My favourite newsletter of all time is This is True by Randy Cassinham. I found these travel map sites through his newsletter. I think of myself as widely traveled but you can see there are large chunks of the world that I have not been. I have read about them though.

Both Karin and I are inveterate readers of travel adventure. Currently we are jointly reading The Song of Troy by Coleen McCullough and The Happy Isles of Oceania by Paul Theroux.



create your own visited countries map
or vertaling Duits Nederlands

Over the years I have been in quite a few US states, however. This is to the best of my failing memory.



create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

SUBSCRIPTIONS to "This is True" are free at http://www.thisistrue.com


The folks at BlogMad traffic exchange (the one with best ratio) are playing tease with a new traffic building site. Check out eXLinks with this link, please.

My next major project is to update and revitalize our full service Paros website. To that end we asked one of our workshop artists, Carol Schar, to take some photos of Karin and I.






Both of these were taken at our closing night festivities at Eddy's Cooking School. See a recent post for links.












By the way, I am looking for feedback on how to improve our Paros website. What type of information would you most like to see there?










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The new school year started with a teacher's strike that is still ongoing. Below are comments by Jayne of Gadzooks newsletter(she is a Brit married to a Greek with two daughters):

Believe me the Greek primary teachers do not need a pay rise - but rather a kick up the backside!
They are absolutely CRAP at their jobs - useless!
They start 'lessons' at 8.30 and finish at 12.30 with breaks included in this.
The parent is expected then to sit with the kid and help them (and explain) the work they have for homework .... as you can imagine for me, this is really difficult. Mostly, Natalia hasn't got an idea as to what and why she does things. Nats is not a genius but she's not the 'bottom' of the class either! Which makes me wonder exactly what her over made up - thong wearing under white skirts teacher is actually doing during those approx 4 hrs.
I can't stand the way Greek teachers work - Greece is overloaded with evening classes of all kinds - teachers work on the basis that all children pay for evening classes so they teach accordingly - i.e leave the difficult work to the over paid evening schools. Greek kids cannot pass their final exams without the help of these incredibly expensive evening schools. Greek society plays on the one thing that keeps Greek families together ~ The desire to give ALL to your children, as many Greeks suffered even 30 yrs ago and do not want their children to experience the same live as they did. Thus producing spoilt little monsters.
It's not unusual for a family to be paying at least 1,000 euro a month on 2 kids for evening classes. I know for sure there is no way a British family would do this unless they were mega, mega rich! Something is terribly wrong with an education system that relies on evening schools to finish the work for them and even after years of paying huge amounts of money many kids did not even get the pass mark to get into the local 'technical college' never mind university!

Below are links to some of Jayne's sites. Please check them out.

Gadzook's eBay shops: JEWELRY SENT WORLDWIDE
UK: Asimenia_jewels
USA: Asimenia_jewels
JEWELRY STARTING AT 99P 99pjewels
DA' BLING! ~ Iced out jewelry and watches DA' BLING jewelry and Iced out watches!

DHC 6 de HavillandTwin Otter

Latest news from TurkishPress.com:
ATHENS - Greco-Canadian seaplane operator AirSea Lines has won a contract from the Greek government to operate flights to the Cyclades islands and the northern Aegean, the government said on Thursday.


No further details available yet as to which islands will be served. To me, however, anything that opens up access and provides competition to existing airlines and ferries is for the good.

This year tourism was up to Greece but down to Paros. Most people blame the reduced ferry capacity. I add to that the incompetent operation of government controlled Olympic Airlines.

For more on how to get to Greece and Paros see our full service Paros website.

In my last post two weeks ago I was being facetious about our hectic life style. So I got my comeuppance. Since then I have been working long, hard days with our Art Workshops--before, during and after 8 days of escorting 13 painters in Athens and on Paros.

Fortunately they all had a very good time while enhancing their painting abilities. The organizational glitches and problems that inevitably arise seem to have been worked through O.K.. Best of all, our closing night festivities were a highlight that left everybody vowing to come back next year. Thanks for that to Eddy and Louise--check out their cooking school.

So next year we are looking at combining painting and cooking into one workshop. If you are interested, send me your e-mail to receive information after we develop it.

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Yesterday Karin and I took a Sunday afternoon break from our hectic schedules--haha--for an adventurous journey on Antiparos. The maps showed a cove with a beach that Karin wanted to see. My powers of description are not up to re-creating the scene.

We headed past the tourist areas along the coast, through the farming areas on the high ground and then up a series of rugged hills about 3 km to the summit. The view was beautiful back over our familiar side of the island and on to our own Paros neighborhood. In the other direction, West, were more rugged hills and a downhill so steep we could not see the coast line, just the sea beyond. We headed down with our brakes on the whole way another 2-3 km into a narrow little gorge that opened up into a beautiful fiord type cove and sandy beach. Karin said it was sinister because she is used to wide open vistas.

In the small flat area behind the beach there were two houses; one boarded up and no one visible at the other. So we took the opportunity for our once-a-year skinny-dipping. Karin stayed close to the beach because of things growing in the water but I snorkeled on out, my white butt flashing on the water's surface. The undersea was quite interesting because away from the sandy shallows the cove bottom was like a grassy mountain meadow with occasional rock outcroppings. All the normal sea life except one thing I had not seen here before was a crab so well camouflaged with plants growing on his back that had he not moved I would not have seen him.

After the swim we were heading back up the steep road, easier going up then down, and back into town for some food and drink. I wanted to try a taverna that we had always noticed as being busy but had never stopped at. Some guests had told us they had enjoyed it this year. We now have a new discovery, Giorgos' Taverna for good food, good prices. You sit in Market Street for up close people watching.

But as we were walking back to catch the ferry home I met Don Hansen, a travel advisor for Fodor's, Thorntree and other internet travel forums. His advice: don't tell anyone how good Antiparos is. It is already growing too fast.

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