Filmmaker/photographer Raphael Pöham created this captivating short video of enchanting scenery on five islands in the Cyclades
Mesmerizing moments: Filmmaker Raphael Pöham took a trip to Greece last year, and produced this stunning video souvenir of scenic holiday highlights from the five Cyclades islands he visited — Santorini, Mykonos, Milos, Sifnos and Folegandros.
The film’s views of beautiful beach, landscape and sunset scenery brilliantly illustrate why the Cyclades island chain is so immensely alluring to travellers from around the world.
The film runs for three minutes, and I enjoyed it so much I wish it had been longer — I really wanted to see more! It also made me feel eager to plan a return trip to the Cyclades. We have already been to each of the islands that Raphael spotlighted, and recognized most of the scenes in his film, but the video makes me yearn to visit those places again.
Give Raphael’s video a look and see if it puts you in a similarly dreamy Cyclades state of mind, too!
Escape winter for a few minutes with this mesmerizing Corfu travel video by filmmaker/photographer Khurum Khan
Winter video break: As cold temperatures, snowstorms and turbulent weather systems continue to wreak havoc across much of Europe and North America this weekend, I’m sure many of my readers are anxiously counting the days until they can get to Greece for their summer vacation.
If you’re feeling blue from bad weather and the seemingly never-ending winter in your part of the world, here’s an effective antidote that will give you a lift — a travel video with dreamy late summer scenes from Corfu island.
Khurum Khan recently brought the film to my attention through my blog’s Facebook page, where I’ve already shared his Greece — Corfu Travel Video. I watched it a couple more times again today to take my mind off our windy, cold conditions, and thought I should share it here on the blog for those who don’t follow me on Facebook so they, too, can enjoy a brief video respite from winter.
Khurum visited Corfu last September, his first-ever trip to Greece, and said he “had an amazing time.” His cinematic travel video certainly leaves no doubt about that.
With a running length of nearly three and a half minutes, the film abounds in beautiful beach, sea, coast and mountain scenery, and lots of alluring images from in and on the inviting Ionian Sea. I find the film totally mesmerizing — it makes me feel like I’m right there on Corfu, contemplating the wonderful scenery and swimming in the brilliant turquoise waters.
Give it a watch and enjoy a temporary escape from winter.
Timely island: An engaging short film I discovered this week has rekindled some sweet memories from our our only and only visit (so far) to Amorgos nearly 10 years ago.
In Amorgos, There is Timewas published on Vimeo just two days ago (March 1 2018), and I found a link to it in the newsfeed for my blog page on Facebook.
The two and a half-minute film features aerial and ground-level photography that spotlights an impressive panoply of sights and scenery from the ruggedly beautiful island in the eastern Cyclades.
The video begins with a distant, aerial view of the magnificent Chozoviotissa Monastery, which is built into the face of a sheer cliff that soars hundreds of meters above the sea on the eastern coast of Amorgos — a stunning sight I think is a must-see attraction for anyone visiting the island.
The film then presents a sequence of alluring images of island attractions and sights, including stone-paved streets, traditional tavernas and whitewashed buildings in seaside and mountain villages; windmills; sheep and donkeys; a tortoise, a seal and other sea life; a shipwreck; and views of splendid sunsets, beaches, mountains and coastlines. These are interspersed with scenes of island residents going about their daily lives and participating in local culture and activities. (There also are numerous views of the Aegialis Hotel & Spa, the only 5-star hotel on Amorgos.)
We spent four full days and nights on Amorgos back in May 2009, and wished we had been able to stay a week or longer. We have been meaning to get back, but its off-the-beaten-path location has kept us from fitting it into our more recent island-hopping itineraries. Looks like it’s time to find a way to pay Amorgos a return visit.
This 2-minute film is the official 2018 promotional video for Canaves Oia on Santorini. The hotel looks amazing, and its outstanding scenic views show why Santorini is one of the world’s most famous islands.
Dreamy destination: Yesterday (February 23) was a terribly dreary day here in Toronto. The morning temperature was only 1 degree Celsius, a light drizzle was falling, and fog had enshrouded most of the downtown skyscrapers that usually crowd the skyline view from my windows. The dull light made me feel tired, and I kept wanting to crawl into bed. I desperately needed sunshine, but since there wasn’t any in the forecast, I started surfing the web to watch some videos of sunny places in Greece. That always perks me up on gloomy days.
I found the usual assortment of home-made travel clips and aerial videos shot by camera-mounted drones, all of which boosted my spirits a bit. However, the film that gave me the biggest lift was a marketing promo for one of the most exclusive — and expensive — luxury resorts on Santorini.
Entitled Luxury Never Sounded So Good, it’s the official 2018 video for Canaves Oia, a stunning 5-star boutique hotel perched atop the caldera cliffs in Oia village. The resort is just as gorgeous as its incredible views and surrounding scenery, and it regularly wins awards and accolades from top travel magazines and websites, including TripAdvisor. It also has been profiled extensively on social media and in dozens of leading lifestyle, fashion, design and travel publications around the world.
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With all that good press, Canaves Oia probably doesn’t need to advertise anymore. But I’m glad they do, since their videos are professionally produced, enticing to watch and — best of all — they make me feel, for a few minutes at least, that I’m back in Greece on vacation.
What I particularly like about this year’s promo film is that members of the Canaves staff and management team play starring roles, while the hotel and the exquisite Santorini scenery fill supporting background positions.
The video runs for just over two minutes, and is bound to put you into a luxuriously dreamy Santorini state of mind — especially if the weather sucks wherever you might be while you watch it. If you won’t be able to stay at the Canaves or visit Oia this year, watching the clip and daydreaming about being there is the next best thing.
By the way, just in case you’re wondering: No, the hotel didn’t ask me to post the video on my blog. Nor did it offer to pay me or give me free accommodation if I did. (I don’t have that kind of good luck, unfortunately). I found the video while clicking around the web, and liked it so much I decided to feature it in a blog post. Santorini was one of the first Greek islands we got to visit, and it’s one of the reasons we fell in love with Greece and keep going back. I simply hope that sharing the film might inspire other dreamers and travel buffs to visit Greece some day, if they haven’t been there yet.
And if you’re a fan of minimalist design and crisp white interior decor, click on the link below to see the sweet looks of luxury — a selection of tantalizing images I’ve collected from various galleries on the Canaves Oia website. There’s a few photos of the breathtaking views from the accommodations, restaurants, bars and swimming pools, too.
Surf sprays two storeys high as roaring waves crash ashore at the Little Venice area of Mykonos Town, flooding the entire seaside strip of cocktail bar terraces. This photo was posted on the Mykonos LIVE TV Facebook page on January 18, the day gale-force winds raged across much of Greece.
Storm scenes: When wild winter weather swept across Europe this week, Greece wound up in the path of powerful winds that pounded some places, including Syros island, with gusts reaching as high as 122 kmh — the equivalent to force 12 on the Beaufort wind scale.
The fierce winds raged relentlessly on Thursday January 18, toppling trees on several islands, damaging one of the iconic windmills on Mykonos, and preventing planes from landing at Syros airport. The storm disrupted ferry travel and shipping, too, as rough seas forced the cancellation of many sailings as well as the closure of the ports at Lavrio and Rafina. At Piraeus port, the passenger ferry Panagia Agiasou broke away from its moorings during the tempest, while waterfront areas at Mykonos Town, and Kini Beach on Syros, sustained damage from massive waves that walloped the shore.
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Although most residents stayed indoors to avoid the incessant blasts of wind, which made walking perilous and even driving difficult, some did venture out to observe nature’s fury and photograph the stormy conditions. I found numerous pictures and videos on social media showing skies filled with massive dark clouds, and huge waves crashing onto seafronts and beaches in Mykonos, Paros, Naxos, Syros, Rhodes, Lesvos, Samos, Skyros, Skopelos, Ithaca, Paxos, Kefalonia, Nafplio, Athens and elsewhere. Many of the images showed that, even in ferocious weather, the scenic beauty of Greece’s coastal areas still stands out.
Takis Vassiliou shot this view of the Nafplio waterfront and Bourtzi sea castle, and shared the image on his Nafplio Kalimera page on Facebook
Maria Alipranti captured sunlight illuminating stormclouds and waves at the Parikia waterfront on Paros. Her photo, and more than 20 others she shot, were shared on the ΠΑΡΟΣ like page on Facebook.
Eleonora Pouwels photographed this scene of waves, stormclouds and sunset at Psiriara beach on Lesvos
Please click on the link below to turn to page 2, where I have posted more photos and several videos that were shared on social media.
Pierre Marteau compiled this overview video of places and attractions he visited during a trip to Santorini in 2017
Eye level views: I discovered a brand-new Santorini travel video on Vimeo today, and wanted to share it immediately so any of my readers planning a first-time visit to the island can see how it really looks in person.
Santorini 2017 is a 9-minute film that Pierre Marteau published on January 14. What I particularly like about the clip is that it wasn’t filmed with a drone, as so many Santorini videos tend to be nowadays. Although drones capture amazing aerial views of the island’s spectacular landscape scenery, no visitor is ever going to see it from the same perspective. On the other hand, Pierre’s eye-level video shows exactly how sights and attractions will appear as you look around while exploring the island.
Places shown in the video include:
♦ Santorini’s main town, Fira
♦ the traditional village of Pyrgos
♦ the black sand beach at Kamari
♦ the romantic and extremely picturesque clifftop village of Oia, which is perhaps the most famous place for sunset viewing in all the Greek islands.
The video also shows what you’ll see riding the cable car to the cruise ship and excursion boat docks in the Old Port below Fira, and while taking one of the popular boat tours to the hot springs and the nearby volcano island of Nea Kameni. Of course, the video also captures views of some of the beautiful bougainvillea and flowers, colourful houses, iconic blue-domed chapels, and marvellous sunsets that together make Santorini one of the most-photographed places in Greece.
And you’ll see some of the island’s controversial donkeys and mules, which I hope none of my readers will ride while visiting Santorini. If you don’t know why you shouldn’t climb atop any of these animals for a ride up or down the caldera cliff paths, please read my post Don’t ride the donkeys! Why tourists should avoid taking the mule ‘taxis’ on Santorini.
Note that Santorini 2017 is a compilation video that Pierre put together from several other clips he shot on Santorini. You can view all of those films — which show other top Santorini attractions, such as Akrotiri and Ancient Thera, on Pierre’s VIMEO page.
The beautiful landscapes and scenery on Kefalonia look tremendously inviting even in winter, as this short film by Yiannis Prassadis reveals
Finally going: Kefalonia has been on our bucket list for quite some time, but we have never been able to fit a trip there into any of our past island-hopping holidays — largely since we were usually travelling in the Aegean or Dodecanese regions of Greece, too far away to conveniently slot any of the Ionian islands into our vacation schedule. We kept expecting that we would devote one entire holiday just to see Kefalonia and some of its island neighbours, but it never happened.
Notions of visiting Kefalonia were rekindled this past January when I discovered the Explore Kefalonia — Winter video (posted above) while working on my blog articles about snowfalls and severe weather conditions in Greece.
I was captivated by the video scenes of beautiful coasts and landscapes, and that led me to start watching more Kefalonia videos, almost all of which were filmed during the summer tourist period, rather than during the off-season winter months. Those videos, in turn, made me conclude that we had to bump Kefalonia higher up our “must see” list of places to visit sometime in the next five years.
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I never thought for a moment that we might get to Kefalonia as early as this year, but when friends invited us to join them on a road trip in the western Peloponnese this spring, and asked if we would like to go to Kefalonia from there, we couldn’t pass up the golden opportunity.
We will be on the island later this month for almost a full week — clearly not long enough to see all the fascinating places and attractions that have intrigued me so much in the videos. But if we do wind up loving it Kefalonia as much as we have enjoyed so many other islands, we’ll return another time to get to know it better.
Now it’s just a matter of contending with the steadily growing anticipation of finally getting there. With the countdown to our flight to Greece in its final days, we won’t have to wait much longer.
Below are three of the videos I enjoyed watching during the winter, never realizing that a trip to Kefalonia would be in the cards for us so soon.
James Brook published his Kefalonia video in October 2016
Greg Stachura released his Amazing Kefalonia video last November
This short video includes aerial views of Delos island, film of the excursion boats that ferry visitors between Mykonos and Delos and, at the 1:39 mark of the clip, a schedule of boat trips and prices for tickets and guided tours in 2017
Time changes: If you’re visiting Mykonos this summer and hope to take a daytrip to explore the historic ruins and museum at nearby Delos island, take note there has been a slight change to the time excursion boats will return from Delos in the evening during 2017. The last boat back to Mykonos will now depart Delos at 7:30 p.m., a half hour earlier than last year.
That’s the only significant change (so far, at least) to the information provided in my Visiting Delos in 2016 blog post. Prices for the boat rides remain at €20 per adult and €10 for children aged 6 to 12. Kids under 6 can still ride for free.
Guided half-day tours still cost €50 per adult and €25 per child between 6 and 12 years of age. There is no charge for kids under 6 to join the guided tours, which are available from May 2 until the end of October.
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The ferry ticket and tour prices do not include the government-imposed fee for admission to the Delos archaeological site, which is €12 per person again this year, and which is payable at the entrance gate on the island.
For full details about Delos excursions from Mykonos, consult the website for Delos Tours — the company that operates the boat service between the islands.
