Pamela Heywood

Back in around 1985, I visited Paris and took a trip to the Château de Chantilly. It was a trip I would never forget.

Read the article about my trip to Chantilly »

As St. Paul’s was my mum’s parish church when she was growing up, she was actually confirmed in the cathederal. And dead proud of that she is too. Justly.

Yup, seen the Crown Jewels, but the rotters wouldn’t let me take any home! :)

But I certainly have been to the QE. I was born there!

Yeah, it’s worth visiting if you want to do cross-channel shopping. Didn’t strike me as a place I’d want to hang around in though.

When you live in an exotic location, such as the sub-tropical Canary Islands – as I have done since 1992 – it requires conscious thought and effort not to allow the magnificent to become the mundane through over familiarity.

After all, what would one have left to look forward to otherwise?

Much like a marriage, where you have to decide to make the effort to keep the first feelings of love alive for many years and, funnily enough, the Canary Islands are still the favorite place of the mainland Spanish for their Luna de Miel – Honeymoon.

So far I have succeeded in remaining daily awe inspired by the islands’ charms and scenery and, in all those years plus working for local newspapers, I have picked up a fascinating array of facts and figures about them and visited four of the seven.

Yes, each one has its own, distinct, flavour and culture.

Much of what I know, you will not find in the usual brochures and tourist guides, so I’m always willing to help those who would wish to discover and enjoy the real nature of the islands.

The Empire State Building has its own website, located at http://www.esbnyc.com

Covers business and space rental, but also tourism issues and offers online postcards.

As TrevorFSmith has already pointed out, the people of Sifnos are so friendly that a common reaction is for visitors to not want to leave. If I hadn’t been itching to explore Athens too, when I was in Sifnos exactly 20 years ago, we wouldn’t have eventually left either and, I have always intended to go back one day.

Maybe not just for a holiday. I wouldn’t mind living there.

We were island-hopping on the ferries with no particular plan, but a vague idea of going to one of the next islands. We arrived in the port of Kamares on route, saw the huge curve of beach and decided, “That looks nice, let’s get off here”.

What made the island for me was the Boulis family. When we’d arrived, a little girl met us off the ferry with the usual greeting of “You want a room?” We did and she took us to the family home just up the road out of Kamares going towards Apollonia, on the right, to which had been added some rooms to rent. These purpose-built rooms were clean, fresh and – at that time, about 3 quid a night – with twin bedroom, bathroom and veranda and each with it’s own outside door.

We were given to understand that the same family who owned the restaurant we used for breakfast, lunch and dinner, also owned the house in which we were staying. This was when Boulis Taverna was on the waterfront at Kamares.

Actually, we had to stop going to the waterfront for breakfast after a swarm of wasps had taken a liking to my jam. I’d tried running up and down the street faster than they could fly, but that hadn’t worked. So, we bought bread in the bakery, butter and jam in the supermarket and took breakfast back to the room.

That was the point I discovered a) No knife b) No one at home who speaks English.

So out came the phrase book and I made an attempt at copying out what I HOPED was “Please can you lend me a knife?” in Greek. And it can’t have been far off, because I got a laugh and a knife to spread my butter and jam with!

Meanwhile, back at the Taverna for main meals. Because it was small and family and because I can’t abide doing the “Oy, you!” business to call a waiter, since I had heard ours called Yannis (as it turns out, by his father), I did likewise.

No big deal, it just seemed more courteous.

Well, these are people upon whom such small courtesies are not lost and Yannis insisted that my partner and I accept a drink on the house as a gesture of thanks. And, so began a week or so of us tripping over ourselves to take our custom back to the same establishment daily and them treating us like right royal visitors!

We had actually intended to hop on and see other islands, but ended up staying in Sifnos for the duration of our holiday, bar one day in which to see Athens.

Probably the best known and certainly the best content site on Greece is Matt Barrett’s Greek Travel, which I found a couple of years ago via a link on the BBC website. He has been traveling to or living in Greece since 1968 and Sifnos is his own favorite. It is through Matt’s site that I know that Giorgos Boulis Taverna has moved to larger premises, pretty much where the house we stayed in was.

It is listed on his page for Sifnos restaurants, along with the comment:

“Yannis, who is my favorite of the brothers waits tables and is the grill man.”

Naturally, I had to write to Matt and confirm a few details, but I knew this was “our Yannis” (who had indeed worked the grill) and I have to say that it gives me a really warm feeling to know that the friendliness remains and that the family seems to be doing well with the restaurant, the bakery and the sweet and pastry shop …

Metroblogging Birmingham remind us that the Handsworth Riots took place 20 years ago, in September 1985 and point to this BBC Community Feature, Handsworth Riots – Twenty years on. I had only moved from Handsworth a few months prior and caught the news of the riots while I was in Greece.

Good greif, this brings back memories … I think it was 1979 (coulda been 1879!) when I went to Knebworth festival – Led Zepplin topped the bill. What I do remember most of all was the Knebworth dust that never washed out of anything and the open-plan wooden toilets over a pit with half a sack for a door … and the SMELL. Still an experience not to be missed, mind you.