Marvelous Milos, Greece, September 19th-30th, 2026!

We recently returned from our 3^rd trip to marvelous Milos (yes, where the Venus was discovered, the same statue that lies in the Louvre).  Milos is supposedly one of the world’s most beautiful islands.  For me at least it was trip no. 11 to Greece and also to 18 different islands.

 
We stayed a nite in wonderful Athens.  It’s  the 3^rd or 4^th time that we visit that city of some 5 million people with its majestic Acropolis (our hotel was near the Plaka). The  Athenians we met were very nice, as are 99% of the islanders we ran into on this trip. 
 
Athens’s handy metro takes you from the airport straight to their main stop/square, Syntagma, which is right in front of the Greek Parliament (where you can take in the ceremony of the changing of the guard).  It’s about a 40 minute trip. Our Hotel Arethusa was also just nearby. 
 
That metro line is VERY convenient as it’ll also take you in about 30 minutes to the city’s main port, Piraeus (or Pirea).  We took a ferryboat to Milos, a 3.5 hour boat ride (luckily no choppy waters going there but on the way back to Piraeus we were rolling a wee bit because of choppy waters).
 
We booked a place in a studio where we had been on our 2^nd trip to Milos, the Anamnisi Studio in Adamas.  It was sort of like going back home for us, rather close to the city center and VERY clean (they’d pass by and clean our room every 2 days) and rather quiet too.  We choose studios because we can do our own cooking.  Not only to you save big bucks but no offence to my Greek friends but I can only handle so many days of Moussakà, Souvlaki and also French Fries!   But what we did to was to indulge in their great Mythos beer!
 
For 35 euros a day we rented a Kia car (from www.miloscars-gr) and covered about 350 km around the island.  As it was late September it wasn’t that hot nor that cool, a perfect temperature I must say.  And the beaches?  A wee bit crowded with lots of Aussies (they had their two-week break back in Australia) and fellow Canucks, many also from Québec (‘twas indeed a pleasure to talk to them en français).  There were also Americans and while talking to them (all of them very nice by the way) we got on the subject of Cda-U.S. relations, especially under Trump.  
 
About the only negative point this time about Milos was the cost of 2 sun-beds and an overhead umbrella which ran as high as 40 euros (98% those sun-beds were usually empty).  What we and many other tourists did was to simply lie on a beach towel and directly on the sand, thus saving those 40 euros.
 
Good to see the old stomping grounds and also some old friends, such as Ianis and Anezina (both darlings by the way) whom we met during our 2 previous trips to Milos.  Magnificent their wonderful and precious churches and some of their great pastry shops.
And the chess aficionado that I am we also got to play some games on two large garden chessboards.  Too funny as one day I actually helped a young lassie from Québec to checkmate her boyfriend…who wasn’t all that happy that he lost!  
 
We left with a touch of sadness for Piraeus and for another overnight stay in the same hotel in Athens.  A beautiful rooftop view of the Acropolis and off we headed the day after again for the airport and our September 30^th flight back to Rome (it’s only a 90-minute flight), and on the very same day of the FlyDubai incident.
 
And the next trip to Greece?  I’d like to spend a few more days to explore the country’s rather interesting capital and why not, also island no. 19?
 
(All pics taken with the Fuji Fine Pix XP 140 waterproof camera).

The Frank Horvat photo exhibit at Rome’s magnificent Baths of Caracalla, September 11th, 2026

The Frank Horvat photo exhibit is currently on until January, 2027 at Rome’s magnificent Baths of Caracalla (named after the Emperor Caracalla who had granted citizenship to all those living under the Roman Empire).

Horvat was born in Abbazia, Italy in 1928  into a Jewish family from Central Europe and died 2020.  He was an Italian photographer who lived and worked in France. He’s best known for his fashion photography, published between the mid-1950s and the late 1980s. Horvat's photographic opus includes photojournalism, portraiture, landscape, nature, and sculpture.  He collaborated with fellow photographers such as Don McCullin, Robert Doisneau and Helmut Newton.  In the 1990s he was one of the first major photographers to experiment with technology including Photoshop.

Horvat started his career in the mid 1950s as a otojournalist in Paris, working to capture the “sleaze and squalor” of the city before going on to fashion photography.  In 1955 he moved from London to Paris and found that the mood of its streets and its inhabitants had little in common with the somewhat romantic vision of the so-called humanist photographers.  In 1957, Horvat shot fashion photographs for Jardin des Modes using a 35-mm camera and available light,  which formerly had rarely been used for fashion. This innovation was welcomed by ready-to-wear designers because it presented their creations in the context of everyday life. 

In the 1990s, Horvat became interested in computer technology and produced Yao the Cat (1993), Bestiary (1994), and Ovid’s Metamorphoses (1995). He transgressed the Cartier-Bressonian rule of the "decisive moment" by combining parts of images shot at different times and in different places.  Several years later he produced A Trip to Carrara.  

Women played a central thematic role in his fashion journalistic works and with a focus on realism. Speaking about women in his photography and his emphasis on natural looks he said, “I was interested in women. I wanted to show what I liked about them. They would spend two hours in the makeup chair, and I’d try to get them to remove it so they’d look more natural".  

Horvat died on 21 October 2020 at the age of 92.

Rome honours the victims of 9/11

The Eternal City honoured the victims of 9/11 during the 25th anniversary of that tragic event.

The sombre occasion took place directly in front of Rome’s Circus Maximus and the U.N.’s FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization). 

 

Officials of both the U.S. Embassy in Rome and City Hall were om hand to lay a wreath at the 9/11 memorial (it consists of two long stone columns).  The dignitaries were also joined by members of Italy’s fire brigade as a sign of respect for fallen comrades in both New York and Washington, DC.