Dimitra’s Diary
The Authentic Greek Summer Is Fading Away
A love letter to the childhood summers I spent in Preveza, to my grandparents, and to the slower, simpler Greece we are quietly leaving behind.
Before Greek summer became a destination, a moodboard or a booking made months in advance, it was a KTEL ticket, nearly three months away from home, swims counted like trophies, fish caught that morning and afternoons behind half-closed shutters.
This is the Greek summer I remember.
The Boat That Carried an Entire Childhood
My grandfather Thomas and a friend repairing Lefki, the small wooden fishing boat he built by hand. It would later carry us across the Ambracian Gulf for fishing trips, swims at Aktio and quiet sunset rides—the kind of ordinary moments that became the finest memories of my childhood.
Chapter One
When Summer Began with a KTEL Bus
When school finished around the middle of June, my sister and I knew that summer had officially begun. My parents worked through most of the season, so the two of us would board a KTEL bus and travel to Preveza, where our grandparents were waiting for us.
Those who know, know. The KTEL journey was not merely transport. It was the passage between ordinary life and the long, seemingly endless freedom of summer.
We did not stay for a carefully planned week or a ten-day holiday. We arrived in June and remained there until the schools reopened in September—two and a half, sometimes almost three, uninterrupted months with our grandparents.
We did not go on holiday. We went to our village.
It may be difficult to understand now, but working- and middle-class Greek families did not usually travel in the way many families do today. There were no complicated island itineraries, boutique hotels or reservations made months in advance.
You went to your village—provided you had one, and were lucky enough to be welcomed there.
We were particularly fortunate because our “village” was not really a village at all. It was Preveza: a proper town with an old centre, neighbourhood shops, a harbour, castles and beaches close enough to reach on foot or by bicycle.
The Place Where Summer Properly Began
The clock tower and Agios Charalambos in the centre of Preveza. Arriving in town meant that the school year—and life as we knew it for the rest of the year—had been left behind.
Our Village Was a Town by the Sea
Downtown Preveza, where narrow streets, neighbourhood shops and shaded tables formed the backdrop to everyday life. It offered us the familiarity of a village and the freedom of a seaside town at once.
Preveza gave us both worlds. It had the closeness and freedom of village life, yet it also had the sea. We could walk through town, cycle beyond it, swim twice in one day and return home only when evening began to soften the heat.
And for almost three months, it belonged entirely to us.
Chapter Two
We Counted Swims, Not Days
In the mornings, my grandmother Ariadne would take us to Kyani Akti for a swim. We walked there from the house, following a route that became so familiar I could probably have traced it with my eyes closed.
Along the way, we passed an old castle that was then being used as a military camp. To my childhood eyes, its stone walls seemed enormous and mysterious—the sort of place that could belong as easily to a story as to the town around us.
The walk, the heat, the first glimpse of the water and the moment we finally reached the beach were all part of the ritual. We did not need a car, a packed itinerary or a reservation.
We simply put on our swimsuits, left the house with our grandmother and walked towards the sea.
We were not collecting photographs or recommendations. We were collecting swims.
We counted every swim with tremendous seriousness. Sometimes we went in the morning and returned again in the afternoon, partly because we loved the sea and partly because both visits counted.
When school began again in September, one of the first questions children asked one another was: “How many swims did you do this summer?”
We wanted to return with an impressive number. It was our own summer competition, measured not in kilometres travelled or places visited, but in mornings and afternoons spent in the sea.
The Beach We Walked To
Kyani Akti in Preveza, reached on foot from my grandparents’ house with my grandmother Ariadne. We often returned for a second swim in the afternoon, determined to add one more to our summer total.
The Castles That Framed Preveza
Pantokratoras Castle, one of the coastal fortresses that shape Preveza’s landscape. It is not the castle we passed on our exact route to Kyani Akti, but it carries the same sense of stone, sea and childhood mystery I remember.
It sounds like such a small thing now, but the number mattered enormously to us. Each swim made summer feel fuller, longer and somehow more successful.
We did not count how many days were left. We counted how many times we had entered the sea.
Chapter Three
My Grandfather’s Little White Boat
My grandfather Thomas was a carpenter—a real craftsman, from a generation of people who seemed able to make almost anything with their own hands.
To me, he was a genius.
He had built his own small wooden fishing boat and named her Lefki. She was painted white, practical and completely unpretentious. She was not a yacht or a pleasure boat of the kind that now fills Greek marinas.
She was a proper little fishing boat, made to work, to cross the Ambracian Gulf and to return home carrying whatever the sea had offered that morning.
There was nothing impressive about it by today’s standards. And perhaps that is precisely why it was so beautiful.
Sometimes my grandfather allowed us to go fishing with him. Other days, he took us beyond Preveza for a swim or carried us across the Gulf towards Aktio.
Lefki was small enough for us to feel close to the water. We could see the rocks beneath the surface and, in the clearest shallows, the dark sea urchins resting on the seabed.
There was no polished deck, no music and no sense that the journey had to be turned into an experience. The boat itself, my grandfather beside us and the water opening ahead were more than enough.
A Fishing Boat, Not a Yacht
A visual recreation of the kind of small wooden fishing boat I remember from my childhood in Preveza. Practical, handmade and close enough to the water for us to watch the rocky seabed and sea urchins passing beneath us.
When the Light Began to Change
Some of my clearest memories are not of fishing at all, but of being in the boat as the sun began to fall.
The Ambracian Gulf would darken beneath us while the sky turned gold. We sat inside that tiny wooden boat and watched the light stretch across the water as we made our way home.
At the time, it felt like an ordinary evening. I did not know that one day I would try so hard to remember every detail.
Sunset on the Ambracian Gulf
The light over the Ambracian Gulf, recalling the quiet evening rides we took in my grandfather’s fishing boat. No music, no polished deck—only the wooden boat, the sea and the setting sun.
What once seemed like an ordinary little boat now feels like one of the great treasures of my childhood.
Chapter Four
Beyond the Town, the Coast Opened Up
Kyani Akti was our everyday beach, the one we could reach on foot. But some days took us beyond the familiar route and outside Preveza, towards long stretches of coast that seemed almost endless to us as children.
Monolithi was one of those places. Its long beach, open horizon and deep blue water felt entirely different from the small, sheltered coves closer to town.
We did not think of these outings as excursions to a famous destination. There were no lists telling us where to go, no reservations and no need to prove that we had been there.
It was simply another place to swim, dry beneath the sun and return home with salt still on our skin.
A Beach That Seemed to Go On Forever
Monolithi, one of the best-known beaches near Preveza, with its long shoreline and uninterrupted view of the Ionian Sea. For us, it was not an attraction to visit but another piece of the summer landscape we believed would always remain unchanged.
The beaches were not destinations. They were part of everyday life.
Chapter Five
My Grandmother Ariadne’s Kitchen
My grandmother Ariadne was the finest cook I have ever known. She is almost certainly the reason I came to love good food, beautiful ingredients and cooking as much as I do today.
Whatever she made was magical. Not complicated, not presented with ceremony and certainly never described as gourmet. Her food relied on instinct, patience and ingredients that tasted exactly as they should.
Fresh fish from my grandfather’s boat appeared on the table almost every day. There were mussels from the Ambracian Gulf and the extraordinary fish soups my grandmother prepared without ever appearing to consult a written recipe.
My grandfather would take his bicycle and go almost daily to the market in the old town. He returned with what was fresh, local and available that morning. The menu began with the ingredient—not with a photograph, a trend or a recipe saved online.
Her recipes were simple. Recreating them is anything but.
Her cooking belonged to a Greece in which the food had travelled only a short distance. The fish came from the Gulf, the courgettes and aubergines came from the garden, and the herbs smelled of something before they reached the plate.
She did not measure everything precisely. She watched, tasted and knew. That sort of knowledge is difficult to inherit because so much of it lives inside the hands of the person cooking.
Of all the dishes she prepared, the one I remember most vividly is also one of the simplest: gambares with tiny courgettes.
From Ariadne’s Kitchen
Gambares with Baby Courgettes
A traditional Preveza dish made with whole prawns from the Ambracian Gulf, tender young courgettes, garlic and parsley. No tomato. The deep orange-red juices come entirely from the prawns.
The Recipe I Still Cannot Recreate
Gambares from the Ambracian Gulf cooked with tiny, tender courgettes, garlic and parsley. The deep orange-red cooking juices contain no tomato—the colour comes entirely from the prawns as they simmer. This is the dish I remember most clearly from my grandmother Ariadne’s kitchen.
A family recipe from Preveza
Ariadne’s Gambares with Baby Courgettes
The quantities are intentionally flexible, as they would have been in my grandmother’s kitchen. What matters most is using the freshest whole prawns and the smallest, most tender courgettes you can find.
Ingredients
- 800 g to 1 kg very fresh whole gambares or large shell-on prawns, thoroughly washed
- 700–800 g very small, tender baby courgettes, left whole
- 2 garlic cloves, thinly sliced or lightly crushed
- 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- Approximately 150 ml water, or only enough to help the ingredients simmer
- Fine sea salt, to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- A small handful of fresh parsley, finely chopped
- Plenty of fresh bread, for serving
Method
- Wash the whole prawns very thoroughly and allow them to drain. Wash the baby courgettes and leave them whole. They should be as small and tender as possible.
- Heat the olive oil gently in a wide, shallow pan. Add the garlic and cook very lightly, just until fragrant. Do not allow it to brown.
- Add the whole prawns and sauté them for only a few minutes, turning carefully, until their shells become an intense orange-red and the kitchen begins to smell of the sea.
- Add the whole baby courgettes and enough water to create a shallow layer of cooking liquid. This is not a soup, and it should not become a thick sauce.
- Cover loosely and simmer over medium-low heat until the courgettes are completely tender and have absorbed the colour and flavour released by the prawns. Turn them carefully once or twice without breaking them.
- Taste the cooking juices and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Remember that the prawns may already bring natural salinity to the dish.
- Remove the pan from the heat and scatter the finely chopped parsley over everything.
- Serve immediately in a shallow dish with plenty of fresh bread for the deep orange-red juices.
I have tried to recreate this dish many times. The method is not difficult and the ingredient list could hardly be shorter, yet it never tastes exactly the same.
Perhaps the prawns are different. Perhaps the courgettes are no longer small or tender enough. Perhaps the flavour belonged to the garden, the Gulf, the old kitchen and the person standing over the pan.
Sometimes a recipe survives, but part of its magic remains with the person who made it.
Chapter Six
The Taste of an Earlier Greece
My grandfather took his bicycle and went almost every day to the market in the old town. He bought what the kitchen needed, what looked good and what had arrived fresh that morning.
Food shopping was not an event or a weekly expedition. It was part of the rhythm of the day—the bicycle, the market, the familiar shopkeepers and the return home with bags hanging from the handlebars.
There was no Parmesan or mozzarella in my grandmother’s kitchen. There was Dodoni feta, Dodoni milk in its triangular carton and kefalograviera grated over pasta tossed with fresh, fragrant butter.
There was no Nutella. There was Merenda. Chocolate meant Pavlidis dark chocolate or ION with almonds. The ice creams we counted our coins for were EVGA, and the little chocolate cake we loved was called pontikaki.
We did not feel deprived of choice. We felt at home.
My grandfather would also send me to buy his magazines: Radiotileorasi, Romantso and Thisavros. Their titles, the chocolate wrappers, the triangular milk carton and the striped awnings of the local shops now hold an entire period of Greek life inside them.
These details may seem insignificant. To me, they contain a complete summer: the small errand, the coins in my hand, the walk through town and the certainty that the same familiar things would still be there the following day.
The Market Was Part of the Rhythm
The neighbourhood shops of central Preveza, recalling the almost-daily journey my grandfather made by bicycle to buy whatever was fresh and needed for the family table.
Streets That Still Felt Like Neighbourhoods
Seitan Pazar in the old centre of Preveza. The streets were not arranged as attractions; they were places where people shopped, talked, stopped for coffee and recognised one another.
It was a Greece with fewer choices and much less novelty. We ate the same chocolate, bought the same milk and returned to the same shops. Nothing had to be constantly replaced by something newer.
Pleasure came from familiarity, repetition and the comfort of knowing exactly what something would taste like.
The same walk. The same shop. The same ice cream. The same feeling of being exactly where we belonged.
Chapter Seven
The House with the Palm Tree
Although my grandparents’ house stood in the centre of Preveza, it had a remarkably large garden. In it stood the great palm tree that seemed to define the whole property. People knew it simply as the house with the palm tree.
My grandfather kept a proper garden there, with tomatoes, courgettes and aubergines growing in the heat of summer. There were also chickens—my first pets, if chickens can be called pets.
I spent so much time around the chicken coop that, on one occasion, I even managed to come back covered in chicken mites. At the time, this seemed like a perfectly natural occupational hazard of childhood.
The house gave us the kind of freedom children rarely have now. We moved between the garden, the yard, the coop and the house itself without needing to be constantly entertained or supervised.
The Neighbourhood Where Summer Lived
Old-town Preveza, recalling the atmosphere of the neighbourhood where my grandparents’ house once stood—a house remembered for its garden, its chickens and the palm tree everyone recognised.
You cannot simply relocate a garden, a palm tree and several generations of family life into an apartment.
At midday, the house fell quiet. The shutters were left half-closed, the rooms darkened against the heat and the sound outside belonged almost entirely to the cicadas. Then, later in the day, everything began again with a bicycle ride, another swim or an evening outing.
The old house no longer exists. A road was eventually built where it once stood, and my grandparents had to leave the family home and move into an apartment building. It was a house that had belonged to the family for generations, and I think something in them broke when it disappeared.
It was never just a building. It was the garden, the palm tree, the chickens, the vegetables, the routines and the quiet certainty that this place had always been ours.
Some homes disappear physically long before they disappear from memory.
Chapter Eight
The People Who Made That Summer Home
A place is never only its streets, its beaches or its buildings. The Preveza I loved existed because my grandparents were there.
My grandfather Thomas gave us the boat, the fish, the bicycle rides and the sense that almost anything could be made or repaired by hand. My grandmother Ariadne gave us the kitchen, the table, the flavours and the feeling that there would always be something extraordinary waiting beneath an ordinary saucepan lid.
They gave us almost three months of freedom every year without ever describing it as freedom. They were simply looking after their grandchildren while our parents worked.
We did not know that the life surrounding us was disappearing. We thought the house, the boat, the garden and the people inside them would always be there.
We thought we were simply spending the summer. In reality, we were being given an entire childhood.
From the Family Archive
The Faces Behind Every Memory
My Grandfather Thomas
A carpenter, craftsman and the builder of Lefki. To everyone else, he may have been an ordinary working man. To me, he could make almost anything and seemed nothing short of a genius.
The Hands That Built Lefki
My grandfather Thomas and a friend working on the little wooden boat he built himself. Lefki later carried us across the Ambracian Gulf, although here she was still taking shape beneath their hands.
A Celebration at the Old House
Members of my family gathered for a celebration in the garden of the old house in Preveza. The house is gone now, but this photograph preserves something of the life that once filled it.
My Grandmother Ariadne
One of the last photographs of my grandmother, taken with me and Angelos only a few months before she passed away. Even here, much later, she remains exactly where I remember her: at the centre of us.
The Preveza I Remember No Longer Exists
I have not returned to Preveza for many years. Nothing physically draws me there now except the memory of those childhood summers. The people, the house and the life that made the town mine are gone.
Perhaps that is why I hesitate to return. Not because Preveza means too little to me, but because it means too much.
I imagine Kyani Akti filled with beach bars. I imagine the old taverna serving a reimagined village salad and the bicycles slowly giving way to cars. I imagine the little fishing boats surrounded by yachts and the local food we once ate every day presented as something rare and luxurious.
Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps much of it remains exactly where I left it. But even if the streets and beaches are unchanged, I know that my version of Preveza cannot be found there anymore.
It existed inside a particular house, at a particular table, with my grandparents waiting for us to arrive in June.
The authentic Greek summer may be fading, but fragments of it remain: in a recipe, a faded photograph, the sound of cicadas, a wooden boat and the memory of curtains moving behind half-closed shutters.
Greek summer, where are you?
Dimitra
