Sifnos, among other Greek islands, have started the initiative to decrease the usage of plastic bags by charging 10 cents per bag. The initiative, which began on Sifnos island and named the ‘Do it Like a Sifnian’ act, hopes to encourage people to use reusable material pouches or bags instead of plastic.

Sifnos Island Cooperative (SIC) started awareness-raising programs back in 2015 by visiting local schools and distributing multi-purpose bags. The project quickly gained traction and is now winning over the trade industry among others. Even the island’s Association of Professionals and Traders and the municipality have joined in the effort by raising awareness at school educational events and hosting community gatherings.

In addition to the effort Sifnos is making in the reduction of using plastic bags, they are also exploring ways to make the island self-sufficient in energy by using renewable resources like the wind and sea water.

Source: Greek Travel Pages

Travel blogger, author, and Athens local, Marissa Tejada, shares her favorite spots and tips for the best panoramic views of Athens!

1. Acropolis
The eternal landmark of this ancient city owns some of the most spectacular views around. Built on a hill, with nothing higher around it, you get an amazing panorama of the Greek capitol. A short hike is the only way to get you up to the top of this unique, majestic wonder of the world.

 

Walking Tip: Check out Mars Hill/Aeropagus. Great views on this rock next to the Acropolis where St. Paul once preached. Talk about standing on history!

Take a leisurely walk through the paths of the hill to reach its full height of 147 meters. From that vantage point, a full view of the Acropolis awaits. Look to the south, and for a view of the Aegean Sea. The park around the hill is lovely.

Walking Tip: It is a public park, so there isn’t an admission fee to walk around. There are various entrances to the hill. You can walk right into the hill at the end of Dionysioiu Areopagito pedestrian way.

Located in in the neighborhood of Exarcheia, the view at the top is of both the Acropolis and Lycabettus Hill. This choice of best view is because it is not a real touristy spot. Here, you can take in a pretty view and be among where locals trek.

Walking Tip: Closest metro is Omonia. One way to get there is to walk up Emannuel Benaki street all the way until you see the hill and follow a path up.

To read Marissa's article in full, please visit: My Greece My Travels

The Greek state broadcaster from ERT TV has launched their own Arabic news bulletin called ‘News for Refugees’ in response to the increase of Middle Eastern and North African refugees. The bulletin aired on radio and TV in March 2016 and is in collaboration with ANA-MPA, a state news agency.

 

The news bulletin aims to cover the urgent need in useful, official and reliable information in Arabic for the 50,000 refugees and migrants in Greece right now. When the first bulletin aired, approximately 30,000 people tuned in to listen.

In addition, ANA-MPA launched a new website in Arabic providing news and other useful information for migrants and refugees. The site's content includes useful tips, links, guidelines and announcements issued by the Coordinating Body for Refugees.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras commended the decisions by ERT and ANA-MPA to offer news in Arabic in order to help refugees in Greece.

To read this article in full, please visit: Greek News Agenda

Spring is in full swing and there's no better time to enjoy an outdoor picnic with the kids!

Celeste Tat, from Family Goes Out Greece, gives her expertise on great parks to enjoy a picnic in Athens. Below are some of her favourite spots. Also, click here to read about child friendly parks in Athens.

Address: The main entrance is on Amalias Avenue but you also enter the garden from Vasilissis Sophias Avenue, Herodou Attikou street and the Zappeion park area.

The National Garden, formerly called the ‘Royal Garden’, is a public park of 15.5 hectares in the centre of Athens. It is located directly behind the Greek Parliament building (the old palace) and in between the famous monuments of the Zappeion and the Panathenaiko first Olympic Stadium.

I find it an ideal cool oasis and a green escape in the middle of the city centre for a hot summer day. My kids always love the huge and impressive palm trees at the entrance of the park. Inside the National Garden you will find a little farm with animals and birds and a pond with turtles. There is also a nice playground with a large sandbox. There are impressive botanic gardens, a labyrinth of rare plants and trees and plenty of open grass areas and benches to have a picnic.

Address: 182 Kifissias Avenue, Maroussi

Syngrou Estate is best described as an area of unspoiled countryside where you will forget that you are near the centre of the capital city. The land belonged to Andreas Syngrou, a successful and wealthy businessman. What I love about the very well kept park of Syngrou Estate is the variety of trees and shrubs, the pathways for bicycles and open areas. There are expanses of grass for picnics and ball games.

Address: Alimou-Karea Avenue, Kaisariani

Kaisariani forest is located 5 km from the Athens city centre up and around the forest of Mount Ymittos. The park has many footpaths, beautiful trees, many birds, old churches, ruins and rocks. There is a botanical garden as well and there are large grass areas with picnic tables and benches. There are endless possibilities in this park, both in the sun and in the shade. There are bicycle paths, a playground and a café too. A picnic in this park can be combined with a visit to the Kaisariani Monastery.

To read this article in full, please visit: Family Goes Out Greece

Starting a day later than previous years because of the Labour Holiday, Mid-Season sales in Athens began on Wednesday, May 4th. Retailers in Athens will have their sales for one week, ending on May 10th, so get your shopping bags ready! 

What if you could see the original artwork depicted on ancient Greek vases come alive in a series of animated pictures?  Sonya Nevin, co-creator of the Panoply Vase Animation Project alongside with Steve K. Simons, talks to Greek TV all about Panoply.  Below is a snippet of an interview with Sonya Nevin and Michael Klioumis about the concept of Panoply and the usage of animation on vases.

M.K: How did you come up with the concept of Panoply?

 

S.N: It was during my doctorate at University College Dublin. Steve (i.e. Steve Simons – Panoply’s animator) and I started messing around making stop-motion ancient world stories with toy-figurines, just for fun. I showed at a few student society events and they got a great response. Then I heard from teachers that some of them were showing the animations in school. So we decided to push the ancient-world animation concept further. The idea of working with vase scenes came to us and really began to explode the potential of what we were doing. From there we began working on getting the movement right and on ways they could be beneficial in museums and beyond.

M.K: Can you tell us about the uses of the animations on vases?

S.N: In the Ure Museum in Reading, UK, and in the University College Dublin Classical Museum in Ireland, museum visitors can watch animations alongside the vases they were made from. I absolutely love that. It encourages people to look again at the vases – to understand the scenes, to feel their movement, and to think creatively about what the artists chose to depict.

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

Just in time for spring and the national holiday of Protomagia, Greece is on the list of top destinations to travel to in May!

 

The esteemed Conde Nast Traveler has listed only 6 six destinations for the best May travel and Greece has made it to the number 1 spot. 

Conde Nast urges its readers “not to limit their trip to popular destinations like Mykonos and Santorini, but wander the lesser-frequented harbors of Hydra or hike through the verdant forests of Zagorohoria.”

Other destinations included on this list were the South of France, Portugal, and South Africa. 

 

Source: Conde Nast Traveler

Travel blogger and author Rebecca Hall, tells us about her recent 'hidden Greece' adventures - some of the beautiful places that not many travellers know to venture to. 

 

Parnassos is a limestone mountain in central Greece and the ancient Oracle and town of Delphi can be found at its base. Not many tourists who travel to Greece will equate the country with skiing, but that’s exactly what you can do on Parnassos because at 2,457m high, it offers good ski facilities in the winter.

Most people stay in the mountain town of Arachova. Think of it as an apres ski town; alive in the winter with ‘beautiful people’ - yet in the spring offering lovely wooden chalets, private accommodations with views to the distant Peloponnese region.

About a 20 minute drive from Arachova and Delphi; up, up, up into the pine woodland and suddenly the cave is there. The area offers sweeping views out as far as the seaside village of Galaxidi (yes, it’s possible to be skiing or in the mountains one minute, then soaking up the sun by the sea within half an hour in this area of Greece).

Caves, traditional villages, mountain countryside, an off-the-map UNESCO monastery, if you’re looking for a completely different side of this every magical, changing country, you can’t go wrong in booking a Hidden Tour of Greece.

Local Villages
My private, tailor-made tour also included visits to small villages where I encountered local people weaving using the traditional methods, wine tasting from the various vineyards in the area - and a visit to the Bread Museum of the town of Amphiklia (who knew bread could be so interesting? I certainly didn’t).

I would discover that ‘luxury’ did not have to mean a five-star resort on a beach - it’s about the richness of the experiences had...how deep one goes into a culture. That, for me, is luxury.

Originally posted on Huff Post Travel. To read more from Rebecca, please visit: Life Beyond Borders

There is an app for every appetite, every obsession and every moment of the day. And just when you think you've seen them all, you hear about some new amazing piece of software that can work magic on the mundane.

Greece is slowly becoming a veritable wellspring of app development - from tourism to taxis and table reservations - with new innovations popping up all the time.

The other day I came across an app that, although not created in Greece, serves up a truly fascinating experience that fits the description of that thing 'you never knew you needed so much...'

How many times have you been wandering around the city, looking up at buildings that seem to be unimaginative (ugly?) blocks of concrete, the leftovers of a hastily-erected city in the mid-20th century? On a good day I've often thought 'How did that happen?' - on a bad day I've thought far worse...

Well, all your Athens architectural ponderings can now be answered, thanks to the Athens Typology City Guide app.

The app, developed by the Design Studio Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, helps you to find places and buildings that other guides will never take you to.

Following five years of academic research in eight cities, the team unveiled a series of original city apps that present a compilation of 20th century urban architecture. The buildings (for the most part ones you have probably never noticed) were chosen in order to provide a glimpse at metropolitan design in the 20th century, comparing the patterns and differences in building styles found around the world. In total,360 buildings from Hong Kong, Rome, New York, Buenos Aires, Paris, Delhi, São Paulo and Athens have been carefully analyzed and are presented in a separate app for each city.

The Athens app showcases 54 buildings, most of them of the 'what were they thinking' variety - with accompanying background information that helps you to understand precisely what they were thinking. With this little app in your pocket, the previously hideous buildings of the city centre take on a new life, as you begin to understand that each building has a 'past' and an entire set of reasons that it is the way it is... Much like people ;)

Check it out on the AppStore and Google Play, and see Athens in an entirely new light. And just like people, you may not end up loving these buildings any more than you did before - but you will at least understand their stories a bit better...

Until next week,

Jack

In his native Syria, Ibrahim Al-Hussein often swam in the Euphrates River. He would climb to the top of the Deir ez-Zor suspension bridge, jump and dive into the water.

In 2011, the civil war in Syria started. Al-Hussein’s neighborhood was shelled and the bridge was destroyed. Al-Hussein lost part of his right leg.

This week on 26 April, the 27-year-old athlete carried the Olympic Flame in Athens as part of the torch relay during the Olympia Torch Lighting Ceremony for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Al-Hussein ran with the flame through the Eleonas refugee camp in Athens, home to around 1,500 displaced people. The act aimed to build empathy for refugees at a time when nearly 60 million people worldwide have been forced to leave their homes, the highest number since World War II.

Al-Hussein’s run with the Olympic Flame is part of a number of initiatives surrounding the Olympics intended to bring attention to refugees. Between five and 10 registered refugees are expected to participate in the Olympics later this year as part of team “Refugee Olympic Athletes.”

“After 20 years, I have achieved what I dreamed of,” Al-Hussein told UNHCR, the United Nations' refugee agency. “I used to dream to be a participant in the Olympics. Now, I have achieved more than that. I have achieved carrying the flame.”

To read this article in full, please visit: ABC News