Living like a local in Athens

I’ve been thinking this past couple of days that I’ve been getting it all wrong about travelling. The frantic search for the best hotel, the hottest restaurants, the relentless attempt to tick the *must see* boxes. But I’m going to have to admit after two days in Athens I didn’t even make it to the centre.

Instead I let things happen. A conversation with a Greek chef I know, Theodore Kyriakou of The Greek Larder, led to an offer to put me in touch with two winemakers in the surrounding area of Attica, which I’m ashamed to say I didn’t realise was Greece’s most historic wine-producing region.

One - Antonia Papagiannakos of Domaine Papagiannakos - took me to the nearby temple of Artemis at Brauron together with its brilliant museum, an experience I'd never have had if I'd decided to head for the Acropolis. We saw a tiny stone church dedicated to St George being scrupulously scrubbed for Easter then drove down to the unspoilt resort of Porto Rafti to which many Athenians escape for the summer, to sit in a beachside taverna without an English voice within earshot.

Living like a local is not just a question of staying in an airbnb* - though that helps - but adjusting your mindset to a more gradual pace - one where you maybe do one thing a day rather than attempt to fit in six. Discovering things for yourself rather following the herd.

What normally happens if you’re going somewhere? You buy a guidebook, search Google, ask Twitter - you get a list of restaurants that have been written about dozens of times before. But in the case of Greece many people’s favourites turn out to be the local taverna they stumbled across. Such is the Greeks' hospitality you can have a good time more or less wherever you rock up. There are literally hundreds of tavernas of that type in any one of which you might have a decent meal.

The secret of getting the most out of a trip is being prepared to change your plans at short notice. Spending longer in a place if it interests you, leaving if it doesn’t.

It’s easier to say this, admittedly, when you’ve visited a place before or if you’re travelling as a private individual rather than as part of a group - and I know I’m in a privileged position as a journalist but the whole nature of travel writing - 48 hours in so-and-so, 10 places you must see in wherever - telling you what to do every moment of the day lends itself to this idea that you won't enjoy yourself unless you're told where to go and what to do.

Who spends a trip to London visiting the Tower of London and Madame Tussaud’s or Paris going up the Eiffel Tower or Venice going on an overpriced gondola? Even skipping those touristy hotspots we flock to the same areas - that newly re-opened art gallery, that chic neighbourhood with the arty shops.

Can you truly say you’ve got the best out of a city without that kind of experience? I reckon you can and mean to try and do it more often. What about you?

*Oh, and if you're wondering from my previous post what my airbnb was like and why it cost so little the answer is it was great but in a quiet, residential area rather than one with a bustling nightlife. But only 5 minutes from the metro so you could be in the centre of Athens in 15 minutes.

My big Greek adventure

I first went to Greece when I was 17 as a treat for passing my A levels (not with great distinction I have to confess). My mother and I went on a cruise round the islands about which I can’t remember a great deal apart from having a crush on one of the cabin stewards who bore an uncanny resemblance to Sean Connery in his James Bond heyday. And was probably my mother’s age. Nothing came of it I'm sorry to say although mother, of course, was profoundly relieved.

My next visit was even more momentous. It was in September 2001 when I was at Athens airport that I heard that a plane - and then another - had crashed into the twin towers. We spent the next week - as the world did - in a state of shock.

It was on that visit that we visited Kefalonia. I’d been commissioned by Bon Appetit to write a piece about island wines and by Sainsbury’s to write a food and travel feature about the island, inspired by the interest in Captain Corelli’s Mandolin which had just been made into a film. (Aaaah, those were the days of lucrative commissions!)

The charm of Kefalonia

We hung out with the Kosmetatos family who owned the island’s best known winery Gentilini for a couple of days. I remember the breathtaking blue of the sea on island’s most famous beach, Myrtos and Petros diving off the rocks for sea urchins which we ate on the spot and still remain the freshest and best I’ve ever eaten. At the end of a couple of days we’d bonded - as you do - and they urged me to come back sometime for Easter - which they said was as important to the Greeks as Christmas and absolutely the best time of year to visit the island.

I treasured that thought but never got around to it. My late husband Trevor wasn’t much of a one for travelling. Having been brought up in France, like a true Frenchman he could never see the point in going anywhere else. As I travelled a lot it seemed unfair to go somewhere without him when we could travel together. I didn’t even want to - but now … Why not?

I plucked up courage to write to Petros and his wife Marianna. ‘You remember 15 years ago inviting me to come back for Easter? Well could I possibly make it this year?’ Very sweetly they said yes. I booked a plane without a second thought.

Athens' cheap airbnb

As flights to Kefalonia didn’t start until May I needed to fly into Athens so thought I might as well go a couple of days ahead and spend some time in the city first. I trawled airbnb and was amazed to find how cheap rooms were, picking a room in a pretty flower-covered house in the Chilandri district about 15 minutes from the centre for - wait for this - £17 a night. It doesn’t look remotely like a dodgy hostel and has attracted glowing reviews so how come so cheap? I hope to find out.

My plans to spend time in the city have also been hijacked by a couple of winemakers with whom I was put in touch with by Theodore Kyriakou of The Greek Larder who is hosting his own Easter feast this weekend for which there may still be places. Apparently Athens is part of a winemaking region called Attica. Who knew?

So that’s the plan. I’m sitting writing this on an Easyjet plane hoping they haven’t lost my luggage this time as they managed to do for six days on a trip to Galicia last summer.* Press and other work trips apart, it’s the first time I’ve travelled on my own since Trevor died in October and it feels quite strange.

What will I find? Will Greece be traumatised by its economic woes? How will it be coping with the refugee crisis? Hopefully there won’t be an earthquake (always a slight worry - Kefalonia suffered a devastating one back in 1953 and a couple of less severe but significant ones back in 2014) What will Greek Easter be like? Will I be able to stomach (pardon the pun) the entrail soup that is traditionally served at midnight to mark the end of Lent?

Well I hope I’ll find time to tell you. Follow me on Twitter (@winematcher and @food_writer) and Instagram (food_writer) if you’re interested. I might even have a crack at Snapchat. You never know ….

* it did arrive, thankfully.

Photo ©kwasny221 @fotolia.com

The joys of open-top motoring - and headscarves ...

This week I have been mainly driving around the south of England in a large open-top Beemer. No, it’s not our car, we were offered it by the nice people at BMW who obviously got me confused with the Guardian motoring correspondent. But who was I to disillusion them?

The idea was to do an English *ch*mp*gne trip - not that you’re allowed to use the C word - taking in a few nice hotels on the way. (Well you don’t want to park your posh car outside a Travelodge do you?) As the UK’s sparkling wine vineyards extend from Cornwall to Kent that could have taken some time so we decided to concentrate on the English fizz heartland around Hampshire and Sussex.

So what was the car - a BMW series 2 convertible twin turbo for you cognoscenti - like, you’ll want to know? Well, to put it technically, large and fast (3.5 litres is lorra lorra power as the late, much-lamented Cilla Black might have said). We dubbed it Brendan (we name all our cars) after the Liverpool Football Club manager. How could we not - it was red?*

Not having had a new car for years it was also deeply confusing, like putting an Amstrad owner in charge of the latest Mac. We couldn’t for the life of us fathom how to program the satnav which, it turned out, didn’t matter that much as half the wineries we visited were buried deep down country lanes. Fortunately we’d also taken our own satnav, a map and a set of instructions but even that didn’t prevent us getting hopelessly lost around Hambledon (right) and having to ignominiously walk into a small industrial unit to ask our way. The village of Hambledon is currently cut off its most direct point of access but still!

There were some other embarrassing moments when we couldnt lock the car - or thought we couldn’t (it remains unlocked if you stand by it, Mick from BMW had to explain), start it (our suitcase was jamming the roof mechanism) or get it out of park. That resulted in yet another call to the longsuffering Mick who had to get an engineer from BMW to talk us through it. (Key needs to be in car not in husband’s trouser pocket apparently.) This was mainly due to our incompetence though to be fair there is a separate manual devoted to the electronics which probably takes a couple of days to master. It may also not have helped that we were lowering and raising the roof with childish glee at every opportunity, wearing down batteries gaily as we went.

But I’d forgotten the sheer heady pleasure of driving a fast car in the open - not mere driving to get from A to B but the glorious old-fashioned art of motoring. The earthy smell of damp, leafy woods (as you can see (right), it was typically English summer weather) as Brendan soared up hills, hugged corners and nipped round slower cars which obstructed his progress - though we wisely decided not to engage with three utter madmen who were involved in a lethal car chase outside Billingshurst. Blimey, what is Sussex like these days?

I’d also forgotten the immense sartorial appeal of the headscarf, an accessory I’ve been wrongly dismissing as mumsy for years, which not only helps you to arrive at your destination without looking like a demented dish mop but to appear as if you were born to drive a car like this.

Friends of Faceboook, over which I shamelessly plastered images of our trip were full of admiration at our latest acquisition but sadly I had to disillusion them them. Brendan wasn’t ours. So thanks, BMW. I still think you probably got the wrong woman but you made my car-mad husband very happy. It was a blast.

PS More on the wineries we visited, the wines we tasted (and spat out, I assure you), the food we ate and the beds we slept in another time ...

*yes, I know that could have meant we're Man U supporters but how on earth could you think that?