In late October, I went on a little trip to Lake Plastira, in Central Greece. I completely neglected to upload photos because Christmas in the magazine intervened and I had to host a fake Christmas party with all the trimmings (photos of that are coming later on).

The Lake is a place of utter beauty and if you are into that, spirituality too. It’s very hard to escape the spiritual side of nature when you are there. It is so animated, every dewdrop is a whole world. You know me, I love big cities. But I felt so protected there and at times the beauty made me feel awkward and puzzled. Should I take photos, should I hug trees (I didn’t, collective sigh of relief), should I get lost in the forest and never reemerge, should I cry?

I was at a loss, most of the time. The photos have been photoshopped (more of them here). But this was not to make them look better. I did that in order to show the atmosphere and communicate the feelings I had. The camera can never capture what I saw, so, maybe photoshop is of help here. What you see is true. I was there.

This past year I traveled a bit and so now I find myself facing another addiction. The not sitting still one. I keep thinking about the next trip and checking the calendar and my diary and making plans and looking for hotels. They are called withdrawal symptoms.

Planning a trip is so comforting. Leaving, too. Whatever you may be doing, you can switch to “I am leaving in a month” mode, as in: “I am not sure I can attend the conference, I am leaving in a month”.

When you return, everyone is excited to see you and you bring back photos and gifts. And then you plan the next trip and everything is comfortably transient.

Doctor, am I going to be okay?

Song of the day: Pangea by Someone Still Loves you Boris Yeltsin

Siena

Sam Gimignano

Duomo, Florence

Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

Certaldo

Ponte Vecchio, Florence

The lavenders and butterflies outside our door

Siena, Cathedral

Siena

Restaurant in San Gimignano

Bagno Vignoni

Our house

Tuscany does not look like it’s real. It looks like it is painted or handcrafted. The first morning, when I went in the garden and saw the butterflies and the lavenders I thought: "This is photoshopped".  There were bunnies, squirrels and partridges in our garden and as city people we were amazed.

I have seen beautiful landscapes but there, everything is in perfect proportion. The sun is bright but not too bright, the skies are the perfect blue, the hills are not steep nor are they bare, there is always a castle, a church or a farmhouse on top, the cypress trees look like guards, protecting you in the dark. Endless sunflower fields, fragrant olive groves, lavender everywhere, harvest fields filled with hayrolls, the grass smelling so fresh, vineyards everywhere, everything tells you this is the land of abundance.

My Tuscany top 11

The villages: Monteriggioni, Montalcino, Montepulciano, Certaldo, Colle di Val d’ Else, San Gimignano

Siena, the Piazza del Campo

Pienza, one of the most romantic towns ever

Gelato, especially the one in San Gimignano

The cheese, the red wine, the fresh pasta, truffle oil, porcinis  and the thin-crust pizza

The castles, cathedrals and farmhouses

The place we stayed in, the wonderful views from there and the huge garden

The Duomo in Florence: So huge but so divine

Plazza dei Miracoli in Pisa

The Ufizzi: Renaissance art that touches the soul

Leonard Cohen in Lucca. He was the sweetest

What I did not like

Florence: It was too crowded, too dirty, too smelly

The bread in restaurants

The fact that you can’t ask for tap water anywhere.

People were often rude, or rather, blunt.

I am glad to be back. I walked so much I need a vacation to rest from this vacation. I will leave again at the end of the week for southern Greece first and a northern area then. Before that I am going to check all your blogs. When I got back and checked my email and found all your messages and comments I thought "It’s great to be reading nice emails first thing when you return home". I’d like you to feel the same way when you get back from your holidays too.

I’ll be staying near San Gimignano. My mission is to eat as much gellato as possible. I hope I will find the heart to come back. Everybody tells me it’s a difficult place to leave. Expect postcards.

Also: This sums up the re-design of the site for the time being. The fact is I don’t like anything. There is not a single wordpress theme I love. Actually, there is one but I can’t make it behave. If you know code I am willing to pay you in whatever form you want.

I AM GOING TO TUSCANY!

House in Makrinitsa

The cafe

May got off to a bumpy start. The countryside is nice (I went to Makrinitsa, a beautiful village on Mt Pilio to celebrate the coming of May) but not so nice when you have a toothache that could kill ten fat horses and there is not  a pharmacist’s in sight. I had never experienced this kind of pain before. It was a whole new level. I actually wondered if death is underestimated as a cure of pain. At one point I told my son to call his father if he sees me pass out.

Anyway, it was a crappy trip. I am glad to be back and in the dentist’s chair again. Dentists are good. Countryside is bad.

I have nice pictures to show you but not nice feelings to share. Actually, it would be good to stay in bed all day, moaning and pretending the outside world has disappeared in a haze of painkillers and antibiotics. If you have sent me an email, I am going to write soon, because I need some friendship and a shoulder to drool on.

We celebrated Greek Easter on the 27th of April. We mainly eat lots of food somewhere in the country and crack eggs which are mostly red. They symbolize Christ’s blood (I think). Read more about Greek Easter food and the food I found in Nafpaktos here. For new readers there are other Easter posts (from previous years) here.

We stopped at Delphi first. Did you know it’s the centre of the earth? And the Universe? That’s what the ancient world believed. This is the theatre. It’s an amazing place. Truly sacred.

This is the Treasury of the Athenians in Delphi. It was built after 490 B.C. with spoils form the Battle of Marathon.

We spent Easter in Nafpaktos, a beautiful seaside town about 3 hours away from Athens. However, door knobs are scary in Nafpaktos. Maybe they don’t like visitors?

Monastiraki, a small fishing village near Nafpaktos

Nafpaktos, the harbour

The statue of Miguel de Cervantes at the harbour. Cervantes was wounded in the naval Battle of Nafpaktos, serving in the Spanish infantry, on Oct 7 , 1571.

The castle

Castle gate, one of many

Good Friday -a usually solemn affair- in Nafpaktos is even bigger than Easter day. They celebrate with fireworks, they light the sea wall and they hang a cross above the sea which is later set alight..

A lake, a tiny inhabited island in the lake, a fortress, mosques, old churches, nice restaurants, wonderful villages 20 minutes away, this town has everything. It is in the North-West and it is called Ioannina. It’s like Disneyland for grown ups who are interested in history and medieval times. I could live there for a couple of years. We went to see friends -so nice that they gave us their bed and slept on the couch- and it was the most fun I’ve had in a long time. Our friends have a sweet little girl who would comb my hair into pigtails and follow me in the bathroom to look into my make up bag. It was very exciting as I live with males who consider my make up bag a load of junk. And the mushrooms. The place is full of mushrooms and there were tavernas where all the dishes had some kind of mushroom in them. I felt like a princess (although Greece has lots of mushrooms restaurants and especially tavernas don’t use them much).

I was thinking I should start writing here more often and also reading you more often and generally having a better internet schedule. Not because I have to, but because it makes me feel good and creative and more interesting. I collected all my recipes from my old and abandoned food blog here  where I intend to post all the food issues that occupy my mind.  I thought long and hard about why I had neglected my food blog. Especially because I cook all the time and I take pictures of food non-stop too. The part I did not like about the food blog was writing the recipe and mostly, writing quantities and how much of this or that you need (I am lazy). I seldom follow recipes (only when cooking, because sweet things are a different thing), and if I do I do it to deconstruct them. So, no more quantities and detailed recipes from me.

Some great things are going on work-wise, some new opportunities that came unexpectedly and also our deli is going from strength to strength. There was a small mention in a british paper and we had many many orders and were really busy this week. This is why I neglected this place but don’t we all say that? Life gets in the way of the internet but I will not let it. Especially because a big part of my life and work IS the internet at the moment.