Sunshiny days

Greece gets 211 days of sunshine a year.   No doubt this is one of the biggest attractions for Scandinavian tourists who get 150 days of rain in their country and the english who get (on the average) 133 days of rain a year.  No wonder the Brits sit out in the sun all day and go that bright painful pink soaking up as much sun as possible before returning to their cold, cold home.

Mad dogs and englishmen go out in the midday,
out in the midday sun.
(A Noel Coward classic)

This week we have visiting us:

Leonardo di Caprio, 'incognito' (he wears a hat) on  Myconos with four friends
Kate Hudson, Skiatho.  According to one source she was 'sizzling' in a tiny bikini.
Andreas Bocelli - on a greek island.  In 2010 he sang at the Odeon of Herod Atticus (174 BC) under the Acropolis.


Tom Hanks.  He and his wife Rita Wilson own a  house on AntiParos and spend summer holidays on the island.  Hank's wife has greek roots.  They both worked on and helped to promote 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding'.  Great movie.  Funny and portrays the greeks exactly as they are, family orientated, always ready to party and fanatical about anything greek.

I was once told by a Greek taxi driver that every language in the world is derived from Greek including Chinese.

Aristotle Onassis's private island of Scorpios was bought by the daughter of a Russian billionaire along with the next door island of Sparti.   Last year the billionairess was married at the small chapel on the island, the same chapel where Onassis and Jackie Kennedy were married in 1968.

Anthony Quinn.  Fell in love with the island of Rhodes when filming 'The Guns of Navarone'.  Quinn bought a small bay now known as 'Anthony Quinn Beach' and made the island famous.  He made a road into the beach and brought water in but the purchase was annulled and he never got the title deeds. 50 years later his family is still trying to legalise the purchase. 

 Boris Johnson is spending his summer holiday with his family near Thessaloniki.  Power and money talks.  I'm sure no-one will hold it against him now for his publicly expressed opinion that  Greece should get out of the euro zone and that England should not return the 'Elgin Marbles'.  These are sculptures 'stolen' from the Parthenon by Lord Elgin in the 1800s and now in the British Museum.

Today is a day for celebration and jubilation. We're alive, we're alive.  The world did not come to an end on July 29th because of a 'polar flip' as prophesied by the doomsayers.