Delta Air Lines’ nonstop double daily flights between Athens and New York-JFK are now on sale for travel in summer 2016, an announcement said on Monday 5th October 2015.

Flights will begin five times weekly from March 27, 2016, increasing to a daily service from May 24, 2016 using an Airbus A330-300 aircraft with 292 seats.

From May 27, 2016, an additional flight will be added which will also operate on a daily basis with a Boeing 767-400 aircraft with 245 seats, bringing the weekly total to 14 flights.

During the peak summer months, Delta will offer over 7,500 weekly seats between Greece and the United States.

All services from Athens are operated in conjunction with joint venture partners Air France KLM and Alitalia.

“Our investment in our New York-JFK hub means we offer greater connectivity for customers travelling to the United States and beyond from Greece,” said Nat Pieper, Delta’s senior vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa."

To read more, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

Two Greek cities, that have always been a magnet for art and culture, were included on the list of the 25 cities with the greatest impact on the world.

More specifically, the capital of Greece, Athens, ranked in first place in the list that was compiled by List25, the website that gathers and presents lesser-known intriguing information on a variety of subjects, while at  #22 one can find Olympia, in western Peloponnese.

“Birthplace of Western civilization, Athens is the most influential city ever in the fields of philosophy, architecture, politics, science, and free thinking, as well as the original home of what is considered the most ideal system of government: democracy,” the website reads while it continues, referring: “Athens also became the first city to organize the first modern Olympics back in 1896. Some of its most famous citizens include giants such as Socrates, Plato, Solon, and Pericles.”

To read more and see the full list of the 25 cities, please visit: Greek Reporter

Modest wedding dresses that were once in fashion no longer are, apparently. Fashion trends now require that dresses are  not only "heavier" and voluminous, decorated with luxurious lace, pearls, but also long-sleeved.

Popular wedding fashion website ''The Knot'' has presented the 15 most beautiful long-sleeved wedding dresses. Some are the works of world famous designers like Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera and others of their talented but less famous colleagues.

One of them is Greek designer Christos Costarellos, who lives and works in Athens.

The dresses by Christos Costarellos are unique, with a very fresh vision that aims to emphasize the charm and character of every woman who chooses to wear one of them.

In his penultimate collection he uses vapoury tulle, silk organza and other sheer fabrics like muslin and dotted tulle. The dresses are neo-romantic in style with the addition of some discrete and elegant traditional elements. Their main feature is movement.

To see a selection, please visit: Greek Reporter

In the heart of buzzing Athens there are a lot of open markets selling anything from food and spices to vintage clothing, antiques and souvenirs. Even if you don’t want to shop a walk into the flea market is a great way to get the real vibe of Athens.

Here is a list of the top flea markets in the centre of Athens:

Monastiraki flea market starts next to Monastiraki metro station.  It's not an actual flea market, but a collection of small shops.  Here you can buy almost anything, form clothing, jewellery, cheap souvenirs like t-shirts, toy exzone soldiers, marble Greek statues, postcards and quality souvenirs like backgammon sets, Byzantine icons, traditional Greek products, musical instruments and leather goods.  In Monastiraki flea market you will find almost everything.  Near the flea market there ar ea lot of cafes where you can stop for a refreshment and watch the people passing by.  Early in the morning and late at night when the shops are closed, all the shop fronts are covered with street art, which is totally worth checking out.

Every Sunday at Avissynias Square, just off Ifaistou Street, the central street of Monastiraki flea market, there is a bazaar.  There are vendors selling antiques from furniture to old books and recornds to anything you can imagine.  Some have no value at all, but you can also find a lot of bargins.  There are some cozy cafes at the square and Avissynias restaurant with live Greek music and traditional food where you can have a bite and watch all the action of the square.

To read more, please visit: Travel Passionate

A bronze chair arm — possibly the remains of an ancient throne — and a piece of a Greek board game are among the latest treasures raised from the site of the famous shipwreck Antikythera. 

The ship, which went down in 65 B.C., sits off the coast of the Greek island of the same name. It was discovered in 1900 by sponge fishermen and has been periodically studied since.

This year, archaeologists discovered an intact amphora (a vaselike container), a small table jug (known as a lagynos) and a rectangular chiseled stone, probably a statuette base. Digging on the seafloor, they found broken ceramics, a piece of a bone flute, and broken bits of glass, iron and bronze. A section of bronze furniture may be the arm of a throne, according to the Woods Hold Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). A small glass piece looks to be a pawn in a chesslike game. 

"This shipwreck is far from exhausted," project co-director Brendan Foley, a marine archaeologist at WHOI, said in a statement. "Every single dive on it delivers fabulous finds, and reveals how the '1 percent' lived in the time of Caesar."

The first sponge diver to explore the wreck in 1900, Ilias Stadiatis, managed to bring a bronze arm from a statue up 164 feet (50 metres) to the surgace.  The Greek government quickly sent naval support to the area, and divers brought up to 36 marble statues of heroes and gods, along with other luxury items and skeletons belonging to the crew and passengers.  In 1901, the divers brought up an incredible astronomical calendar, the Antikythera mechanism, which could determine the positions of heavenly bodies like Mercury, Venus and Mars.  It remains the most complex ancient item ever found, according to the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.

To read more, please visit: NBC News

Here, Passion for Greece shares her experience of this Moroccan restaurant in Glyfada, Athens.

Tagine Restaurant in Glyfada, is a Moroccan dining experience that one should definitely try. When it comes to story telling, great food and an authentic environment, this is the place to be. On Monday night myself and 3 other members of Travel Bloggers Greece - Eleanna of Foodaki, Chrysoula of Travel Passionate and Maria of Maria Carras Creative, were invited on a Moroccan food journey in the heart of the Athenian Riviera.

Our host Kareem welcomed us in his new restaurant and shared with us the little secrets of what makes Tagine so special. Kareem cooks from the heart, and he has a passion for his business, which is something you can tell from the moment you meet Kareem. He is also a very talented story teller which makes the whole dining experience an even greater journey. You learn during the process of your meal experience and when you leave, you feel like you have gained new perspectives that have opened up the horizons of your mind. Meet Kareem and you will mark my words.

We started our dinner with learning about the art of Moroccan tea drinking, which is a much-loved tradition that signifies hospitality and friendship. Kareem let us in on a little secret, offering us a treat that has quite a remarkable story. There is a type of sugar that is actually an alternative to sugar and which only wealthy Arabs can afford to buy because of the price tag on this rare product which is especially used by people with diabetes. This sugar is called “Tears of Life” and it comes from a tree that is found on the borders of Afganistan, that produces 5 different fruit types. What you do is take a piece of this sugar, place it in your mouth and then drink the mint tea in order to get the flavours on your palate. A very unique experience indeed.  

The feast then continued with a selection of salads and dips known as mezze: Mutabal, a spicy dip made from eggplants, Taboule which is originally a Syrian/ Lebanese recipe which is served on lettuce leaves for flavour and digestion purposes, Hummus made from chickpeas, Arabic salad which is marinated with three different spices, pomegranate, lemon, balsamic vinegar and rice vinegar.  

You must also try Kareem’s falafel prepared from 14 ingredients, 7 of which are spices and 7 are fresh ingredients. Kareem only listed a few, not to disclose all his secrets, so what we could make out was that some of the ingredients are: chickpeas, garlic, parsley, onions, small leaf parsley and wild ginger. But the whole secret lies in the spices! The ingredients are marinated for 20 hours before they are served. The falafel is topped with Kareem’s signature tahini sauce. Are you hungry yet?

To read more, please visit: Passion For Greece

Athens features in the top 20 list of hotels giving the best value for money, according to a study by hotel search website Trivago.

Trivago recently released its list of 45 best value popular global cities for the coming year and Athens came in at number 17, scoring 78.36 points.

First on the list was Belgrade in Serbia, followed by St. Petersburg and Moscow in Russia. Santiago in Chile was 4th, Istanbul in Turkey was 5th, Melbourne in Australia was 20th and New York was 45th on Trivago’s list.

The hotel search website also compiled another list with 100 lesser-known destinations that also offer the best value for money. The Greek town of Nafplio in the Peloponnese is ranked 63rd on that list with 93.56 points.

To read more, please visit: Greek Travel Pages

Civil Defense sirens will sound across the country on Tuesday October 6th in the morning. The sirens will be sounded for routine checks and to ensure that they are in good operation; the sirens are part of the large-scale military exercise called “Parmenion 2015”.

As announced, the air raid sirens will ring at 11 am, for sixty (60) seconds and will end at 11:05 with a 60-second constant intense sound. The public is to be assured that this is a routine check and there is no cause for concern.

Source: TaNea

Translated by: XpatAthens

Here, Ekaterina via The Greek Glutton shares her love of Greek food, with a bit of Mexican in the mix.

I am a HUGE fan of feta.  I simply cannot have a meal without it.  Add a touch of spinach into the mix and you will have me eating out of your hand, or plate.  So you can guess how much I salivated after seeing my friend Natalia's recipe for Greek Spinach & Feta Quesadillas over at her blog The Greek Glutton.   The recipe just had to be shared.

Speaking of healither meal alternatives, I made these Greek Spinach & Feta Quesadillas with Tzatziki Sauce and I have to say, they're a much better choice than regular quesadillas with melted cheese and sour cream and other fatty/not so healthy ingredients.  And even though they might not be quite as mouth-watering and indugent as regular quesadillas, they still feel like a treat!  Almost like having your cake and eating it, although not literally. 

They're easy to make and they make it easy to get vegetables into your diet.  Spinach has many health benefits: for your eyes, bones and actually helps your digestion.  What's more is that cooked spinach actually delivers more than three times the nutrients of raw soinach because your body cannot fully break down and absorb nutrients in raw spinach.  If you live in a cold and dry climate, eating spinach is really good for relieving dry and itchy skin.

As if you didn't need any more pursuading, take a look at how to make them:

Prep time - 15 mins

Cook time - 15 mins

Total: 30 mins

Recipe Type: Lunch

Cuisine: Greek

Serves: 2-3 quesadillas

12oz spinach

Olive Oil

1 onion 

Bunch of scallions/green onions

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1/2 to 1 cup feta cheese, crumbled

Salt and Pepper to taste

Low-carb or regular flour tortillas

Tzatziki sauce

To read more, including directions on how to make, please visit: Ekaterina's Greek Expectations

Greek islands with tourism growth and high per capita income will as of October 1 see a 30 percent value-added tax (VAT) hike on all their goods and services, doing away with a special reduced tax rate which was applicable until now.

According to the new law, the islands will be divided into categories depending on per capita income and tourism development and taxed accordingly. A reduced VAT rate will continue to apply on remote islands while those with limited tourism will see the tax hikes take effect on June 1, 2016.

The popular Cyclades including Mykonos, Santorini, Paros, Naxos, Milos, Syros and Tinos, as well as the Sporades isles such as Skopelos are expected to be the first to bear the brunt of the new taxing regime.

To read more, please visit: Greek Travel Pages