The Ultimate Trip

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This is Dionysus, a painting on a marble bed in the tomb of Potidia in Macedonia, from around 300BC. It can be seen in the excellent Archaeology Museum in Thessaloniki where I spent the first and last few days of a the final prize-winning trip. It is a fine city, beside a wide blue bay looked down on by the distant snowy Mount Olympus. Its streets are studded with Byzantine churches (fortuitously open on Easter Friday) and sparkling bars that are rammed on Saturday nights by people dressed for a party. The market is the best place to eat and the old port area, Ladadika, where the Hotel Bristol resides, the best spot for a quiet ouzo.

From Thessaloniki I drove some 1200km, first east to Thrace and Xanthi, where, on Easter Sunday, the muezzins called the faithful Pomaks, an island of Muslims in the Greek sea of Orthodoxy. Then back across to the far northeast corner and Lake Prespa, 1,000 metres up, shared with Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Dalmatian pelicans, pygmy cormorants, golden oriols, nightingales and sombre tits were the wildlife performers. A speed boat is the only way to see remote cave churches, and it is possible (but not in the car I hired) to tour the lake through the three countries. I stayed in a pretty mountain village, Aghias Giorghias, which had its own handsome 12th-century church, and the landlord of my taverna was relaxed when I realised I did not have enough cash to pay for my stay – he just gave me his bank details and told me to pay him "sometime".

The only black spot was losing my camera while roaming the hills, hence no pics here (and also discovering on my return home that my annual insurance had expired). But being without a camera was also liberating.

Coming down from the hills I eventuually landed in Sithonia, the middle finger of the Chalkikidi peninsula where Mount Athos hovers. The beachside taverna I fell into at Nikiti was perfect, its beach, as almost everywhere here, empty, unspoiled, and idyllic.

Now I am back, brown, and altogether a much better person for my travels. It was £10,000 very well spent.
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But that isn't quite all I have to say, because during all these travels a number of things have been going over in my mind. This is what I th0ught....