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GREEK ISLANDS – CYCLADES – OCTOBER 2021 – SANTORINI AND NAXOS

SANTORINI ‘Santorini is for the hoi polloi’ says Kevin as he drives us to the airport. ‘Mykonos is for gays.’ We are late at Gatwick, our fault, and delayed even more by a jobsworth pulling out a phial of Dream Satin and admonishing me for not placing it in a plastic bag – this takes fifteen minutes, and then we rush through a chicane of unguents and perfumes and barely get to our Gate in time. Flight, oh fine now, above the clouds, pure and beautiful, and the flare of red red red as the sun goes down, soaking us in last light. At Santorini, officials spot us with Bob limping at the back...
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HADRIANS WALL, NOVEMBER AND MAY 2018

NOVEMBER 2018.  What the guide books don’t say,  the best bits dug from the Wall, like  a beautiful cameo brooch, a sculpture of Mithras slaying the bull – can you see he’s pulling the bull’s mouth open? –  as he creates the world watched by a dog, snake and scorpion, and another one of him surrounded by symbols looking almost like a risen Christ – at in the Great Northern Museum in Newcastle, where there is also a splendid long mock up of the Wall itself.  Mithras was a mysterious god from the east, introduced by Syrian soldiers. Stayed at the Royal Station...
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EGYPT February 2018 – MOSQUES AND MUSEUMS, TEMPLES AND TOMBS

  COPTIC CAIRO Off to the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo, which in etchings appears a village but is now an integral part of this dry dusty flat metropolis bumped by the Turkish Citadel.   It’s in a sumptuous building costing millions, and with a very ecumenical photo of President Sisi, a mullah and an archbishop cheery together at its opening. What’s fascinating here is the link between Pharaonic past and Christian and Muslim futures, quite apart from the exquisite wood carved ceilings and jalousie windows from Coptic palaces (=? So the website says) into the building) to hide those...
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EGYPT, FEBRUARY 2018, CAIRO AND LUXOR

CAIRO AirEgypt to Cairo – all fine except it was Muslim and dry so no chance to down the vino, dreamily floating over the clouds below. Cairo airport at 10pm, get visa, then luggage collection, except as everyone’s vast suitcase popped onto the carrousel, Bob’s did not. Other travellers dispersed, and there was just us and another man minus luggage, and a few weary officials. They were concerned, and pointed us to one desk, which said we should be at another office at the other end of this vast concourse. They searched cubby holes and rooms: nothing. Then an official pointed at the carrousel,...
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GREEK ISLANDS – IKARIA, SYROS then ATHENS.

IKARIA, SYROS, ATHENS IKARIA From Chios, we board the Nissos Rhodos to Ikaria.  Smart, with two flights of escalators.   Off.  The boat trembles outside a minor port off Samos, then we go like a straining animal past sea walls to the dark flecked sea beyond. (I remember Samian ware, figured, dug out of the mud of the Medway all those years ago. It came from here …).  We arrive at the tiny port of Evadilos in Ikaria. Icarus fell into the sea at Ikaria. Ikaria is a blue zone, one of the five places in the world where people live to ninety and beyond.  (Estate agents make use of this fact!). ...
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