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Posted by Barbara Rogers Sep 30, 2006 |
OK, you’ve asked for Greece and here it is. After watching the poll votes mount up, I called in my guru of things Greek, Phyllis W. Zeno. After I whined a little and told her how little I knew about her beloved Greece, she agreed to cover that Aegean paradise for this page.
Phyllis is no stranger to travel writing. She started her travel career escorting AAA tour groups all over the world. This led to her starting the AAA travel magazine, Going Places, which she headed for 20 years. She became enamored with Greece, and after yearly trips there secured an unfurnished house in an olive grove on the island of Paros. Over the years she had furniture built to her taste – all in pine, stained cobalt blue, and she managed to spend a month every year there. On retiring from AAA, she became editor of Marco Polo Travel Magazine and held that position until very recently. Now she is spending more time in Greece and writing travel articles rather than editing other people’s.
I’ll let her speak for herself:
If you’re female, 18 to 80 (and a few years past that) and haven’t yet seen the movie Shirley Valentine, you haven’t begun to live. I saw it, hopped a plane to Greece, boarded a ship to Mykonos, rented an apartment there, and take it from me, I had the most romantic week of my life. And if you’re male, you could probably pick up a tip or two as well.
I’m not going to bore you with all the intimate details. I will tell you there is nothing more sensuous than sitting in a waterfront taverna at sunset, watching the giant red globe of a sun dipping into the blue Aegean while Ravel’s Bolero is reaching its climax in the background. (Not Greek music, by any means, but the throbbing passion that expresses Greece and is universally played in tavernas throughout the islands.
There’s so much more I could tell you, but not today. Come back again, and I’ll tell you why the natives on Mykonos are singing "I see London, I see France…”
After you have read a few of Phyllis’s tales I know you’ll join me in welcoming her to Southern Europe at Suite101.