CRAIG BROWN: Acropolis now - off the beaten track in Greece
Your unmissable, essential Guide To The Greek Islands of ancient myth.
KIOSK
Measuring 3ft 6in by 7ft, Kiosk is the smallest of the Greek Isles, but comes surprisingly well-stocked with street maps, cigarettes, magazines and cheaper items of confectionery.
The perfect holiday destination for those who prefer to stay in one place, and ideal, too, for those looking to buy British Sunday newspapers on the following Thursday.
IKEA
A range of hotels recently opened on the popular Isle of Ikea. 'It's a whole new concept in luxury accommodation, designed for guests in search of something that little bit different,' boasts the brochure.
On arrival, guests are awarded a free set of Allen keys to help them assemble their bed, chair, table and shower curtains. Explanatory diagrams, complete with arrows pointing in all directions, are provided free of charge.
The island of Ikea offers plenty of useful activities, from pick-your-own-fruit farms to restaurants in which customers are given coal and matches, a string of sausages and easy-to-assemble cooking utensils.
Those wishing to embark on a sunset cruise around the bay may hire transport, but remember to allow two-to-three hours to inflate your lilo.
TYPOS
'Welmoce To Typos Airpot' reads the banner that greets tourists. Well-placed signs direct visitors to Car Prak, Trans, Currants Exchang, Lungage Pig-Up and Dirty Free.
There's plenty to do on the island, including water-spots, hopping and crazy glof. Hellcopter rides are heavily boked.
Typos is an isle of cotnrasts, with indrustial cities to the nroth, and rolling pills to the south. Luxury accomodation is provided by the Majestic, a five-rats muxury hotel.
PARANOIA
With its palm trees regularly swaying a full 180 degrees in the wind and its waves offering a once-in-a-lifetime experience to the unwary bather, the sun-drenched Isle of Paranoia is a must for those craving adventure.
Be sure to drive your hire car at breakneck speed along the famously zig-zagging northern cliff route.
The highways agency has thoughtfully placed irregular gaps in the clifftop barriers for those who wish to edge that little bit closer to catch sight of the sea crashing on to the rocks below.
The Isle of Paranoia is self-governed by the military, which enforces strict codes of behaviour. Shorts are to be worn only by those under six years of age; seniors apprehended in shorts and/or baseball caps will find themselves enjoying six hours in the picturesque stocks adjacent to the famous tomato market.
Important note for all tourists: two exit gates are to be found in the Paranoia Airport arrivals, letting visitors decide for themselves whether to go through Something To Declare or Something To Hide.
PATHOS
How many of these have you spotted so far? Six must-see sights on Pathos:
1) A one-eyed, three-legged dog called Lucky.
2) Liz Truss, complaining that Donald Trump still hasn't returned her call.
3) A clown fighting back tears.
4) A visitor centre, closed for the holidays.
5) A town crier who has lost his voice.
6) Liz Truss, boasting loudly over a tumbler of retsina that Rudy Giuliani has asked her to make herself available for dinner in November, on the off-chance that Huw Edwards can't make it.
ATMOS
The historic market town of Atmos prides itself on its multi-storey car park, statue of a 19th-century deputy mayor in a suit and tie, and a shopping mall boasting H&M, Gap, JD Sports and Walmart.
The town's three-star Hotel Reasonable offers a lunchtime buffet of food left over from the previous night's dinner, but with added parsley.
On no account miss the annual Neil Sedaka festival, this year hosted by Rylan Clark.
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A week on the Amalfi Coast in August for £532pp? Here's how
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Spectacular Scotland is unusually quiet right now. Make the most of it
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The survey, carried out by the Office for National Statistics for Visit Scotland, Visit Britain and Visit Wales, records the number and types of trips made by people travelling to and from the UK, and displayed a new record of 4.38 million visitors. This overtook pre-Covid tourism (the enduring benchmark for peak tourism figures) by 27 per cent, and 2023 by 10 per cent. Combined with a rise in the amount those tourists spend once they've arrived, Scotland outperformed all the other UK nations. What's more, despite the pressures of the cost of living and global market disruption, all indicators pointed towards another stellar year. But look closer, and there are signs of other emerging trends that could be making the country seem quieter while having a positive impact for visitors. There may be more people visiting, but they are spending less, according to VisitBritain's 2025 Inbound Tourism Forecast. 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Buck the trend and book ahead, but push for the best deal, especially midweek, when you might find you can negotiate added extras. The same goes for booking tickets forvisitor attractions, for which demand remains high among day-trippers as well as overseas visitors. And arm yourself with ideas from our list of oft-overlooked beautiful places that are quiet even at peak times. Where's your favourite place to visit in Scotland? Let us know in the comments below
Times
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I've just spent three marvellous days in Greece — sun, sea and some great friends, with whom I relished sharing precious downtime. I did not enjoy sharing my taramasalata. Each mealtime our group of six gather would around the same table — either at the hotel where we were staying or in local restaurants. As friends travelling together, of course we did. It was with a sinking heart, however, that I quickly realised we were to share our meals too, thanks to the pervasive — and frankly unwelcome — trend for 'sharing plates'. My joy at perusing each mealtime menu was tempered by the near certainty that my choice would not just be for me, but for all of us. A choice, no doubt, that my dining companions would instantly find more alluring than theirs, and which would fast disappear before my eyes, leaving me to dip into a selection of confusing and dissatisfying alternative mismatched 'bites'. The phrase 'for the table' has become the mantra of those with short-term tastebuds but is the curse of the single-minded diner; the gustatory deficit disorder that plagues our palate in the same way that the smartphone meddles with our minds. The culture of sharing plates is no longer limited to restaurants that specialise in suitable dishes — tapas, for example, or thali, where one can at least expect compatible flavours. In fact it's just one iteration of a wider trend for communal dining, a term applied to a range of set-ups, from disparate diners sharing food and tables, to restaurant guests sitting around a communal table eating individual à la carte orders. It is a veritable buffet of culinary experiences. That said, I can just about cope with starters 'for the table', when I can program my brain to accept dipping in and out of different dishes — I think of it as seated canapés. And puddings, well, I'll rarely have more than a spoonful anyway and it's often off my husband's plate. But main courses? If Iberico pork was meant to be eaten with vegetable biryani, it would come as a menu suggestion, not as carelessly deposited spoonfuls of incongruous flavours rattling around my dinner plate. Even worse, is the expectation that diners share elbow room with complete strangers along trestle tables, now common in even the most traditional of tavernas. It's all very lovely in theory. Meals out, whether on holiday or not, are often a celebratory, convivial affair. Why not share the love — and your food — with other people? Psychologists point to communal eating as a way to connect and to support mental health — the 2025 World Happiness Report ranks shared meals as one of the greatest factors in wellbeing, on a par with income and employment status. Research published in the journal of Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology suggests that social meals stimulate endorphins and are vital to connection with other people — a time when you are more likely to open up, swap stories and discuss ideas. This may well be true, but surely this doesn't mean being forced to sit with a group of strangers and pay for the dubious pleasure? Because, please, the conversation I most want to have over the rare treat of a meal out in an equally rare moment of downtime is with my husband or friend, not small talk with someone I don't know. The sceptic in me wonders if this is a case of providence disguised as preference — after all, those hotels and restaurants that offer it are not just benefiting from the economy of space (more customers per square metre) but from the novelty value too. A straw poll of my fellow Greece guests revealed that, unlike me, most were in favour of the sharing plate, although there was less enthusiasm for communal tables. Nearly all said that they would prefer to dine with their chosen companions than be seated with strangers. So who is it that is feeding this pernicious trend? • 16 of the best quiet Greek islands Back in the London office, I'm surrounded by 'people people' who proclaim to love a shared table. 'It's a study in psychology and I love it!' says one such minded colleague. 'Watching marital breakdown over a schnitzel is my favourite pastime,' she adds. 'I can always spot the signs.' (I too can spot said signs, but prefer to do so from at least a table's distance. Still, each to their own.) There are places, I acknowledge — beyond the family meal or domestic dinner party — where it works, by and large, where every diner eats the same menu, at the same time, and often has a shared experience too. Take, for example, a safari. Here, it's essential. How else can you effectively download the wonder of your game drives and those of your fellow campers? (Or, if you're unlucky with your cohort, trade information on house prices in London, Suffolk and the Cotswolds?) Similarly, communal dining has long been a customary part of the cruise ship experience, particularly river cruises, and is something passengers are almost uniformly enthusiastic about. Here, forewarned is forearmed, and with a greater pool of people to play with (or avoid) there are ways for even the uninitiated to enhance their experience. These are, I'm reliably informed: get to dinner five minutes before the restaurant opens to occupy a seat that's near the window with a view. Prime positioning is important because you may find that people want to sit in the same place every night, but remember, it's first come, first seated. If your first night found you alongside international-level competitive travel bores intent on proving that they've been to more places than you, you are going to want to know your table rights for the next night. But, Wendy Atkin-Smith, the managing director of Viking UK, says, such lengths are rarely required, and in fact these tables are where lifelong friends are made on board. 'Our river ships offer a very intimate experience and our guests all get to know each other very quickly,' she says. 'Our communal tables are very popular and are definitely part of the whole river voyage experience — we don't have any kind of fixed seating so guests are at liberty to move around each evening to meet fellow travellers in a very relaxed and convivial setting.' But what of hotel restaurants — those rarefied centres of intimacy, of romantic dinners, of illicit encounters, and of well-deserved quality family time. Why would they want to mix it up with one big table of potentially gastronomic and social discord? Well, it turns out they are often bringing people together around a shared experience too. For some, it's nothing new. Stuart Smith, the brand home manager at Glenmorangie House, a farmhouse-turned-boutique hotel for visitors to the distillery, says communal dining has been at the heart of its Highland hospitality for 30 years. 'Our dinner party format fosters a uniquely warm and convivial atmosphere,' he says. 'We've even seen groups who first met around our table continue to reunite here every few years, a testament to the enduring bonds formed in this special setting.' Others are doing it to create connections with the past. Flore, the restaurant at De l'Europe in Amsterdam which reopened in April after a makeover, has created a communal table crafted from a single elm felled not far from the hotel. 'It creates a connection between guests and the city's natural heritage,' says chef Bas van Kranen. 'Seating has been designed to allow solo diners, couples, groups of four, and larger parties to all sit together around the same table. The communal table experience pairs diners randomly, they don't get to choose their seat — we find that this breaks down the traditional barriers of fine dining in a way that brings people together rather than isolating them.' At Killiehuntly Farmhouse in the Cairngorms, part of the Wildland conservation network, guests in the main house begin their day together over bowls of porridge with cream and fresh berries at a long, scrubbed farmhouse table. At Lundies House, 120 miles further north in Lairg, dinner is more refined, but no less social. Here communal dining is not a gimmick but a way of life, Ruth Kramer, the head of design at Wildland, says. 'In an era of individualism, there's something quietly radical about sitting down with strangers to eat a meal. It's a gentle return to something older and simpler: the table as a place of welcome, nourishment and unexpected connection.' So I guess if, like me, you don't want an unexpected connection that goes beyond the food, then research before you reserve. Leave the trestle tables and the small plates for the more caring, sharing diners out there, and raise your glass to a summer of enjoying your own dish from the comfort of your own table. Do you enjoy communal dining or would you rather eat alone? Let us know in the comments below
