“He started collecting all the paperwork, voluminous, even though no house had ever been built there, and had almost completed the process when, two days before the deal was to be signed, one…

“Your very vivid description of the house last week reminded me again why I  NEVER wanted to own a house in the country (although I am very happy to have relatives and friends who…

“Not long ago, we went to a christening in a sweet little church just outside Athens. The ceremony unfolded the way it’s meant to: the priest was benignly pious, the baby howled when…

“I’m writing just after the last weekend of Carnival in Greece, which comes to a close not with an Ash Wednesday but with a Clean Monday. This gives Greeks three days on which…

“It was then I began to feel like Rip Van Winkle. Nothing in our old neighborhood bears any resemblance to the charming quarter of only 20 years ago. When I first arrived, the…

“Even though I majored in English Literature in college, I was never fond of Ezra Pound’s poetry (or politics). Even though T. S. Eliot dedicated ‘The Waste Land’ to him, calling him il…

Eating Well Is The Best Revenge By Diana Farr Louis The iconic Greek family at their dinner table. “When I was young, growing up on Long Island, my father used to bring home…

“This column, first published last May, was the result of several months spent exploring The Big Olive for a new book, 111 Places in Athens That You Shouldn’t Miss. I intended it as…

“The summer’s unseasonal storms, which did more harm than good, followed a rainless winter and spring. Even as early as mid-June, not long after we arrived to stay, locals were telling dire tales…

“Our hostess explains, laughing, that the name of this estate/vineyard in southern Evia probably means Mount of Leaves, from the Italian foglie, but that it could just as easily be Monto Folly or Mount…