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Keep Calm & Bake for Christmas
Travelling is one of my favorite activities. Baking is another. I generally prefer going on holidays in the summer, for this is the best time to visit the Greek islands and Scandinavia, my favorite holiday destinations. Come December, I tend to have used my annual leave, and I therefore spend Christmas at home. A perfect opportunity to bake. Once I have put the tree up and posted my greeting cards (with Christmas classics playing in the background), I am covered in flour (and not just for the snow effect) whilst my flat smells of all those lovely Christmas scents and spicy aromas: orange, clove, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and the list…
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Chasing the Northern Lights in Tromsø
In order to experience the Northern Lights first hand, I recently traveled to Tromsø. Also known as Aurora Borealis (named after the Roman goddess of dawn, not the Norwegian singer-songwriter), the Northern Lights is a spectacular natural phenomenon observed around the Arctic (the same phenomenon when observed around the Antarctic is called Southern Lights or Aurora Australis). In brief, the auroras are due to the interaction of the solar wind with the Earth’s magnetosphere. Simply put, they are the result of disturbances in the magnetosphere caused by the solar wind. The Northern Lights are visible from Tromsø, as well as other places in Northern Scandinavia, Russia, Canada and Alaska. Thanks…
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Keep Calm and Carry On & Secrets to Serenity
The iconic ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster was originally produced by the British government in 1939 in preparation for World War II. However, it was little known until 2000, when a copy was rediscovered at Barter Books, a second-hand bookshop in the market town of Alnwick, in Northumberland, in North East England. It was not until the late noughties, nevertheless, when the famous phrase printed in sans serif font, in white letters against a red background, and topped with a crown, took the world by storm. Since then, it has been used as the decorative theme for a range of products, from mugs to coasters, and from T-shirts to…
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Music, film & wine: 12 days in California
It all started in September when I went on a musical journey to California to attend the Kaaboo Del Mar festival. This is an annually held festival that takes place in Del Mar, a beach city near San Diego, in southern California. Getting there was easy; from LA, I took the train to San Diego and got off at Solana Beach (the journey took about two hours) where I stayed for the duration of the festival. After the festival, I returned to Los Angeles, and after spending a few days there, I rented a car and went on a road trip to California. My itinerary included Santa Barbara, Big Sur,…
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My California wine-tasting road-trip
I was certainly amused when the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at the Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) asked me if I’d brought any alcohol into the US. Why would I do that, I wondered. I had just flown for 10 hours across the Atlantic and was about to embark on my California wine-tasting road-trip from LA to Santa Barbara and the Central Coast, and from there to Big Sur and San Francisco (with a detour to the Yosemite National Park). I was planning to drive on the Pacific Coast Highway and visit as many vineyards and wineries as I could (the fact that I would be driving was…
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Napa Valley: Wine, food & film
Worldwide famous as a fine wine-producing region, Napa County (not to be confused with Ayia Napa, in Cyprus), along with the neighboring Sonoma County and the perhaps somewhat lesser-known Mendocino County, is part of the so-called Wine Country, in Northern California. Napa County is part of the San Francisco Bay Area, which also includes San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose and the Silicon Valley, Sonoma and other neighboring counties. Home to Michelin-starred restaurants and to the Napa Valley Film Festival taking place every November, Napa County is the perfect destination for foodies and wine fans with a love of the big screen. Even if you visit San Fran at a different…
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Leeds: 9 tips by a (former) local
Leeds. Live it. Love it. This was the slogan of the city of Leeds when I moved there in 2011. I lived in this West Yorkshire city for 6 years. And, boy, I did love it. Leeds, the largest city in Yorkshire, reminds me of my hometown, Thessaloniki, the second-largest city in Greece. In terms of population, they’re both medium-sized cities (the city of Leeds has almost 800,000 inhabitants, whereas the population of the wider metropolitan area exceeds two million). Like Thessaloniki, Leeds has several universities that attract tens of thousands of students each year. Like many other medium-sized cities, it has a fairly compact center that can be walked…
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A cinematic journey to France
Inspired by the BFI London Film Festival I attended in October (it took place from the 2nd to the 13th of October 2019), I embarked on a cinematic journey around Europe. My first stop was the Nordic countries (‘A cinematic journey to the Nordic Countries’). I then continued my journey to East (Estonia, Russia, Poland), Central (Germany, Austria, Belgium) and South Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece). I now continue my cinematic journey to France, a country with a rich cinematic tradition. As both a cinephile and Francophile, I have always been interested in the French cinema, and naturally the French Film Festival UK (due to take place nationwide from 1st November…
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A cinematic journey around Europe
Inspired by the BFI London Film Festival I attended earlier this month (it took place between the 2nd and the 13th of October 2019), I embarked on a cinematic journey around Europe. My first stop was the Nordic countries (‘A cinematic journey to the Nordic Countries’). As well as attending mainstream film festivals, such as the BFI London Film Festival, and the Leeds International Film Festival (due to take place from 6th to 20th November 2019), I also attend lesser-known ones, such as the European Psychoanalytic Film Festival (EPFF). EPFF takes place in London every two years and is due to take place from 31st October to 3rd November 2019. Every…
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A cinematic journey to the Nordic countries
A keen traveler, I am also a music lover, and I particularly enjoy discovering and listening to music from different countries, often in languages I don’t understand. A few months ago, I published the post ‘Beyond Eurovision: A musical journey around Europe’, where I ‘visited’ 22 European countries, listening to some of my favorite musicians from each of these countries. This musical journey was followed by similar ones to Greece, Norway, Iceland, and California. But, I am also a film enthusiast, and as such I enjoy watching films from other countries, not always in English (as long as they have subtitles). To marry my love for cinema with my passion for…