Editor’s Note: This week, the blog has been tagging along with fellow Cheapo Alex Christodoulides as she visits family in Cyprus. NEW YORK—For the first 17 years of my life, my panorama of Cyprus was the inside of my relatives’ homes. We would arrive “apo Ameriki” and immediately begin a whirl of lunches and dinners » Read more

Alex’s aunt sets the table for a Cypriot family dinner. Editor’s Note: This week, the blog will be tagging along with fellow Cheapo Alex Christodoulides as she visits family in Cyprus. Sure, the language spoken in Cyprus is Greek, but the accent is distinctive and so is the food. For one thing, Cyprus recently made » Read more

Photo by Alex Christodoulides Editor’s Note: This week, the blog will be tagging along with fellow Cheapo Alex Christodoulides as she visits family in Cyprus. Cyprus is on a modernizing rampage, wrestling on one side with its fairly recent history of colonial domination by the British, and on another side with its newly acquired European » Read more

Tourists visiting the ruins of ancient Athens will probably already be armed with a cheapo souvenir. Your archeological map (available for free or cheap) serves as both a necessary guide to the past and a fun souvenir for the future. Build your map collection in Athens Face it, if you’re planning to spend any time exploring Athens’ » Read more

It’s been many years since Athens and greater Greece experienced the Hellenic Dynasty, but today the city celebrates its ancient history with the annual Hellenic Festival. The festival, now in its 51st year, offers four months of events, from May through September. The line-up of this year’s Epidaurus Festival runs the gamut from professional stagings » Read more

We like fancy costumes. Bonus if that costume has pompoms and tassels. Major bonus points if said costume requires a snazzy red hat. So, it’s no secret then that we love to watch the changing of the Evzone Guard in Athens’ Syntagma Square. The elite Evzones make up an infantry unit stationed in Athens and meant to guard » Read more

Author, reporter, and NPR correspondent Scott Huler recently returned from an epic journey tracing the tale of Homer’s “Odyssey.” After reading “No-Man’s Lands,” his insightful recounting of the trip, we asked him for advice on planning a similar journey—on a budget. Scott had some great advice: When Odysseus set off on an epic voyage, he » Read more

Some items of note that flashed across our screen this week… Cheap eats in Roma It turns out we’re not the only ones blogging this week about cheap eats in Rome (read our post). Budget Travel’s blog is talking up cheap lunches in the Eternal City. Erica Firpo writes from Rome that we should say » Read more