Places that stay with us
Places are more than destinations. They are encounters with different ways of living, remembering, eating, building and understanding the world.
This section explores places through culture, food, history, identity and everyday life—looking beyond what a visitor first sees to the perspectives that emerge when we spend enough time somewhere to notice what makes it distinct.
From Places
Essays and observations exploring culture, food, history, identity and the character of places—and what they can teach us about the world, and sometimes about home.
Cyprus: What I Saw Beyond a Divided Island
In 2008, I travelled to Cyprus to understand which businesses could survive the global financial crisis. What stayed with me was something far more human: the resilience of communities, the relationships that sustained small enterprises, and the cooperation I witnessed across an island often defined by its political divisions. Through one modest restaurant investment, I…
What Crete Taught Me About Home
I travelled to Greece during a time of economic crisis and found something the headlines could not measure. Through Crete’s stone houses, long meals, olive groves and inherited traditions, I began to understand how deeply a place can value what it has inherited—and why sometimes we must travel far from home to recognise the value…
