Paxos stuffing! A non-stop feast of meze, olives, beef, octopus, pork, tuna, salad and even broth made by monks

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I’m a sucker for a plate of meze, a glass or two of red, and a huge pile of whitebait, so I would have liked to have been at the Archduke’s side as he toured the island by foot for 18 months, recording and drawing everything he saw.

His book, Paxos And Antipaxos, is extraordinary. Ludwig gave out 100-page questionnaires to all the village elders and records diet, occupation, administration, taxation, geography, history, architecture, politics and more.

These things may seem irrelevant as you bask in the glorious sunshine and warm, clear waters, but while so much is unchanged, one thing is very different. ‘There are no vehicles on Paxos,’ Ludwig notes with admiration.

The road-builders who upgraded the island’s donkey tracks must have been from Devon, and Britons accustomed to one-track country roads will experience familiar frustrations, driving their tiny hire cars at the oncoming Alfa Romeos that treat the narrow lanes like their own personal race-tracks.

e496f336c153a46733722af747a72422 Paxos stuffing! A non-stop feast of meze, olives, beef, octopus, pork, tuna, salad and even broth made by monks

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