⛰️Innsbruck, Austria 🇦🇹

I’m glad everyone in the family watched The Sound of Music before we got here. That way, any one of us could break into 🎶”Edelweiss”🎶. 

From Lindau we took a train 🚞 to Innsbruck and rented a car for a few days. Innsbruck was a stop on the way to Italy, and it was a lovely one. We walked around the downtown, looking at the historic buildings, the most unique being the palace with the golden roof where queen and king looked over their square. The city was bustling with tourists and we met the first of many Swifties in the area for Taylor’s Munich shows. With beer and wine cheaper than water around here, it was tempting to start a drinking game… take a drink when you see someone with an Eras T-shirt or a sequined outfit. My liver couldn’t.😝

Austria hosted the Olympics three times, and it was fun to check out their ski jump in Innsbruck. I was pretty good at the Wii ski jump myself, if I do say. To our delight we learned that jumpers can practice all year. We bought tickets up to the look off tower and before we got into the funicular, we saw a fella getting into position, then he flew by! 🚀 

We went into the massive tower and took in the views of the mountains, forest, and storybook villages. We had cake and coffee in the restaurant and planned the rest of our day: swimming at the Völser Badl, another outdoor swimming complex with — you guessed it — stainless steel pools, my new obsession. Four pools, a long twisting slide, clean facilities for changing and storage lockers, a licensed canteen, beautiful surroundings — what a place to relax. The landscaping was impeccable with rolling terraces, tall trees and topiaries. It was a great deal too. 

Lindau & Bregenz 🇩🇪🇦🇹

We got a little muesli and stayed at the Hostelling International Jugendherberge Lindau for three nights. It took me back to residence life, with bunk beds, a shared bathroom, and a solid cafeteria. There was a lot of common space, with a courtyard pub, playrooms, reading rooms, and a big games room where we wiled out on slacklines, played pool, ping pong 🏓 and pinball. 🤩 

We walked to the Bodensee (Lake Constance) and took a swim. I was delighted when a blimp flew by. I had forgotten they were real. They look pretty whimsical. 🎈 The landscapes, trees, bike paths, architecture were stunning. We rented bikes and made our way to the picturesque island where the cobblestone streets led to the landmark lion & lighthouse, ornate churches, restaurants, museums, botanical gardens, and finally a huge lido with a cafe/pub. We swam in the choppy lake and sat in the sun with hundreds of people having fun. It was beautiful. 🌞

Dinner was a bit of a Bavarian bust. We went to a German restaurant and ended up with pretty pricy plates of pork, kraut, and potato dumplings. It was okay. 🐖 😬

The next day we took a 10-min train to Bregenz, Austria. We walked through their iconic opera, where stadium seats look out to the stage built on the lake. The set was a half sunken creepy moonlit village. Five minutes later we arrived at the Strandbad swimming complex with huge stainless steel pools! They were gorgeous. I splurged on a new swim mask and the water was so clear it was like they were prescription lenses. The water glimmered on the pool surface, and felt fresh and clean. 🧼 

That night, I ordered pizza and salad in German. 🍕🥗The waitress was so tickled that she gave us a tiramisu. My 200 days of learning German on Duo Lingo paid off. 🦉

24 hrs in Zurich, Switzerland 🇨🇭

From the plane to the train downtown, Zürich is more temperate than Athens. The train station is as opulent as the airport. We hop off downtown and walk a few blocks to Furdich Guest House & Kafi. The cafe is cozy and eclectic, chill folky music is playing. We leave our baggage in the office and set out to spend the couple hours before checking in.

🥨🧀🥖

I love going to grocery stores in other countries. They’re usually pretty cool (AC) and it’s fun to see the local snacks and differences in all the sections of the store. At Migros we bought baked pretzels, a loaf of soft sliced bread, a tube of mustard (genius), a little pack of salami and a cheese platter! We also got plums, yellow watermelon, hazelnut yogurt, and the cheapest Swiss chocolate bar, just to test it as a base line for our Lindt factory tour later that afternoon. 🍬

The park is big, green, and blessed with lots of enormous trees. There are couples, and people on their lunch breaks, families with kids and it looks idyllic. We sit in the grass about 6m from a tree and a black and white dog strolls by. We miss our dog so we’re watching him with tenderness. 🐶 He decides to “use the WC” halfway between us and the tree, which puts a damper on the picnic, but luckily his owner comes by to scoop. 🌳

No worries. The picnic is phenomenal. There are no sketchy ingredients allowed in this Swiss délice! We ppl watch a little more and notice that around the perimeter of the park, on benches, some characters are a little erratic, getting loud now and then. Not great vibes. A very sexy lady walks by very slowly. An older fellow follows her. Hmmm. Time for us to take a hike. 🗺️

We walk out to explore the neighborhood. We pass shops and cafes. There are a few people out and about. The architecture has story book details like curving iron balconies, and dormered roofs, in beiges and ochres. But the color palate shifts to black and red. Prints on the businesses look like 80s albums with cartoon lips and sultry eyes. The people outside seem to be wearing a lot of makeup on such a hot day. Ohhhhh… this is a district… 🛑

We head back to the neighborhood where we saw the funky record store, back to the more wholesome vibes. Our room at the Guesthouse is ready. We settle in, change and Uber to the Lindt factory! We get an interactive history-of-chocolate tour which culminates with a cloying amount of samples. In a word, decadent. Chocolate fountain, chocolate bark, chocolate bar dispenser, and the classic shiny spheres of all flavours. Now we’ve got about $40 worth of chocolate on us to keep from melting. Silly. 🍫

We walk to the waterfront and the locals are swimming and stand up paddle boarding. Some picnickers are even sipping champagne and a big fella does a backflip. Mike can’t resist a refreshing plunge in the stunning scene. 🏊‍♂️

We Uber back to relax. We have snacks on the balcony and listen to a live band playing in the park. It’s across the road. Mike and I check it out for a half hour. It’s a cool little band called Bandit Voyage. They rock out in French, German & English. The guitar player is in roller skates the whole time. 🛼🎸

And that’s that. We leave Zurich 24 hrs later by train. Off to Lindau via Bregenz. 🚞

Greece 2024 🇬🇷

🇬🇷 We thought we’d wait three years to return but we couldn’t do it. Tortuga Beach called us back to Greece. Getting to travel and hang out with friends and family was a special bonus! Labi, Jill, the girls, Aaron, Leigh, B, and Yvonne — what a crew. 💕 Our restaurant dinners for 12 were adventurous, with fantastic food every night and only mild chaos if the wasps showed up. They love souvlaki too. 

As soon as we arrived I forgot what day it was and sunk into a deep restorative relaxation. Daily swims in the warm ocean “set me up forever” (as Jane Austen put it in Pride & Prejudice). Drinking cheap Greek beers (Alpha for €2,50) and eating Oregano Lays in the afternoon, and reading a few chapters, lounging on a chaise is just dreamy. Catching up with folks is also a treat. 

Greece is foodie paradise of course: souvlaki, spanakopita, salad, perfect feta, sweet red onions and the peppers, cukes, tomatoes were exquisite. We tried something new — yemista but it’s in zucchini flower instead of veg. So good. In Athens I had a game changing dessert called chocolate mosaic! I’ve already done a preliminary Pinterest search for recipes. 

In the countryside it was sometimes quite windy and the sound of cicadas in the olive trees was loud. They’re intense. Like the waves in the distance, they swell and retreat. There are cacti and palms, mountains and valleys. The sky - light blue- meets the ocean - Med blue- and dry beige land  is speckled with green brush. There are rare pops of pink flowers. It’a a soothing colour palate. 

We returned to some special places — Plitra, Elafonisos, Monemvasia — and explored caves in Neapoli. Before leaving Greece, we visited the Acropolis, its museum, the agora, and walked around the neighborhoods in their shadows. 

It was all daxi. 🇬🇷

USA! USA! Springfield, Mass. & NYC

         Over the last few years, our daughter Sylvie has developed a love of R&B, hip-hop and 90s style. We knew she’d love to see some of her heroes live, so when we found that BoyzIIMen were performing in New England, we planned a trip around it. But we kept it secret… kudos to Chloe for keeping it under wraps for months (best sis). 

We dropped off our dog and took the Cat from Yarmouth, NS to Bar Harbour, ME. It was a smooth ferry ride, foggy for most of the way until the sun lit up the green tree-lined coast of Maine. From there we drove to Springfield. At Theodore’s Blues, Booze and BBQ, we revealed the news to Sylvie over a bowl of mac and cheese and brisket bites. She had tears of joy in her eyes. 

To keep the concert secret, we found some more good reasons to go to Springfield. We spent a day at Six Flags, a sizable Looney Tunes/Superhero-themed amusement park. That was a blast, with roller coasters, Dippin’ Dots, and overpriced drinks in the sweltering heat. Mike and I rode The Batman, The Crime Wave, The Riddler, and the Wicked Cyclone, and chose to watch the kids brave the scarier ones (The Harley Quinn, The Joker, etc). They were fearless. 

We checked out the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Both girls play bball, so that was a slam dunk. There were lots of famous sneakers to compare one’s own feet, and plenty of paraphernalia and history on display. The WBNA was well represented, which was awesome. There’s a gleaming gym where you can shoot on nets of all sorts, including ye olde peach baskets from the Heritage Minute. 

It also happens that Theodore Seuss Geisel grew up in Springfield, and The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum is there. He’s a family-favourite author and illustrator, and the museum is a wonderful, whimsical manifestation of his work. It was inspiring to see more of his art and learn about his life. His funny phonetics and invitation to imagine warm my heart. It’s amazing how he portrayed universal and complex concepts in lighthearted ways. His poetics are on point as well – the rhythm, the rhyme, the weird imagery – I love it. 

Finally on Friday night, it was time for BoyzIIMen at the Springfield Symphony Hall. The Hall itself seats about 2600 people, with beautiful architectural details and excellent acoustics. The Boyz still have the voices for those emotional ballads and rich harmonies that we slow-danced to in the nineties. The audience was swept away in their feels and just about everyone had a hand on their heart, swaying and singing at the top of their lungs. For the last couple of songs, Sylvie made her way up to the front with the other superfans, reaching her little hand out and getting handshakes from all three of the singers, and one of the red roses they flung to fans. We all had so much fun and it was well worth the effort. 

Springfield exceeded our expectations, and with 4 more nights on the road, we drove to the Big Apple. We spent the first night in Manhattan, checking out some classics like the Empire State Building and Times Square (intense!). Then we had the great luck of being able to stay in our friends’ lovely home in Brooklyn. (Thanks again to Sarah and Gijon, who we met traveling in Tulum in 2019, who are now traveling in Iceland with their children!) From there we could take the subway wherever, and we also drove around to check out my dad’s childhood neighbourhood (or should I spell it “neighborhood”?)  in Park Slope, quite nearby. 

A few highlights were the general cool vibes of NYC and Brooklyn, the familiarity of always seeing it in movies and shows, the thought that so many artists and characters are from this megalopolis, and that there’s always a slim chance of catching a glimpse of someone famous. We saw the Statue of Liberty – she counts, right? 

We had the best pizza ever, and exquisite bagels and lox cream cheese. We walked a lot, just taking in the density of the city, the diversity of its buildings and its people, the importance of public parks and social spaces. NYC has over eight million residents and even more tourists and travellers at any given time. The stories buzz all around you. No wonder it's a cradle of creativity. 

Last but not least, we popped into Salem, Massachusetts on the way home. I’ve been reading and teaching The Crucible for about 15 years, so it was surreal to be in the town of the witch trials. The Salem Witch Museum does a great job relaying the history and psychology of events of 1692. It was creepy and thought-provoking, with enough kitsch thrown into the kettle to keep it cool.

Greece 2022 – An Awaited Revisit: Elika, Nafplion, and Meteora

 

When we did our RTW trip in 2019, the whole family agreed that Greece was somewhere we’d return as soon as possible, so in the doldrums of February, we bought our plane tickets and started our research, booking AirBnbs in Elika, Nafplion, and Porto Rafti on the way out of Athens. We used booking.com for our accommodation in Meteora, and it worked out perfectly.

Elika was the ideal place to start our vacation. We spent nine days in the seaside village with a handful of great restaurants, one in particular I’d been reminiscing about for three years. Every night we had delicious meals, usually starting around 9pm. A quick list: gemista (stuffed tomatoes and bell peppers), tzatziki, roasted pork, gyros, dolmas (stuffed grape leaves), chicken or pork souvlaki skewers, saganaki (fried cheese), lemony Greek potatoes, calamari, zucchini croquettes, and Greek salads every night, with the signature slice of feta on top – fragrant oregano and good olive oil was all the dressing needed.  Our AirBnb in Elika was a tiny home on a quiet stretch of road with a sandy beach. While the home was humble, it was luxurious to walk the ten seconds from the cottage into the truly Mediterranean blue water. Interlude: I dove in with my swim mask. The water was crystal clear all around me, shimmering blue light filtered in. The beige sand was uncluttered, happy to keep its wavy ridges intact. I swam for a while alone but connected to the world. It was pure tranquility.

A private beach is exquisite, but it’s also fun to secure a couple of lounges under a thatched umbrella for the day. Tortuga Beach was a one-minute drive from our place, and we’d post up, play in the warm water and reeeeeelax. Of course we enjoyed a few treats from the cantina – frappes (iced coffee with foamy milk), chips (Please, Lays, bring us the oregano flavour!) and local beers Alpha and Fix. We ventured to two other beaches: Elafonisos and Plitra, both with beautiful blue vistas, hot white sand, and bathtub-warm water. We spent our days swimming, chatting, reading,and playing Uno. Vacation life. 

We took a day trip to Monemvasia (which we had done in 2019), a spectacular town carved into a mountain-island, an ancient citadel with a panoramic view. We wandered through the quiet town, sparsely inhabited, partly in ruins, explored the fortress, and ended the evening checking out little shops and having another great supper. Like everywhere in Greece, there are always cats nearby ready to take care of any scraps. 

Our next stay was for three days in Nafplion, a small city on the water, still in the Peloponnese. Traveling with Labi, Jill and the girls, we shared a beautiful two story house in the middle of an orange grove. This large, new modern home was beautifully designed, spacious and comfortable, and had a private pool, a must when the weather was always over 30 degrees. 

When we left our luxurious digs, it was to visit fascinating ancient historical sites. We hiked around the citadel of Mycenae, constructed over three thousand years ago, an elaborate fortress with a working water source. Then we checked out the Treasury of Atreus, an ancient architectural feat. It’s a beehive-shaped tomb that was the largest dome in the world for a thousand years. 

The castle of Palimidi looks over the city of Nafplion and we toured it before supper one evening. It was a bit unnerving to be walking around with our kids at such great heights, but the views of the city and ocean were fantastic. It’s interesting to stroll through places with such strange and long histories, and to imagine what life was like when they were inhabited – if these walls could talk. 

The final leg of our Greek journey was to Meteora, which is in central Greece. It was an epic six-hour drive from Nafplion to Meteora, over, around, and through mountains (lots of tunnels). Mike did great driving our rental car. He got pretty smooth at saying “efcharistó” to the many toll booth workers. Very “daxi” of him.

The town of Kalabaka is at the base of unique, massive sandstone rock formations. The road twists and turns up the mountains and there are six byzantine monasteries built into and upon the rocks. We toured the museum sections of several of the monasteries, which remain inhabited by monks or nuns for the last 600 years. The artifacts and paintings were engaging and definitely gave a window into the effect and evolution of Christianity. It was a great place for physical and mental exercise. 

In juxtaposition with the solemn monasteries, we stayed at a family-oriented motel with pools and waterslides. We all had a blast zipping down and floating around. The kids loved their poolside smoothies. In the evenings, we enjoyed the “Feel The Rocks” restaurant vibe so much that we went there twice, and we had a great supper at Taverna Gardenia in Kastraki, the older part of town.

It was a wonderful trip, spending lots of time together as a family, hanging out with friends (Labi, Jill, Alexandra, Olympia, Dave, Sotiria, Kyriakos, and Alexandra!). The beaches, the food, the friendliest of the Greek people, all make it an easy and interesting destination. We will return one day. Resisting referring to Odysseus here is a challenge. YASSAS!

More on Monemvasia (https://www.visitgreece.gr/mainland/peloponnese/monemvasia/) 

More on Elafonisos  https://www.visitgreece.gr/mainland/peloponnese/elafonisos/

More on Meteora