Off the beaten track in Greece prices and purchases are much cheaper - but with limited choice and simple living.
Fly to the south west, the raggedy round lump slightly nearer to London than Athens. Hire a Hertz car.
A four star hotel in Olympia (with half board!) under £100.
Cheap wine. Delicious giant tomatoes and melons more flavourful than those in supermarkets in London.
Nuts. Did I mention nuts? Almonds and walnuts.
At the breakfast buffet the hotel at Olympia had a big bowl of nuts. Soft nuts. Almonds. Maybe the ones from UK are dried - you fear they will crack your teeth. The nuts at the hotel buffet were delicious, 'cracked open in your mouth like popcorn'.
It was a mistake not to have brought back some nuts as stocks and souvenirs and gifts. But we brought back Greek wines at lower prices than in the overseas supermarkets.
Airport Shopping
The little local airport, Kalamata, is relatively small and not the supermarket size shops you get at airports in a capital city.
What about the Greek equivalent of the brand name which has become a generic terms in England, Turkish Delight? We used to buy it from the Greek Cyprus shops. Known as Loukoume. So here's a list for the next trip, what to try, buy and/or bring back:
What we did buy was wine. Wine, such as Vin Doux, small berried Muscat from Samos. The island of Samos is the only place outside France allowed to use certain terms. Vin Doux is French for sweet wine.
Vin doux naturel which you would see in France is a fairly common label wording. But in this wine from Greece extra alcohol is added to stop the fermentation leaving residual unconverted sugar making a sweet wine.
Yeast can't survive in high alcohol so adding alcohol stops the fermentation. So this bottle is labelled Vin de Liqueur. That would have been low alcohol but because you have added alcohol, it's high alcohol; the bottle says15%!
You can buy a half bottle in the UK. My family bought a full size bottle from Kalamata airport duty free.
Car hire
A Hertz hire car for a week cost 175 euros, about £20 a day.
"The Greeks are so friendly," recalls one of the group. A smiling brolly dolly rushed out from the Hertz office with a giant umbrella to check the mileage on return of the hire car and waited while everything was unloaded. "It was like being in a five star hotel, like the Ritz."
Read my earlier post on learning the Greek alphabet.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
Fly to the south west, the raggedy round lump slightly nearer to London than Athens. Hire a Hertz car.
A four star hotel in Olympia (with half board!) under £100.
Cheap wine. Delicious giant tomatoes and melons more flavourful than those in supermarkets in London.
Nuts. Did I mention nuts? Almonds and walnuts.
At the breakfast buffet the hotel at Olympia had a big bowl of nuts. Soft nuts. Almonds. Maybe the ones from UK are dried - you fear they will crack your teeth. The nuts at the hotel buffet were delicious, 'cracked open in your mouth like popcorn'.
It was a mistake not to have brought back some nuts as stocks and souvenirs and gifts. But we brought back Greek wines at lower prices than in the overseas supermarkets.
Airport Shopping
The little local airport, Kalamata, is relatively small and not the supermarket size shops you get at airports in a capital city.
What about the Greek equivalent of the brand name which has become a generic terms in England, Turkish Delight? We used to buy it from the Greek Cyprus shops. Known as Loukoume. So here's a list for the next trip, what to try, buy and/or bring back:
Photo by Angela Lansbury
WinesWhat we did buy was wine. Wine, such as Vin Doux, small berried Muscat from Samos. The island of Samos is the only place outside France allowed to use certain terms. Vin Doux is French for sweet wine.
Vin doux naturel which you would see in France is a fairly common label wording. But in this wine from Greece extra alcohol is added to stop the fermentation leaving residual unconverted sugar making a sweet wine.
Yeast can't survive in high alcohol so adding alcohol stops the fermentation. So this bottle is labelled Vin de Liqueur. That would have been low alcohol but because you have added alcohol, it's high alcohol; the bottle says15%!
You can buy a half bottle in the UK. My family bought a full size bottle from Kalamata airport duty free.
Car hire
A Hertz hire car for a week cost 175 euros, about £20 a day.
"The Greeks are so friendly," recalls one of the group. A smiling brolly dolly rushed out from the Hertz office with a giant umbrella to check the mileage on return of the hire car and waited while everything was unloaded. "It was like being in a five star hotel, like the Ritz."
Read my earlier post on learning the Greek alphabet.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer.
