SPECIAL OFFERS FOR THE PERFECT DIVING ADVENTURE HOLIDAY!

Amorgos Diving Center www.amorgos-diving.gr offers a variety of special discounts for the months of May, June, September and October.

Learn to dive with us in the magic island of the “Big Blue”.

OPEN WATER DIVER COURSE  for the special price of 470 € for one and 850 € for two persons!

Step up in your diving career an improve your skills.

ADVANCED OPEN WATER DIVER COURSE: 450 € for one and 800 € for two persons!

Prices include 5 NIGHTS ACCOMODATION WITH BREAKFAST in Askas pension, 5 minutes from the sea and beside our diving center!

If you don’t see what you want e-mail  us and we’ ll taylor-make your package.

Dimitris Sinodinos

Amorgos Diving Center
Tel: 0030-22850 73611
Mobile: 0030-69322495338
Fax: 0030-22850 73611
Email: scuba@amorgos-diving.gr
Web: www.amorgos-diving.gr
Facebook: Amorgos Diving Center Fanpage

Michael Jagd, Journalist

The Danish journalist Michael Jagd, who has previously appeared in the Amorgós Island Magazine with the video “Greek dishes easy to cook”, recently made a contribution to the 3rd International Short Tourist Film Festival of Amorgos held during the YPERIA April 19th-22nd – though not taking any prices.

The film is a documentary of dissemination about Amorgós with the working title ”Amorgós has many Seasons / Island of many Seasons”. The idea of the documentary is to show that Amorgós is an untamed island that you may visit almost all year round especially due to its biodiversity, beautiful walks, friendly resident population, lively folklore, nice villages and growing brand of wellness island with its spa, yoga, rakí, healing and herbs. But still it is also showing the famous monastery Panagia Chozoviótissa and other local attractions. On the sound track we hear the Amorgian nisiotiko (folkloric songs from the island).

Michael Jagd has written travel guides and articles about the Cyclades. He visited Amorgós in 1978, 2005, 2007, 2008 and 2011, and in the video are recordings from 2011 with some stills from the other years. Typically to show the many seasons and types of weather here, since the time during the recordings in 2011 the weather was much like in Denmark with rain, fog, blasts of wind and low degrees bringing out warm sunny weather on the day of his departure. But fortunately the sun also was shining during the other stays. So there is a diversity of light in the video that has a duration 16:35 minutes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgQ-9PlC30M

Visit the homepage of Michael Jagd: www.michaeljagd.dk

Successfully organized since 2003 by Aegialis Hotel & Spa in cooperation with the Cultural Association of Tholaria Women in Aegiali – Amorgos island. Yperia Convention celebrates this year, from the 19th to the 22nd of April 2012, its 10th anniversary.

The spirit of the conference is around tourism and travel styles that care about culture and the environment of local communities – responsible travel. Yperia’s Conventions objective is to enhance the Cultural Heritage, the Civilization and the environment of Amorgos and to promote them through articles and films of Greek and International Media.

Enjoy the phantastic view from the Aegialis-Hotel-&-Spa

The topic of this year’s convention is the “Cultural Ηeritage of Amorgos” and will include the third Amorgos Festival of Short Tourist Films, in co operation with the Film Club of South Amorgos .

Yperia 2012 will especially focus on the 1000 year old Monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa, which is considered as one of the most impressive byzantine monuments in Greece. The Yperia Committee believes it deserves its place in the UNESCO’S World’s Heritage Monuments and that it is time to broach the subject. Distinguished people from all around the world are invited to exchange ideas and opinions: journalists, photographers, producers, Political Representatives, Ambassadors, artists etc.

As usually the program is going to be fully packed with excursions around the island, presentations, photography & painting exhibitions, workshops in Greek dancing & language, wine tasting, and cookery demonstration, film projections and discussions at Aegialis Hotel & Spa.

Amorgian Gastronomy will be presented and tasted during lunches and dinners in different restaurants: “Ambrosia” – Aegialis Hotel & Spa, “Lakki” Restaurant, “O Chondros, “To Limani”, “To Panorama”, “O Kostaras”.

Welcome & Farewell dinner will take place at “Amvrosia” Restaurant of Aegialis Hotel & Spa with traditional music and dancing.

The tradition of Yperia comes into work and continually creates and intensifies the growing awareness of sustainable tourism and should be continued to impact the future of tourism on Amorgos.

Visit the conference homepage: www.yperia.gr

Participation to YPERIA 2012 is possible, at special rate of 350 Euros per person for 5 days including accommodation, with full board (in double room) and all tours and transfers on Amorgos.
Please write to: info@aegialis.com or
call: +30 22850 73393
www.amorgos-aegialis.com

Conference Location

Some pictures of Yperia 2011

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Paolo Buatti

The goats crossing the road, the silence while walking in the white of the town, the colours of the water and the smell of the wild herbs growing everywhere. These are the images that Amorgos left into my brain.
Silence, colours and smell are extremely common words but they have an unique strenght there.
Since I went back to Rome I worked to organize all the stuff i produced during my trip, and then I extrapolated a book and a small video-doc. I’ve been in Amorgos and Santorini so each one of my works is splitted in two parts. This gave me the chance to compare two beauties, two realities, two totally different ways of doing tourism. I feel closer to the Amorgian reality, massive numbers can destroy the peculiarities of a place and sustainability is the only way to preserve it.
Silence in Amorgos gives suspension of time and peace, and I hope to find it again over there in the future.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEojyW-jZ6A

Take a look at Paolos photo book “Due Cicadi” he did about Amorgos and Santorini – you can also buy this book.

Visit Paolos Homepage

View some of Paolos photos he sent to us:

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Thank you Paolo

Of course, walking is easy. It’s so easy that no child has to be taught how to. It’s so easy, that we never think about it. Unless it gets difficult. Sometimes difficulties are caused by fatigue and often by pain. Ones knee bothers and another one moans about back pain. Nobody complains about a painful gait. People still think they have got this walking thing off pat.

Reconnect with your natural abilities to walk, even before it hurts. Learning to move with less effort makes daily life easier and also can enhance sport and the standard of your exercise performance. Everyone, from top athletes to those with limited sports abilty, can benefit from learning how to fully use their own capabilties.

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Amorgos provides the perfect ambiance to explore elemental walking. Barefoot experiences on the sandy beaches. Balancing on pebbles and rocks. Gentle hikes with stunning views. Inhaling herbal scents. Here you can discover your individual way of elemental walking which appeals to all your distinct senses.

Nicola’s Kurvenschule: Workshop Elemental Walking, Aegialis – Amorgos

2011, Monday September 12th – Friday 16th,  11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
Starting point Monday – beach volleyball area
Costs – Euro 20/day/person
Contact & Enrollment: nicola@kunstpiste.com or kunstpiste.com/contact

About Nicola Werdenigg
Born in 1958; graduate ski college Stams; degree course in sports science at the University of Innsbruck, qualified Austrian ski instructor and ski guide; national diploma for bioenergetic body work. 1968 Interski Demo-Team Austria; for 6 years member of the Austrian Ski Team competing in the World Cup, 1975 Austrian downhill champion and third in the overall downhill World Cup, 1976 fourth in the Olympic downhill in Innsbruck, ski school director and sports coach with the focus on sports for children and handicapped people, organization of movement and awareness training courses, sports coaching + consulting

It’s “Dimitris Kafeneion”!

When my daughter and I noticed it we never thought we were actually stopping at THE place full of memories! I chose it because from the outside (and the inside even more) it looked very local and authentic, the menu written only in Greek and a few elderly people playing cards and sipping their coffees in a sort of good old days atmosphere. I immediately perceived a sort of nostalgic feeling looking at the many faded photos on the wall showing a pierced dark eyed man with big moustache and wearing a beret!

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I thought … Who is he???

“Einai o Parvas” (he is Parvas) … someone said reading my mind!! I noticed a happy looking elderly man sitting alone who then introduced himself as Kostas. We sat with him and he started unveiling the story behind the mysterious character on the photos. His name was Dimitris Giannakos, better known as “Parvas” and before passing away, he was the owner of the kafeneion together with his wife Flora and their daughter Dina, who is nowadays running the place!

Dimitris Giannakos "Parvas"

Parvas’ long life was spent between the solitude of his field and the cozy kafeneion and as our new friend Kostas said “he was so photogenic and gifted of a unique personality that photographers and directors discovered him and he even had a role in the film Le Grand Bleu”!

But that was only the beginning of becoming the Amorgos celebrity … later on he played himself in the poetic film “Parvas agonh grammh” by Gerasimos Rigas which shows his simple life in Amorgos day after day in a sort of journal! The film itself (only in Greek) is a real treat for anyone who loves the most authentic and real aspect of the Island!

Here is a YouTube video showing a short extract…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=122p27Z_6B8

“Parvas, Agonh grammh” ΠΑΡΒΑΣ ΑΓΟΝΗ ΓΡΑΜΜΗ – Film Homepage

We thanked our friend Kostas, took a photo of him promising a copy and paid our bill to Dina, the daughter of the legendary Parvas and left. What a sense of a sweet nostalgia … next time you pass by it, have a coffee and if you see him there, ask friendly Mr. Kostas to tell you this story all over again…

Sylvia

Location

Nigel McGilchrist

Amorgos – July 26th, 2011 – The Scottish scholar and art historian Nigel McGilchrist who has lived and worked in the Mediterranean area – Italy, Greece and Turkey – for over 30 years, has self-published a 20-part book edition on the Aegean islands – an undertaking of epic proportions.

The Amorgos Island Magazine is proud to announce a partnership with Nigel McGilchrist’s publishing activities to present his books to you and enrich the Magazine’s content from his publications.

About Nigel’s Greek Island Guide

Every publisher’s nightmare? Or every reader’s dream? When the publisher Blue Guides asked Nigel McGilchrist, to write a guide to the Greek islands, it never expected what it got – a manuscript that ran to nearly 600,000 words, three times the agreed length.

For lovers of the Aegean, it is as close to being the definitive guidebook to the region as you are ever going to get. There is no volume on Crete, because there is already a Blue Guide to Crete; and Corfu and the Ionian Islands, to the east of mainland Greece, will have to wait for another day.

But the islands of the Aegean – 70-odd in all, some barely inhabited, others popular tourist destinations – are charted in loving detail. From Kos to Rhodes, from Chios to Lesbos, from the Northern Dodecanese to the Lesser Cyclades, McGilchrist does not miss a trick.

The practicalities are all there: how to get to each island, where to stay, where to eat. But it is the other stuff, the richly textured descriptions of the landscape and the main archaeological sites, littered with learned footnotes, that makes the series so rewarding.

One of Nigels’ favourite Islands is Amorgos (Book No. 20).

Amorgos, the easternmost island of the Cyclades, he recommends as having something for everyone. “It provides stunning natural beauty, lots of historical interest and is not much visited or known.”
Writing about the History of Amorgos (see original text), Nigel goes into geographic and historic details about Minoa, Chora, Hozoviotissa, Varsamitis, Markiani, Kamari, Arkesini, Aigiali, Langada, Tholaria, …

About Nigel McGilchrist

Nigel was a scholar at Winchester College and at Merton College, Oxford. At Oxford he graduated with First Class Honours and won three University prizes and medals in Literature and in Art.

As an art historian, he lectures widely in art and archaeology at museums and institutions both in Europe and in the United States. He worked for a period for the Italian Government’s Ministry of Arts as an external consultant in the field of wall-painting conservation, at the time that the Vatican was embarking on its controversial cleaning of the Sistine Chapel. He was Director of the Anglo-Italian Institute in Rome for six years, taught at the University of Rome, for the University of Massachusetts and was for seven years Dean of the joint Faculty of European Studies for a consortium of American Universities and Colleges. In recent years he has been lecturing at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC and at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art in California.

Nigel has served on the Board of Editors of the Blue Guides series, the world’s oldest English-language cultural and artistic guides, and has contributed extensively to several of the new editions on Greece and Italy. Over the last six years he has walked every path and village of the sixty inhabited Greek Aegean islands in order to prepare a completely new survey-guide of their archaeology, history and art – published in abbreviated form as the Blue Guide to the Aegean Islands and in complete version as the twenty volumes of McGilchrist’s Greek Islands. He has lived and worked in the Mediterranean area – Italy, Greece and Turkey – for thirty years and now lives near Orvieto in Italy where he produces olive oil and red wine.

To get more information and to buy the books visit Nigel’s Website McGilchrist’s GREEK ISLANDS.

Twenty Books, Seventy Islands, A hundred and twenty maps & plans, Three thousand four hundred pages. “For lovers of the Aegean, it is as close to being the definitive guidebook to the region as you are ever going to get.” Daily Telegraph.

Pricing: single book GBP 7.95, all 20 Titles GBP 100 (unboxed), GBP 120 (boxed), free P & P within Europe!

Nigel McGilchrists - Greek Islands - full edition

Panagis Chrysovergis

Amorgos – July 18th, 2011 – Panagis a mechanical engineer from Athens changed his traditional job to photograpy. He is now “married” with photography and hopes that “we are going to have a lot of children (nice pictures) and one day to be a member of magnum photos.” He likes to take pictures “because i have a problem, i see pictures…all the time…in my every life… and believe me its a big problem, because i am very sad when i dont have with me my canon…”

Panagis came to Amorgos first time last summer and fell in love with the island: “the reason is one and only. its beauty in everything … places, sea, humans”.

Thank you Panagis for offering your beautiful pictures to the Amorgos Island Magazine!

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Honestly,  I would go through the exhausting travel all over again because what was waiting for me and my 15 years old daughter Yasmin was beyond our expectations!

During the 8 days, based in Katapola we were hiking trails, visiting villages, exploring beaches and ruins  but especially experiencing the precious gift of the Island its  ”φιλοξενία” … hospitality!
And this reminds me of when we drove South and in the heat of the day, hungry and thirsty we reached the small farming village of KOLOPHANA.

Tavern Delfini, Kolophana, Kato Meria

Looking for a place to eat we noticed a woman waving at us from her little taverna named DELFINI! The sweet owner, Sophia  welcomed us  with her biggest smile and set our table on the small terrace overlooking fields, while we were still parking the car!!!

It was only me and my daughter and without even asking for it, we found two bottles of fresh water waiting for us and she prepared excellent vegetarian food and the most delicious fermented goat cheese plate. She surprised my daughter with an extra portion of home made french fries  and fresh slices of watermelon for both of us! We hugged and took photos before leaving that little special spot in the middle of nowhere!

If you go there, she will certainly invite you to sign on her Guestbook along with a collection of greatful travelers on the road who have been blessed like us to stop by her Delfini and enjoy her simple and earthy food! My daughter helped her and created a sign for her “At Delfini you eat well” written in Italian!

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While you are driving down south … don’t miss this experience of beautiful Greek hospitality!

Sylvia Alberti

Tavern DELFINI
Kato Meria, Kolofana
Tel. + 30 22850 72244

Location map

Ingredients

• Small sized zucchini – the smaller the more aromatic
• Olive oil
• Salt
• Fresh coarse-grounded pepper
• Lemon – juice and grated rind

How to

1. Wash and cut off the ends of the zucchini
2. Heat up a large saucepan, half filled with salted water.
3. When water boils, add the zucchini and boil till they are „al dente“. Check with a fork to see when it passes through the skin with ease.
4. Remove on a plate, half each and serve hot with salt, pepper, lemon juice, some grated lemon rind and olive oil.

Καλή όρεξη!

Zucchini – courgette, κολοκυθάκι [:kolokitháki] – like all squash, has its ancestry in the Americas. However, the varieties of squash typically called “zucchini” were developed in Italy, many generations after their introduction from the “New World”.

Zucchini are usually picked when under 20 cm (8 in.) in length, when the seeds are still soft and immature. Mature zucchini can be as much as three feet long, but the larger ones are often fibrous and with the flowers attached are a sign of a truly fresh and immature fruit, and are especially sought by many people.

The zucchini fruit is low in calories (approximately 15 food calories per 100 g fresh zucchini) and contains useful amounts of folate , potassium, vitamin A and manganese.