Work Category: Articles

Craggy, arid, isolated, and dramatically beautiful, Folegandros is one of the most remore islands in the Cyclades. Will the arrival of a new, five-star resort tip the balance and change the traditional character of the island, or can Folegandros become a model for more sustainable tourism developments?

In a quiet corner of mainland Greece, a glamorous new resort offers access to extraordinary treasures, both natural and archaeological.

Deep in the southwestern Peloponnese, Greece’s first Mandarin Oriental hotel offers hospitality of the highest calibre, and access to some of the country’s most stunning beaches and mind-blowing ancient ruins.

Surprisingly, after a hiatus of some 25 years, I found the Cycladic island of Anafi to be little changed.  This tiny, mountainous island just south of Santorini clings on to a way of life that has all but disappeared elsewhere in Greece.

Read all about it in my latest story for the FT.

Is Leros the most overlooked of all the Greek islands? Read all about why this lovely Dodecanese island should be on your radar in the latest issue of The Australian’s Travel + Luxury magazine.

With enchanting photos by the always exceptional Thomas Gravanis @storiesbysomeone.

Northern Zakynthos offers quiet hills and golden coves that are as welcoming as the eccentric maitre d’s. Read all about it in my story for Conde Nast Traveller.

A gourmet retreat on the Greek island of Andros offers the chance to meet the island’s chefs, farmers, beekeepers — and its cooking monks.  At Melisses, you could easily drift off the radar and forget about the rest of the island and the rest of the world. But that would mean missing out on some of the most unspoilt beaches, beautiful villages, and unexpected scenery in the Cyclades.

As one of the world’s oldest cities, there’s no surprise at the sheer amount of things to do in Athens – the destination is a master of reinvention.   The Parthenon still dominates the skyline – and will forever be one of the key things to do in Athens – but for most Athenians the antiquities embedded among tightly packed apartment blocks are an afterthought. It’s in the graffitied backstreets and café-lined squares, the factories converted into galleries, bars hidden in arcades, and secret coves for skinny dipping where the heartbeat of Athens is racing. Beyond the classics, these are the best things to do in Athens.

I hadn’t been to Patmos in more than a decade, so my excitement when House and Garden invited me to review a new guesthouse there was tinged with trepidation. Would the Dodecanese island now be overrun with fashionistas, its empty coves lined with designer sunbeds?  Would the sacred island’s peaceful atmosphere be ruined by cruise ships? I needn’t have worried. Off season, Patmos remains as meditatively, austerely beautiful as ever. And Pagostas, a 16th century abbot’s house immaculately restored to its monastic glory, encapsulates the best of Patmos. In October, the summer crowds have vanished, leaving this far-flung island to the locals and the cognoscenti who appreciate Patmos for what it really is: a place of year-round pilgrimage for quiet reflection.

Discover an icon collection in a neoclassical townhouse, contemporary art installations in a converted tobacco factory, the best place for a picnic or a swim,  where to acquire a taste for modern Greek wines, and so much more in this insider guide to Athens in summer 2022.

From lamb chops eaten kerbside by the kilo, to neo-Greek bistros, sizzling yakitori and Levantine street food, Athens is on a culinary roll. These are the places I enjoy eating most in Athens right now — simple, unpretentious, relaxed and always delicious.

They say a crisis is good for creativity, and Athens is a case in point. After a decade of fiscal austerity, political turmoil, and social unrest, a city whose cultural baggage once defined its modern identity is reinventing itself as a 21st-century capital of artistic innovation. This is largely thanks to non-profit foundations such as NEON, established in 2013 by art collector and philanthropist Dimitris Daskalopoulos. NEON’s mission is ambitious: to make contemporary art accessible to everyone with site-specific installations in unexpected venues.

As the driving force behind these urban interventions, Elina Kountouri, director of NEON, knows the city and its flourishing art scene better than anyone. Kountouri shared her Athenian cultural highlights and local secrets with me for Travel + Luxury, The Australian’s lifestyle magazine.

Spanish anchovies, Russian salad, quail à la Ali Pasha, breaded brains, courgette moussaka, artichoke mousseline, meatballs egyptiennes, cod in Hollandaise sauce . . . The menu at Olympos Naoussa in Thessaloniki in the 1970s is a tale of cosmopolitan culinary influences befitting a city that’s always been a confluence of cultures. This cult seaside restaurant has reopened, and is now part of the new ON Residence hotel, the best place to spend a long weekend in this epicurean city.

Read all about how Greece’s second city is becoming a new foodie destination in The Times. Including my favourite places to eat and drink in Thessaloniki.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Travel + Leisure for sending me on a fact-finding mission to find four of the best new(ish) places to stay in Lisbon. Seven years since my last trip, the city of light and seven hills is a LOT more touristy, but perhaps even lovelier than ever. And who can resist a custard tart? My son and I managed to scoff a dozen in each in four days.

“We sat on the terrace under the starry sky and talked about poetry, we drank wine, we swam, we rode donkeys, we played chess — it was like life in a novel,”  the painter Niko Ghika wrote of life on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1930s.

When Ghika returned to Hydra in 1936, after living in Paris for almost 20 years, he set about restoring his ancestral home — a 40-room mansion built in the 18^th century by his seafaring forebears. Ghika’s brilliant coterie soon followed: Patrick and Joan Leigh Fermor, John Craxton, Cartier-Bresson, Walter Gropius, George Seferis, Henry Miller…

By the time Leonard Cohen arrived in 1960, a straggle of nomads with literary and artistic ambitions had settled on the island, forsaking electricity and running water for naked swims, boozy lunches, and creative freedom.

While Hydra still attracts the contemporary art elite, it is no longer affordable for most charismatic dropouts; but the nearby island of Aegina continues to quietly lure artists from Greece and beyond. Whereas Hydra’s paved alleys commemorate naval heroes, on Aegina the streets are named after the artists and writers who adopted this unassuming island only an hour from Athens: Nikos Kazantzakis, Yiannis Moralis, and other leading lights of the so-called ‘1930s generation’. Many of them discovered Aegina because of Nikos Nikolaou, a prolific painter and set designer, as well as a consummate host and inveterate bon viveur.

The charming seaside home on Aegina where Nikolaou spent most of his time from the mid-‘60s until his death in 1986 is now one of the loveliest guesthouses in Greece.

When Marianna Leivaditaki offered to cook me fish soup, I knew it would be good. Marianna is head chef at Morito, one of my favourite restaurants in London. But I didn’t expect  to be eating her silky, briny broth for breakfast, on a green bay wedged between granite cliffs on the western shores of Crete.  We had never met before Marianna picked me up that morning in her brother Andonis’ motorboat…

Western Crete is full of unexpected twists and turns. There’s a surprise around every hairpin bend in the highlands, a wild world apart from the luminous beaches along the coast. And then there’s the food —  reason enough to book a trip, right now.

Just when you think you know Greece, you’ll happen upon another slice of coast, sail to another island, or stumble across yet another one of the best hotels in Greece – and your perceptions are flipped all over again.

These are 10 of my all-time favourite places to stay in Greece, from an art-filled guesthouse in Aegina to palatial pavilions in the Peloponnese.