Six nights in Nafpaktos meant time to properly test the restaurants, from a stand-out meal at Captain Cook to a disappointing one at Kouzina Loi, plus a room with a view at Pepo’s Guesthouse and the two very different beaches either side of the harbour.
Nafpaktos has answered to several names over the centuries, and its kastro shows why. A walk from Botsaris Tower to the Sideroporta and beyond uncovers Byzantine walls, Venetian bastions and Ottoman fountains, all stacked on top of each other.
Getting to Trizonia means a bus, a water taxi, and a fair bit of faith in Greek public transport connecting up. Once there, this tiny car-free island in the Corinthian Gulf turns out to be less about sightseeing and more about learning to stop.
A ferry sprint, an unexpected bus connection, and a return to Patras nine years after volunteering there with a refugee charity. Zakynthos to Patras isn’t glamorous, but it comes with forts, a windy crossing to Antirrio, and a sunset at Mare Mare worth chasing down.
The final evening of the Sochos Panigyri belongs to the adult oil wrestling competition. Categories One and Two take the field, the musicians never stop, and the whole festival comes down to who shows their belly to the stars.
Beach Wrestling World Series champion Christos Christoforidis competed at the Sochos Panigyri of the Holy Twelve Apostles and won his category outright. This is his story.
The Panigyri of the Holy Twelve Apostles in Sochos is best known for its oil wrestling, but the festival begins long before anyone steps onto the field. Part 2 follows the Sunday evening procession through the upper village, a cultural performance that stopped me in my tracks, and the moment the youngest generation of Pechlevanides took to the field.
Oil wrestling isn’t what comes to mind when you think of Greece; but at Sochos, it’s a centuries-old tradition, and one wrapped in genuine controversy. Greeks and Turks alike fiercely claim it as their own. The real history, it turns out, runs back through ancient Egypt, Persia and the Seljuks, and is far too tangled for either side to own outright.
Guess what. A Greek Oddity recently turned fifteen years old! It began life on Blogger, migrated to Posterous, which then became Posthaven. Eventually, I threw myself into the confusing world of WordPress where I fumbled my way through to creating something that almost resembled a website. It’s not perfect. It’s not slick. But neither am…
I’ve thrown myself into a frenzy of projects since reaching retirement age. The latest? Building an Android app for independent travellers to Greece. Plan Your Greece is now on Google Play.
Ask anyone how to get from A to B in Greece and the answer is almost always the same: hire a car. But after thirty years of travelling Greece by bus, ferry, and Shanks’s Pony, I’d argue it’s not always the only option — or even the best one. And I say this as someone who once wheel-spun a Suzuki Celerio into a rut on Lipsi while a man on a digger watched and smoked his cigarette.
This is the final post of a two-month journey that took me from Istanbul to Athens via the Sea of Marmara, the Turkish Aegean coast, several Greek islands and the Peloponnese. It was not planned in any conventional sense. It started with my aunt Janet, who wanted to visit Constantinople. It ended, as these things sometimes do, somewhere else entirely.
