All posts filed under: Travelling

A Gourmand’s Guide to Thessaloniki-Part 1

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My love affair with Thessaloniki started a long time ago, in my late teens. During my last summer holidays in secondary school I had the opportunity to spend a week in a youth camp near Thessaloniki. Funnily enough, the camp was close to Perea, the small town where Alex and I decided to set home years later! That first time, I wasn’t exposed to the Greek culture much. The camp we were in was an international Christian camp and English was spoken more than Greek. But at the end of the week, that Sunday, our small group was invited to a Greek Orthodox assembly and that is there I met for the first time what is described at typical Thessalonians, warm, genuine and very hospitable people who are still my friends, even after all these years! The draw was so strong that when I was doing my master’s degree in Romania and was offered an Erasmus scholarship, I immediately decided to go for Thessaloniki. I spent four and a half months then learning a bit …

Living la vita bella

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We have been living what for most people in cold countries is perceived as “the dream” for three years. Slightly by accident, as most things happen with us, three and a half years ago, after an unsuccessful  stint of trying to live in Greece, we decided to return back to Northern Ireland. But not before we made the decision that we liked Greece as a holiday location and we secured a place where we could return every year. How were we able to do that? We were “lucky”, as the financial crisis had already hit the country and the rental properties were hard to let out and, in consequence, much cheaper than they had been. We moved our furniture from the house from which we had tried to made a home into a much smaller and cosier apartment in the vicinity and locked it for the next 9 months. At 350 euro per month (approximately £250), we realised that it was quite the intelligent solution for making our dream of hot summers possible. According to …

Visiting Istanbul…by mistake!

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As you know from my last post, we have been travelling within Greece in the last weeks and were meant to be back to Thessaloniki, where we have our summer base, yesterday. But as life has it, I am writing this post from a sunny hotel lounge in…Istanbul! Let me tell you how we got here. Yesterday, on our way back to the airport, we had a very near car crash. A crash which would most likely have been fatal for all of us, had it had happened. We then proceeded to return our rental car to Goldcar Rental in Koropi. We had experienced issues with them when we had picked up the car and we allowed half an hour to return the car this time. Foolish miscalculation! Their ATM wasn’t working and after FOUR(!!!) unsuccessful attempts to return our deposit, we knew we were very close to missing our flight back to Thessaloniki. Which we did… We sat there, shell-shocked after the near-crash,  furious following the car rental mishaps (which, from the sound of …

Stunning Andros Island

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We have been in Greece for over two weeks now and have done some serious travelling so far. We are based in Perea, near Thessaloniki, where we rent a small apartment all year round. I am planning on writing a blog post on how this is possible, to have a holiday home in a warm, Mediterranean climate, without necessarily paying top pound for your holidays. But today, I will introduce you to the island of Andros, one of the beautiful Cycladic islands but less known than Mykonos, the over-touristy and loud one! Andros, with a rich history and known in the olden days as Micra Anglia(Little England), due to its cosmopolitan and cultured atmosphere, can easily be reached by ferry boat from the port of Rafina, in Athens. We had a pleasant, less than two hours ride and arrived here mid-morning. We had rented a car in Athens as we wanted to have flexibility of transportation in the capital so our ferry boat journey in, with the car and three passengers, was 82 euro. The …

BritMums Live 2015

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This was the first year I attended BritMums Live and I am so glad I did! It took me over a week to condense down ALL the things I had learned, experienced and enjoyed but finally, here is my synopsis of two wonderful and very insightful days. Let me start by saying that I went to London with no expectations as this proved to be the best policy I could have adopted. The bloggers’ conference delivered over and beyond my dreams but IF I had approached it with expectations of possible sponsorships for next year, of big brand giveaways or the like, I think I would have let myself down. Saying that, BritMums Live 2015 proved to be a truly inspirational place to be, with sessions that inspired me and, dare I say, shaped the destiny of my future in blogging. I met and listened to strong women who through the power of their words and utilising the strength of sisterhood, have been reshaping and molding our worldview on important subjects such as disability(the beautiful …