting for a taxi” said the second captain. … Read More
My favorite part of the job that almost makes up for having had to learn how to tweet or twitter or whatever it is called… On Sunday I leave for Greece and have a wonderful trip to see villas on Paros, Antiparos, Amorgos, Koufonisia, Sifnos and Mykonos, before ending up for a week at home on … Read More
Five Star Greece on the road… Poor Evi has been on the road inspecting houses. I say “Poor Evi” without a hint of irony even though that is normally the part of the job that I look forward to the most, and I had not been pleased when she said to me, “You stay and man the office and pay the … Read More
Five Star Greece on Spetses We have just had a cancellation for August for one of our favorite houses on Spetses – the Queen of the Saronic Gulf, where the real insiders head for. Lazy, laid-back, elegant easy. Trying out baby steps in my newly acquired social media skills, I have done a tweet and a … Read More
Five Star Greece is back in the office (with a cold..) Sifnos is an island for the cognoscenti – a Cycladic beauty with 200 kilometres of heavenly footpaths, mostly ending at the white-washed gate of a small, blue-domed church with a name like “Virgin of the Flowing Water”, and commanding an extraordinary view over … Read More
Five Star Greece on the road. I never made it to Patmos in the end – gale force 9 winds brought all ferries to a halt. Patmos as you know is where St John wrote the Book of the Apocalypse, and I am betting that it was on just such a wet and windy … Read More
