Sunday brunch is catching on quickly in the Athenian Riviera with more and more restaurants offering a delicious brunch menu. Passion For Greece heads out to get a taste of the popular tradition and explores Vouliagmeni with friends. They dine in at Somewhere Vouliagmeni. Here's what they think!

Somewhere hotel brand opened its new property in the Athenian Riviera during the summer of 2016. On a warm summer evening, together with my fellow travel bloggers of Travel Bloggers Greece we were invited to savour the summer menu at the hotel’s bistro Lutetia.

 

Included on the menu were mini burgers, haloumi, beef steak, leek pies, tarts, and plenty more.

The buffet features a selection of freshly baked croissants and pastries. Do try the crusty apple tarts, they are simply delicious.

Address: Dios ke Agiou Panteleimonos

Telephone: 210 967 0000

Sunday Brunch Hours: From 08:00 until 16:00.

To read this article in full, please visit: Passion For Greece

Award-winning Executive Chef Sotiris Evaggelou and his highly experienced team collected two Golden Chef’s Hat awards for the Hotel Grande Bretagne’s GB Roof Garden restaurant and the King George Hotel’s Tudor Hall restaurant.

The GB Roof Garden Restaurant, under the responsibility of Chef de Cuisine Asterios Koustoudis, received a Golden Chef’s Hat award for Modern International Cuisine.

The Tudor Hall restaurant, under the responsibility of Chef de Cuisine Alexandros Koskinas, scooped up a Golden Chef’s Hat award for its Greek Cuisine menu.

Since 1992, the Golden Chef’s Hat Awards are given to the best restaurants in Greece and organized by Athinorama magazine/city guide and Alpha Guide.

To read this article in full, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

The lights of Greek tourism, culture and gastronomy will flash in the heart of Manhattan, New York, USA in May 2017 for the highly anticipated first exhibition 'Greek Panorama!'

The first 'Greek Panorama' exhibition focused on Tourism, Culture and Gastronomy exclusively for Greece is organized by Hellas North American Events Inc. in collaboration with the company North Events and will be held in the iconic Grand Central Terminal Station, which is one of the most important historic buildings of Manhattan, in the city center, on 11-13 May 2017.

It is the first time that such a dynamic and integrated organized promotion and advertisement action for Greece takes place in this area, at a spot where over 750,000 daily residents, workers and foreign visitors of New York pass through!

With three American companies flying directly to Athens and the daily flight of Emirates, all year round, the exhibition steps forward to bring Greece closer to the American traveling audience and America, an audience that has doubled its arrivals in our country within the recent years.

The exhibition will take place at the Vanderbilt Hall of Grand Central Terminal (42nd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue junction) and will include presentations for each tourist destination in Greece and the exposure of sectors such as luxury tourism, Greek gastronomy, real estate, shopping, yachting & cruises etc.

On Friday, May 12, 2017 and Saturday, May 13, 2017, the exhibition will be open to the public for free.

The opening of the exhibition is scheduled for Thursday, May 11, 2017, which will be dedicated exclusively to professionals from the US and the Greek market with b2b meetings at a central hotel in New York, with the aim of cultivating professional relationships and networking of both sides. Key members of the US tourism market will be in contact with representatives of Greek tourism.

Similarly, in the evening of the same day professionals and exhibitors will have the opportunity to attend the official dinner of the 'Greek Panorama' with guest representatives from Greek and American tourism market, as well as numerous journalists and participants.

'Greek Panorama' exhibition is organized with the support of the main tourism operators in Greece and abroad.

The Greek community stands once again, on the side of this important initiative, as well as the entire Greek American community. Great personalities will be present in the exhibition while many surprises should also be expected for the participants.

One of them is the interview of the –maybe- top Greek basketball player, in the new Greek American magazine Hellas Blu, which will be released just before the opening of the exhibition. The first festive edition will have some additional surprises such as the famous ultramarathon Konstantinos (Dean) Karnazes.

The magazine will be published three times a year and will be distributed at key points and specially selected recipients while its content will be exclusively dedicated to Greece. It will include among others, extensive special editions focused on selected destinations in Greece, interviews with key persons of the Greek American community and distinguished Greeks and Americans from the political, business, sports and artistic world, columns devoted to gastronomy, culture and specific forms of tourism, as well as news, proposals and useful information about Greece, its tourism, services, products, events, etc.

'Greek Panorama' exhibition and its parallel events are one of the main axes of the strategy of Hellas North American Events Inc. for the Northern American market as the plan designed includes actions and respective initiatives throughout the year.

It should be emphasized that North Events organizes with great success the 'Grecka Panorama' tourism exhibition in Poland and the unique tourism exhibition 'Grekland Panorama' in Sweden.

Please visit Greek Panorama for more information.

Susan from Greeker than the Greeks celebrates 40 years of living in Greece by sharing 40 things she as learned from the Greeks! Forty years ago, Susan left England on February 5th in 1977 to marry her love and start a new life. Here are 40 things Susan has learned from living in Greece.

Ellinopoula.com is a web-based platform catering to the needs of children and parents of the Greek diaspora, especially focused on building and maintaining Greek language ability through entertainment and other methods.

Interview with Anna, who runs Ellinopoula. By Michael Klioumis.

Michael: User experience both for kids and parents is characteristically enhanced, is this a part of a bigger strategy?

Anna: Yes, our strategy is simple: we want to help every child learn Greek. Learning any foreign language is hard and it requires a lot of commitment both from the parent and from the child. We want to make this effort easier. We believe that Learning Greek is very important both as a developmental tool (children do much better in life when they learn a second language and Greek in particular) but also for patriotic and emotional reasons. Our culture is very rich and part of that culture is the language.

Michael: In what ways would you say the new platform of ellinopoula.com is ahead of competition?

Anna: Actually I do not think there is really a serious competition to my knowledge. There is no other site in Greek that has the depth and breadth of our site one that includes so many different types of interactive activities and videos, games quizzes etc.. We know that some people get onto our site and copy some of our content but they cannot catch up or compete with us because each day our groups of educators, illustrators and designers come up with all kinds of new stuff.

To read this article in full, please visit: Greek TV

Three Greek beaches are among the top 20 in the world, according to TripAdvisor’s 2017 Travellers’ Choice Awards. Elafonisi in Chania, Crete comes in 9th in the top ten list globally, while it is 2nd best in Europe. Five Greek beaches are included in the best 20 European beaches for 2017. Balos lake, Kleftiko beach, St. Pavlos beach in Lindos, and Simos beach also made the list!

To read this article in full, please visit: Protothema

 

To view the Top 25 Beaches of Europe, please visit: TripAdvisor

 

Serves: 6

 

• 4 eggs, separated (whites in small bowl and yolks in medium bowl)
• ½ cup sugar
• ¾ cup ground skinless almond*
• ¾ cup ground biscotti
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• 1 ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
  

• ½ cup water
• ½ cup sugar
• 1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice
  

To view this recipe in full, please visit: Lemon & Olives

Qatar Airways has launched new daily flights to and from Auckland, New Zealand. The first flight took place on February 6th, 2017 and was the world’s longest commercial flight, taking 17 hours and 30 minutes.

The new service will give passengers from New Zealand the opportunity to travel to the more than 150 destinations on the airline’s global network via its hub, Hamad International Airport, in Doha.

Other new destination launches planned by the airline for 2017/18 including Yanbu and Tabuk in Saudi Arabia; Dublin in the Republic of Ireland; Nice in France; Skopje, FYROM; Chiang Mai in the North of Thailand; Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia Herzegovina; Libreville, Gabon; Douala, Cameroon; Rio de Janeiro in Brazil; Santiago, Chile; Canberra, Australia; Medan, Indonesia; and Las Vegas, U.S.

To read this article in full, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

Athens will spring to life on March 19 when thousands of amateur and professional runners test their mettle at the 6th Athens Half Marathon, co-organized annually by the Hellenic Athletics Federation (SEGAS) and the City of Athens. Organizers are already expecting the numbers this year to break all records with registrations set to reach some 21,000.

Organized for the first time in 2012, organizers aim to turn the Athens Half Marathon into a global, unique sport cultural and entertaining running event and attract visitors from Europe and the rest of the world to participate and also experience Greece’s cuisine, sun, sea and the history and life of Athens.

All races start and finish in the heart of Athens, at Syntagma Square, in front of the Greek Parliament, running different courses in the historic city centre and passing by the main attractions. Runners can register online until March 3rd.

 

 

To read this article in full, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

Athens 2017 - The final countdown for the 1st international golf tournament Messinia Pro-Am taking place in Costa Navarino has already begun!

 

The Westin Resort Costa Navarino is ready to open again, welcoming the new tourism season and the top professional and amateur golfers globally!

Within the last months, the interest of the teams for the tournament peaked. 6 remaining places are now open before the final completion of all the teams!

Messinia Pro-Am 2017 is an occasion to highlight the hospitality element, for which Messinia is famous from the Homeric years! 30 teams, each consisting of one professional and three amateurs will compete on February 21-24, 2017 in the 1st Messinia Pro-Am for the first place! Among them many distinguished international professional athletes will play, such as the Dutch Ralph Miller (who recently won the PGA's of Europe Individual Championship), the Portuguese Hugo Santos (3 times champion of the PGA Professional Championship of Europe), the Italian Emanuele Canonica (Champion of European Tour, 2005), the British, Graham Fox (No. 2 in the ranking of the PGA in Scotland), and the famous Italian Lorenzo Gagli (featured in the top 150 of the Official World Golf Ranking), as well as top Greek Pros including Adam Kritikos, Eugene Papadopoulos and Panos Karantzias!

On Sunday, February 19, the teams will receive their participation bags and confirm their participation in the tournament’s registration office at House of Events, The Westin Resort Costa Navarino. On Monday, February 20 they will be able to have their first unofficial practice.

Tuesday, February 21 is the first official practice day of each team, with the opportunity for athletes to work out in the two award-winning Costa Navarino golf courses. The tournament kicks off on Wednesday, February 22 with the 1st round being held at The Dunes Course. The 2nd round will be held on Thursday, February 23 at The Bay Course. The third and final round of the game will take place on Friday, February 24 at The Dunes Course, while the award ceremony of the tournament will take place at the end of day. The Messinia Pro-Am 2017 detailed schedule is available here.

Messinia Pro-Am aims to promote golf tourism in Greece. The sponsors supporting this goal are the official airline partner AEGEAN, member of the global airline alliance, STAR ALLIANCE, the official sponsor, Loux, which is the largest Greek soft drinks and juices company and Vodafone, Poseidonia, MyTransfer and CU BOX that equally support the tournament as official sponsors.

The company J.VOURAKIS SONS EE, official supporter will craft the golfers’ prizes. METAXA, Kyvernitis Travel and ΤοmTom Sports are also official supporters.

The contribution of the tournament helpers is particularly significant, as their benefits ensure the smooth running of the event. The Helpers include Kalamata Papadimitriou, the brands Stolichnaya and Fever-Tree, Predaris with the Cu Wrap brand and Dimiourgies.

The 1st Messinia Pro Am is organized under the auspices of the PGAs of Europe, the PGA of Greece, the Hellenic Golf Federation and the Hellenic Olympic Academy.

Please click HERE for the Messinia Pro-Am website.