Athens

dry hills
The view from Athens airport

Flying into Athens for the first time felt a bit weird because the landscape was so much like that of Townsville: the bright sky, the nearly-bare hills and the parched vegetation we could see from the plane created a near-deja-vu experience: “We flew all this way and nothing has changed?” (The airport itself didn’t do much to alleviate that, either, since it was much more like ours than Dubai’s or Singapore’s.)

Continue reading “Athens”

Greece: Lefkada

village
The village of Karya, nestled in the hills of Lefkada

Lefkada is a large island just off the west coast of Greece. I hadn’t heard of it until friends moved there a couple of years ago, although I had known and loved its nearest neighbour, Corfu, ever since I read Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals as a child. Our friends settled in Karya, a village in the mountains above the island’s main town and we visited them there in late June before going on to Italy (previous posts).

The weather was gorgeous and we enjoyed a couple of long walks, one down the hill to visit their donkey and the other up the hill just because it was a nice thing to do. There were some spectacular views:

Continue reading “Greece: Lefkada”