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Reflections at the halfway mark

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Yesterday we hit the halfway mark in our trip. For those not aware of our plans or planning, we will be travelling for six months. It is a wonderful experience, but not without its challenges for such a long period.  We had planned the first nine weeks and after that were going to “work it out on the road”. Our first big picture plan had to be adjusted when we learned we were not allowed to take our car into the Balkans. After a day or two trying to find ways around it, we modified our plans. We usually plan about a month ahead, but slowly. This allows us to change our minds on where we should stay, based on the recommendations of friendly waiters….true story!

We spent last evening reflecting on the things we have learned on our trip so far…..

  • Having time provides us with a great opportunity to explore places that are off the usual beaten track and perhaps less well-known. As I write this, we are almost at the end of eight days in the northwest pocket of Greece, high in the mountains. This is an area packed with ancient stone villages, beautiful lakes, steep mountains and gorges. Some of the scenery looks like we could be in any of the mountain villages of Europe, although constant presence of Greek food does remind us where we are. It is not the easiest place to travel to but it has been a wonderful place to visit – with interesting history, beautiful scenery and warm hospitality. This is a different way to travel compared to squeezing a trip into a couple of weeks and we feel very privileged to be able to do it this way.
  • Moving every few days is exhausting. We packed the first couple of months with continuous moving from place to place. Two or three nights in an Airbnb is too short on a consistent basis. We arrive in the afternoon and spend the first afternoon working out our new environment, the second day looking around and then we are off again. We have since slowed down the pace, staying for five nights at Airbnbs, and if we stay somewhere for a shorter period, we have booked hotels. We have also repacked, so we don’t have to access all our bags when we stay in hotels (it’s pretty difficult to travel superlight for a six-month period).
  • The first day at a new Airbnb or village is the hardest. Not without me having had a couple of “moments”, we now know that when we first arrive it is not always as we expected it to be. It might be that we didn’t think about the location well enough, that some things don’t work the way we expect, or just that we may be tired from the travelling to get there. It is usually better by the second day, and we have learned to adapt and find ways to make everywhere work for us.
  • On that note, interpreting Airbnb descriptions (or the absence of a description) is an acquired skill. We look for “fully equipped kitchen” in the comments, air-conditioning throughout, how far it is from where you want to be (or not too close to where you don’t want to be). We check the photos to see what the kitchen is like, is there a couch and, in Italy, is it not right next to the kitchen table. Even then, one can’t always be sure that the three-bedroom, two-bathroom place doesn’t mean that one of the bathrooms is out the back and one must go outside to access it!
Greek coffee & orange cake
Greek frappe and deed cappuccino
Italian espresso, macchiato & sfogliatella (R)
  • Coffee: A “piccolo latte” in Sardinia is a “noisette”. Italian espressos are very short and cheap, a double espresso costs double and a cappuccino at least three times the cost of an espresso. Greek coffee needs a little sugar, and freddo cappuccinos are fabulous, but need stirring before drinking. Coffees in Greece always come with a complimentary biscuit or piece of cake. In both Italy and Greece, coffee comes with a glass of water – perhaps to balance the effect?
  • There is nothing quite like eating fresh fruit, picked off the tree – cherries, figs, kumquats, plums, apricots, oranges, mulberries and red currants have all been sampled. Fresh potatoes, cooked straight after being pulled out of the ground bring a whole new respect for the starchy tuber. And the other local vegetables such as tomatoes, peppers (pointy capsicum), eggplant, onions and garlic sold by the local truck that pulls up on the side of the road, taste magnificent. These fresh fruit and vegetables make dreaming up recipes an easy delight.
  • The European siesta now makes perfect sense. It may have been colder for longer than we expected but summer then started with a bang! By about 2pm it is far too hot to be outdoors. We head inside for a late lunch and then stay inside in air-conditioning until about 7pm when it starts to cool slightly. It is bright until close to 9pm when we realise it might be time to think about dinner. I still haven’t learned to sleep well on a full stomach when we finish dinner after 10.30pm.
  • Food/meals we have discovered we love – 
    • Baked feta
    • Galaktoboureko (Greek custard pie)
    • Sfogliatelle (a pocket of filo pastry best filled with ricotta) – but only on the day they are made
    • Tropean onions – long sweet red onions, amazing cooked with spaghetti or in onion tart, but lovely raw as well
    • Greek Orange cake
    • There is nothing that extra virgin olive oil doesn’t make better
    • Bruschetta with fresh plum tomatoes, basil and EVOO
    • Negroamaro – the red wine grape of Puglia
    • Limoncello Spritz (for Dina anyway)
  • Navigating Italian petrol stations requires patience and a preparedness to accept that what worked at the last place is not likely to work at this place. Having realised that self-serve prices are significantly lower than the serviced pumps, one must make sure to drive next to the correct pump. Then one must understand that if you can get the machine to accept your credit or debit card (not always the case for no apparent reason), it will charge the card €105 no matter how much the petrol costs! I had to have it explained by the lady at the counter (in Italian) that tomorrow I would be charged the amount the petrol costs and then credited the €105. Phew! At the machine, one version asks you to select the pump first and then give your card, another wants the card first and then select the pump. No surprises that not all the machines have an English translation, so I almost paid for someone else’s petrol at one point. Luckily, the kind man realised I was a flailing tourist and cancelled the transaction for me. In retrospect, it made the issue of trying to pay for petrol in Israel with a non-Israeli card not quite as traumatic. Thankfully in Greece we are back to being served at the bowser for the same price and paying the cashier.
  • It is wonderful to not have to set the alarm for 5am, to not have to jump out of bed when one does eventually wake up and quite a shock to the system to have to set the alarm occasionally for an early hike.
  • Perhaps partially because of the pace mentioned in my first point, it took ten weeks for Kevin to stand in the clear water at the beach in Corfu beneath cloudless bright blue skies, turn to me with a smile and say, “it beats working”.  He hasn’t changed his mind yet. 😊

Life in Liapades

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Last year, when talking about this trip, I would say to people: “Our ideal village to stay is one that has two cafes and a bike shop”. And here we are, on the western coast of the island of Corfu, staying in the village of Liapades (pop. 916), which has two cafes and a bike shop. Except that the bike shop rents motorbikes, not bicycles as we had envisaged!

Liapades also has three churches, three minimarkets, three bars, two bakeries, two boat hire companies and a much larger number of family run restaurants or tavernas. It is positioned at the end of a gorgeous bay, with a stone covered beach surrounded by cliffs, with several little beaches, one more beautiful than the next in the coves around the bay and beyond. The nearest beaches are arrived at by walking down a steep path to the water level, allowing for views of the most iridescent turquoise and blue water on the way. Once at the beach, the water is crystal clear and while it becomes very deep very quickly, it appears much shallower as one can see all the way to the sandy bottom just a few metres offshore.

Liapades from above
Liapades Beach
View on the way to the beach

This is a place where the Mediterranean lifestyle and demeanour surrounds you. The first afternoon when we went to the bakery at the end of the lane which leads to our place, the baker had sold out of bread. We made a point of going back the next day in the morning, only to find that he only accepted cash and we didn’t have the €4 our loaf of bread and pastry cost. “Don’t worry”, the baker says. “You can pay tomorrow.” And so we did.

The hosts of our Airbnb, George and Katerina, live in the upstairs of the house we are staying in. They were both there to meet us, having happily agreed to allow us to arrive at 10am as we had caught the overnight ferry from Puglia in Italy. They both work in hospitality, clearly the main industry and employer in the region – she during the day and he does the 4pm to midnight shift. The house is surrounded by fruit trees, and they couldn’t have been more welcoming and generous in providing us with initial provisions and insisting we help ourselves to the fruit at any time. Each day we find fresh produce on our doorstep: lettuce one day, the next day fresh eggs and apricots, then plums and more apricots. We have also enjoyed kumquats, mulberries, figs, cherries and tiny plums from the tree.  George’s parents tend the garden and vegetable patch next door and each day his father greets us with a warm smile and a greeting of “Kalimera” (good morning). Having offered us fresh potatoes three days in a row, he was delighted that we accepted the offer today, foisting on us three times as much as I would have selected for myself. 

I cannot express the delight of the opportunity to prepare food with these fresh ingredients. The potatoes went into a warm potato salad with rocket, parsley, red peppers (the tastiest I have ever eaten) and a pesto mayonnaise dressing. The fresh eggs and apricots became the key ingredients of a twist on a Greek galaktoboureko or custard pie, with orange syrup instead of lemon. The plums, cherries, apricots and more make their way into fruit bowls for breakfast, with real Greek yoghurt on top!

Having taken a lot longer to get warm than we expected (and apparently than everyone in Europe expected), summer has now arrived in full swing. The days here warm up very quickly. I have taken to walking 1.3kms down to the beach, swimming for almost 2kms in the sea and then walking back with Kevin, who in the meantime has run up and through and around the village down to meet me at the beach as I finish my swim. By the time we have enjoyed a leisurely breakfast it is late morning. If we head down to one of the beaches, we can’t stay out for too long. For probably the first time in our lives, we appreciate the necessity of the beach umbrella our hosts insisted us taking to the beach. We might not finish our late lunch until 3pm and by 7pm we are asking each other where the day has gone – even though it is still bright outside. 

So we find ourselves walking out for dinner after 8.30pm, with the sky slowly changing from a pale blue to yellow, orange, pink and then purple before the light eventually disappears at about 9.45pm. On our first night we ventured into the bigger and more touristy village next to us for dinner by the sea, but our more relaxed and authentic meals have been at two of the tavernas in Liapades. One of them faces onto the “main” square up in the old village, made up of the taverna, two bars where many of the old men of the town congregate outside to sit and chat, and a church. 

Evening skies
Liapades village square
An abundance of fresh fruit

The taverna was a family affair. The sons were waiting tables with warm generous smiles, the father was managing the service and mother and daughter were doing the cooking. The food was delicious, the service warm and the turnover of tables substantial as regulars and tourists would wait patiently in the square for a table to become free. Watching life in the village square occur at the same time was certainly part of the fun. 

The other taverna sampled so far is the “Fish Taverna” of the village, once again a family affair. This time the courtyard where we sat was covered in vines and the outlook was through the valley down to the beach, with gorgeous vermillion skies as a backdrop. Here the simple food far exceeded our expectations. Baked feta with tomato and oregano, tzatziki thick with cucumber pieces and rich yoghurt, sea bass grilled to perfection and sardines crisp and juicy at the same time – both accompanied by perfectly boiled potatoes (which probably came from the garden next door) and a very drinkable local rosé wine. We thought we had no space to order dessert, but we were able to make space for the delicious complimentary yoghurt mixed with honey and orange. 

Tomorrow the sun will come up again and beam down its hot and strong rays. We are planning to take a boat tour around this area of coastline and see all the hidden spectacular beaches and then have the boat drop us at one of them for a couple of hours. We are finally leaning into the slower, holiday mode – but how we are managing that process is for another time….

15 June 2025