Corfu is an idyllic Greek island in the Ionian Sea. It’s diverse, picturesque and has beaches that you see in your dream! For years, I have heard recommendations to go there. An excerpt from my travel journal reminded me about our reaction to first arriving there: “My husband was so excited about the Corfu coastline—not realizing what a huge island it is. We are so close to Italy and Albania. You can see Albania on a clear day.
from internet
We drove to Paleokastritsa which I had been reading about. It’s an area with secluded coves and water sports and I knew the guys wanted to scuba dive since they are newly certified in it. My husband loved the countryside—rustic and mountainous and I found it unspoiled and full of flowers, blooms, and foliage…..very lush.” “When we found the Hotel Fiorita, I looked up the steep hill to find a studio apts./villas with white and blue lacquered shutters, doors and trim and the most fuchsia bougainvillea spilling all over the balconies. Tropical plants and bushes landscaped around a tree in a planter box and little purple martins flying under the ceiling of their taverna on the property. Heavenly! ” In Corfu town, we went to the church of St. Spyridon which houses his relics. We happened to arrive right as a christening was happening. In the Greek Orthodox religion, we call it a baptism. What a beautiful church to have a baptism in! How meaningful it will be for that infant to look back on his or her baptismal photos one day and know the significance of this church. The afternoons on the cove were perfect! There was light rainfall which upset me at first but it dried up quickly and the sunshine was a welcome sight. Of course, it’s the rainfall that contributes to the lushness of Corfu!Going into town for dinner was the end to a perfect day. The restaurant we went to, which makes my mouth water just thinking about it, was called Neraida. I believe that means “mermaid.”
waiters smashing plates at NERAIDA
Follow this lesson plan to build trip itineraries with your family:
Purchasing guidebooks and taking numerous photos of each place will help your children remember the landmarks; especially if you immediately make photo albums or photo books and document details. You are creating the memory for your child by having them metacognitively process their experience.
While I wouldn’t recommend only touring museums, castles and cathedrals, I definitely would build them into the itinerary as primary points of interest. A developmentally appropriate itinerary for elementary school aged children would strike a balance between cultural sightseeing of museums and monuments with time spent at the beach, children interactive museums and excursions or (theme) parks.
The latter might even be true for adults! It can be overwhelming to cram in too much intellectual information without a break. You have to give yourself time to process what you’ve visually experienced. Travel can be tiring and stressful if you don’t make time to rehydrate, relax, re-energize. Sometimes long, relaxing lunches can take care of the latter and give you that extra boost of energy to start touring/sightseeing again. We have been part lucky and part motivating for modeling for our sons how to travel energetically and keep up the pace. They never whined, slacked off or had to be coerced into doing something.
I remember when I was a child, I dragged along to things and knew I could get my parents’ or siblings’ attention to give in to me and cater to me. I worked it! But, our kids never tried this and since we never got the cycle started with them, they were troopers from the youngest of ages! It was why we were enthusiastic and willing to go on adventures almost yearly with them.
Of course, it helps to structure the day in a way that accommodates their needs, too. For example, we usually hit the road at 8 am after making sure they had a breakfast of peaches and yogurt and crackers for the car ride. This staved off hunger pains and kept everyone regular. We did heavy sightseeing from 8:00 am.-12:00, had lunch, did something recreational in the afternoon, maybe fit in a siesta with break time for their electronics, swimming, etc. and then hit the town again at nighttime. The biggest meal of the day was at night which is popular in Europe.
Doing your “homework” before a trip to get to know what your itinerary or “lay of the land” will be will help plan ahead. For us, it helped to ask questions/get tips from a similar-sized family who went to Greece a year before us. Smooth sailing!
Part of the “pilgrimage” of taking our children to Greece involved visiting the relatives and connecting with our ancestry. We visited my husband’s relatives in a major city on the mainland and we visited my relatives in my dad’s village on the peninsula of Peloponesus. My maternal ancestors’ island is not as accessible. Everything about the village experience was delightful….but there was one specific day and activity that connected my sons to their ancestry in a somber and powerful way. Just as I did when I was a child, we took our sons to the village cemetery where our ancestors are buried. My husband, sister, and three sons went with a relative of ours to the cemetery on a perfect June day. Our relative brought the necessary accessories for honoring and commemorating the deceased at their tombstones. My sons watched with curiosity at any differences in the way that it’s done in the village. Back home in the states, I take my sons to the cemetery frequently where we visit the tombs of loved ones and light incense as we make the sign of the cross with our censer at each tombstone. The boys noticed that family members in the village keep oil in recycled soda bottles —something they had never seen before as a use for a soda bottle. The purpose for that is to have oil ready to light the candles. According to my father, they may want to light the lanterns if they are there at nighttime. There were many differences about the burial process, too. We learned that three years after the burial, there is an excavation and a service in which the bones are washed. This is done to make more burial space. The family places the exhumed bones in a box. The box is stored in special room room called “osteofylakeio“. “Osteo” is a Greek word for “bones” and “fylakeio”is like a keepsake or storage. A place of safekeeping.
We walked through the cemetery and talked about various ancestors with my sister and relative.It keeps the memory of that person alive. It also adds more to your child’s identity to find out how they are connected to someone’s story or life. My sons grew increasingly attached to the village cemetery and where they fit into the ancestry. They studied the iconography of the village chapel which my family members helped build. To see a tiny chapel like this was even different and significant because we had been in so many massive cathedrals on our European trips.
But this tiny chapel held so much meaning for our sons when they learned and understood its history and ancestral connection. We saw a beautiful tree growing into the window of the chapel. We spoke to a nun whom we’ve known for years. At the end of the cemetery visit, my oldest son heard a bell ringing …steadily. This happened at the moment that we were incensing my grandparents’ graves! He was perplexed by this because we observed the bell tower when we arrived at the cemetery. The rope was tethered to the fence, had not been loose at all and no one was ringing it.
My son ran up to our relative and asked, “How can the bell be ringing?” Our relative whispered back, with no eye contact, “it’s just the wind.” We were not convinced by this because there was no wind! It never happened again while we were at the cemetery–only at that particular moment. My son still recalls this mysterious moment. I will always remember it as the moment I “introduced” my sons to their great-grandparents graves. This day was a good example of how Greece engages your senses and transforms you.Stories like this can be found in the book, A Magic Carpet Ride.
Link to order book. Profits go to various charities.
Greek yogurt has been hugely popular for quite a while now! We hear about it all the time. We see clever commercials about it. We see several brands of Greek yogurt all over the grocery store aisles. Making homemade Greek yogurt is trendy and healthy—but for me, I’ve been eating homemade Greek yogurt for decades! My parents made it frequently along with fresh baked bread and other goodies.
Nowadays, this process has been made simpler by buying yogurt makers…but it’s easy to make good old fashioned homemade yogurt without the gadgets! I had the pleasure of teaching this process to a mother and daughter who used to come to my house for Greek language tutoring. We had so much fun in the kitchen together! They took it one step further and perfected this recipe with their own experimental details—flavors, skim milk, etc.
My favorite recipe is from Food and Wine Magazine.
Morocco is one of my favorite countries. It lingers on my mind weekly. One way to embrace the culture of a country and bring its “flavor” back home, is to integrate the cuisine into your lifestyle! Because our meal in Morocco was such a highlight for our family, I immediately tried to duplicate the dishes back home.
I bought and borrowed cookbooks and best of all, I bought a tagine! A tagine is a North African casserole dish that has two pieces – a bottom “bowl” and a conical shaped lid. Historically, the bottom also had the purpose of a serving dish, which came in handy for nomads.
These can be found at popular kitchen stores. I think I bought my first one at Sur La Table or Kitchen Collection and my second one at Williams Sonoma. Tagines are so easy to use. The food cooks quickly and everything is tender, juicy, flavorful, and healthy! The meat falls off the bone. It seems like a combination of the effects of a pressure cooker and a crock pot. You can use it stove-top or in the oven. They can crack because they are made of clay or ceramic so you have to watch out for this. Ras-al-hanout is a mixture of spices that I mix up on my own and bottle in a cute spice jar to keep handy.
cardamom,
cumin,
clove,
cinnamon,
nutmeg,
mace,
allspice,
dry ginger,
chili peppers,
coriander seed,
peppercorn,
sweet and hot paprika,
fenugreek,
dry turmeric.
(there are various combinations of the ingredients above)
Recommended cookbooks:
“The Food of Morocco” by Paula Wolfert
“Tagines & Couscous: Delicious Recipes for Moroccan one-pot cooking” by Ghillie Basan
“Neeps and Tatties” are the terms for Turnips and Potatoes which is a famous Scottish mashed potatoes dish. In America, we have “tater tots” (potato-er) and in Scotland, they have tatties! We loved neeps and tatties and haggis!
Recipe:
1 lb potatoes (tatties)
1 tablespoon chopped chives
a little garlic
1 lb. turnips (neeps)
1 tablespoon of butter
dash of salt and pepper
Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks or cubes. Boil in lightly salted water. Cook for 20 minutes and drain well.
Peel the turnips and cut into small chunks. Boil and cook for 20 minutes until tender, then drain.
mash the cooked neeps and tatties together in the same bowl .
Vacationing in Greece always offers a treasure chest full of comforts and culinary delights. A day of Greek cuisine on the island of Crete consisted of a variety of mouth watering dishes. An excerpt from my travel journal of Crete in 2009 revealed the following delicious day of delicacies! How’s that for alliteration? 🙂
In Chania, Crete, we ate “Giartoula” at Taman Taverna after seeing the outdoor Maritime Museum and going out on the lookout tower. “Giartoula”–I’m going to take a wild guess here that that means “yogurt sauce” because “giaourtee” in Greek means yogurt.
[One son] ordered rabbit in Mavrodaphne (wine) and it tasted like nutmeg.
{Another son} ordered Giartoula–baby lamb in yogurt sauce, feta and tomato sauce.
{Youngest son] ordered french fries in Cretan goat cheese.
My husband and I split “Taman salad”–slaw, tomatoes, shredded carrots, shredded relish, dill, avocado sauce and walnuts.
This video will show you a similar Lamb in Yogurt recipe. (without the feta and tomato sauce). We have not tried this recipe…just including it for variety.
Later, at the villa, I made us a “pikilia” tray for our happy hour on the balcony.
My Happy Hour Pikilia at a Cretan Villa: toast with herbs, cheese, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, Villa Creta wine and my husband’s frosty mug of Mythos beer. I chopped up some sage, toasted the bread, and fried the Cretan cheese in butter. I squeezed lemon on it, put salt, pepper, oregano, rosemary and wild sage….and olive oil!
from Villa Creta websitefrom Villa Creta websitefrom Villa Creta website
Stories of Greece, (the islands, villages and Athens) and many other countries and cultures (and recipes) can be found in the book, A Magic Carpet Ride by Gina Michalopulos Kingsley Click on this link. Proceeds go to charity. Subscribe to this blog for more travel and recipe updates, too.
Icaria, also spelled Ikaria, is an island in the Aegean sea. It is named after Icarus, the mythological son of Daedalus who built the labyrinth. In an effort to escape King Minos, Icarus’s father made him wings out of feathers and wax in order for Icarus to fly away from Crete. Icarus’s father warned him not to fly too low so that the wings would not get wet from the ocean. He warned him not to fly too high so the sun’s heat wouldn’t melt the wings. Icarus ignored his father’s instructions and advice and he flew too close to the sun, hence, the wax in his wings melted and he fell into the sea. He failed because of hubris. Legend states that Icaria is the spot where Icarus plunged to his death by drowning in the sea. Now, this beautiful island has a reputation for so much more than it’s mythological roots! My enigmatic and uber cool sister visited Icaria to attend a Greek dance seminar. Her training in this craft contributes to her dedication to a Greek dance program she created for our church’s cultural community. I interviewed her about her experience in Icaria.
Why did you choose to visit Icaria?
— I had never been to Icaria and there was a dance seminar that I was interested in attending. I knew nothing about the island except that it is part of the “blue zone”–the 3-4 places in the world where people live the longest. (Okinawa, Sardinia, Icaria–and now Nicoya, Costa Rica has been added to this list).
How would you describe Icaria’s physical features?
–rugged, mountainous, extremely green. I was used to the Cyclades islands so this was very different. It’s rough around the edges but then you suddenly turn a corner and see breathtaking vistas. You see dilapidated things, torn signs, abandoned junk on the side of the road. The villages are different—houses are isolated from each other and not clustered like other villages. Everyone wants to be on the road. Homes are in lots in the middle of trees instead of close together. The island is located near Turkey, southwest of Samos.
Did you find out why the people are so healthy there? why the longevity? What were the meals like?
–not really but I read about it. It’s called the “blue zone”. The best meals were heavy on vegetables and legumes. At the panigiria (festivals), they served goat; boiled goat, roasted goat, or grilled goat.
Describe the panigiria.
–a panigiri (paneeyeree) is a festival. This one started late but didn’t get going until the wee hours and lasted until 6 or 8 a.m. the next morning. It took so long to get to it because of the mountainous road conditions. It took 35 minutes to travel 5 km. People hitchhiked up there; it’s very safe. People drove motorcycles up to it, too. It was attended by young and old. Even 90 years olds were walking up to the panigiri.
–There was a dance where all the people were dancing in the road and when a vehicle came through, the dancers decided when to let the cars through. People lined up on each side of the street because they’ve gone outside of the taverna to dance in the courtyard. The taverna could not accommodate them all. They clapped to the music to see the car through. Then they rejoined hands and formed a circle. The cars honked, waved and some drivers jumped out and danced with us! Most drivers were entertained and joined in on the merriment but a few were disgruntled. (video will be added soon).
Describe the Icariotiko dance. The traditional dance of the island. –
-The Icarioti love their own dance. Children as young as 3 years old know this dance. This one dance can last for 20 minutes according to how long the band wants to play it. The band gages the people to determine the length. There was a real intercommunication between the band and the people.
Describe the people. –Icaria draws poets, writers, artists, musicians and dancers. There were many academians there, a few PhDs in my dance seminar. You don’t travel fast in Icaria; there is no speeding. This might contribute to their “zen” and slow pace of life. (A day in the dance seminar will be featured on a separate post.)
For more information on Greece and other countries, buy the travel book, A Magic Carpet Ride.
My sister attended a Greek dance seminar on the island of Icaria. I describe Icaria on another article posted on this blog. This will be a continuation of the interview I conducted on her experience there.
Cavos Bay Hotel patio
What was the structure of your day like?
–We began with breakfast at the hotel. People from all over the world were at this dance seminar. Lessons started at 10:00 a.m and lasted until 2:30. Then we had a break and resumed at 5:30-8 pm. The program was so well organized!
Who attended?
–There were people there from all over the world; Australians, Europeans, Asia Minor, Chios, etc..
What dances did you learn?
–We learned dances from Samos, Asia Minor, Icariotika and even the Carcilama from Imvros. (Imvros is the island our mother’s parents were from. It’s located in Asia Minor; closer to Turkey than to Greece).
What was your instructor like?
–Christiana Katsarou was the coordinator of this program. She is multilingual, teaches Ancient Greek and also an intensive Greek language immersion course that lasts 1-2 weeks. She had instructors there from Asia Minor, Icaria, Crete, Chios… She also teaches singing.
–There was an Asia Minor dance where we learned how to play hand-held wooden spoons. We danced the Carcilama from Imvros. There was also a song where you played shot glasses (clinking them together with your fingers). On another song, we used finger cymbals.
Would you go back?
–Yes. It was an 8 hour ferry ride from the port of Piraeus to the island but there is also an airport you can fly into.
Where did you stay?
–Cavos Bay Hotel which is a hotel on the beach and we ate our meals outside on the balcony/patio.
The Amber Fort in Jaipur is an incredible place full of history, beauty and Indian customs. The energy from the moment we arrived was contagious. The excitement started with an elephant ride up the hill to the fort. The salesmen chasing us and yelling out prices of their items startled my teenage son but I told him to focus on the view.The tour of the fort was packed with knowledge and details. We were mesmerized with the architecture and the stories of the residents of the fort. We turned a corner and found a delightful duo of snake charmers! …and local ladies in their vibrant attire who loved to pose for pictures.Being at the fort and participating in the customs of the snake charmers and the elephant ride made me feel like we were touching history. The amber tone of the fort had a regal aura to it. photos by Gina Kingsley
more info in the book, A Magic Carpet Ride by Gina Michalopulos Kingsley on Amazon
It’s diverse, picturesque and has beaches that you see in your dream! For years, I have heard recommendations to go there. An excerpt from my travel journal reminded me about our reaction to first arriving there: “My husband was so excited about the Corfu coastline—not realizing what a huge island it is. We are so close to Italy and Albania. You can see Albania on a clear day.
In Corfu town, we went to the church of St. Spyridon which houses his relics. We happened to arrive right as a christening was happening. In the Greek Orthodox religion, we call it a baptism. 
What a beautiful church to have a baptism in! How meaningful it will be for that infant to look back on his or her baptismal photos one day and know the significance of this church. The afternoons on the cove were perfect! There was light rainfall which upset me at first but it dried up quickly and the sunshine was a welcome sight. Of course, it’s the rainfall that contributes to the lushness of Corfu! 
Going into town for dinner was the end to a perfect day. The restaurant we went to, which makes my mouth water just thinking about it, was called Neraida. I believe that means “mermaid.”
