I can’t say I can single out one place. I love them all with the same passion: the bald boulders of Crete, the fir trees of Pertouli, the vast plains of Thessaly, the beaches on the islands.
READING TIME
As long as it takes to eat a Greek salad

My Greece

I have travelled all over Greece, from top to bottom and side to side. I can’t say I can single out one place. I love them all with the same passion: the bald boulders of Crete, the fir trees of Pertouli, the vast plains of Thessaly, the beaches on the islands. It’s something like what the poet Seferis said: “Wherever I go, Greece wounds me,” in the sense of the sweetest memory.

Elias Mamalakis

I’ll never forget

I have experienced many pleasant happenings during my journeys: musicians playing in the middle of nowhere on Mt Pindos, construction workers getting me to help them rebuild a bridge and kitchens where we’d get to chatting and forget the food that was getting singed in the oven.

When I close my eyes

So many images come to mind… I like the black fir trees; I like the village fountains where the babbling water gushes; I like the dolphins that dance around our boat; I like Fiskardo in Kefalonia and Agia Galini in Rethymno, Crete. I like Greece.

Elias Mamalakis

Favourite food

I’m obsessed with stuffed tomatoes. At times I’m pleased and others disappointed. I like them with good quality olive oil, lots of onion, mint and parsley, black seeded raisins and pine nuts.

I like the dolphins that dance around our boat; I like Fiskardo in Kefalonia and Agia Galini in Crete. I like Greece!

My souvenir

Every time I leave a place I promise to come back and buy a house there. If I had, I would have 200 houses. So since I can’t buy a house, I get a souvenir – a hat that the locals wear or a walking stick, sometimes both. I have a big collection of hats and walking sticks.

Next destination

There is no place in Greece that I would like to visit and haven’t. Wherever I go, I return. This time I would like to go to the Prespes Lakes and see the bean plantations in bloom, to take a boat tour of the sketes and early Christian churches, to marvel at the overpowering view at Agios Achilleios, to run over the footbridge and catch my breath at Agios Germanos.

Elias Mamalakis
Elias Mamalakis
Culinary Expert, TV presenter

I’ve loved many people and things in my life, but most of all I love travel – the exploratory journey, the one where the eye searches for the landscape, the palate for a flavour and the soul for culture. When a journey comes to an end, I am sad, but happy too because another one is about to begin.

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