MYKONOS CONFIDENTIAL: The Curse of Lindsay Lohan, the week a Greek minister became American and best of all, a new hotel goes for the bold in Santorini
...oops, we meant Patras! Can you forgive us?
If you were bold enough to go to Mykonos this summer and can actually remember it, you probably weren’t going to the right parties. Right about now, as the superyachts make their final forays to Ornos Bay, discharging their odious cargo, oligarchs and others to annoyingly designed, ink-thirsty beach clubs like Scorpios, and the rich Arabs decamp again to Dubai, it’s time to take stock of stuff like Lindsay Lohan and real estate.
Let it be recalled that Lohan had a beach club in Mykonos not too long ago, and an MTV reality show to go along with it. Both tanked, and the last time I checked the beach club where she famously shimmied for five seconds the club was lying in a state of ruins, sort of like the Acropolis but without the archaeological thing: just locked-down tables and chairs and defunct menus sticking out from the sand like paper phantoms.
The same stretch of sand, as fate would have it, where the young Mayor of Mykonos, Konstantinos Koukas, was briefly arrested over the summer amidst controversy about some legal-not-legal beach construction. The beach is called Kalo Livadi and it has a history of relatively pointless conflict: after all, it’s where Lindsay was dumped by some Russian dude, which led directly to her launching her failed club on the very spot of the altercation: revenge is a dish best served with an overpriced Greek salad and a sea view, apparently.
The construction was undertaken by the Aegon Mykonos hotel, part of Marriott’s vaunted Autograph Collection and situated behind the beach. We wonder if word ever got back to Bethesda-based Marriott about these shenanigans, which do nothing to enhance the stature of Kalo Livadi: the Curse of Lindsay Lohan? You could make the case for it, but it does seem to us that what set this unfortunate turn of events in motion was Lohan’s abrupt departure from Mykonos for her beloved and dictatorial Dubai—but do give her credit, she pulled a Kabul long before it became fashionable!
SPEAKING OF THINGS AMERICAN…the Times of Israel reports that the new Greek health minister, Thanos Plevris, has apologized over past antisemitic remarks. Plevris’s father Constantinos was once charged with incitement to racist hatred over a book called “Jews: The Whole Truth.” AsTOI reported, “the elder Plevris had appeared to advocate for keeping Auschwitz, the former Nazi death camp, ‘in good condition’ allegedly for the day it would again serve to kill Jews.” I haven’t read the book, but imagine Plevris Senior must have been plenty pissed to learn that a band of Thessaloniki Jews did more than any other concentration camp inmates to blow up one of the gas chambers. Now, the younger Plevris had defended his racist father (father issues much?), but ah, has now “apologized.” On Facebook, so it’s all good!
Worth noting that America’s main export these days is the Scripted Phony Apology, and Plevris has capably taken a page out of that playbook. Also worth noting that Plevris Senior’s book describes Konstantinos as a "Nazi, fascist, racist, anti-democrat, anti-Semite," and that he also apparently penned a book condemning homosexuals—i.e., pretty much the whole of ancient Greece excluding Sappho. Oh wait, probably including Sappho. Anyway, sure sounds like a nice family! Anyone want care to remind the fair House of Plevris that Zeus was gay, and probably Jewish? Oy fucking vey.
GO BOLD OR GO HOME…So you travel listicle-reading snobs only know from Corfu and maybe Zakynthos, we get it and we love it, but first of all we are no great fans of Corfu: just too close to Albania for comfort! Possibly oppressively genteel! And in Zakynthos there is a paucity of good places to stay—at last count, we identified only two. Which brings is to nearby Patras, Greece’s third largest city and a major westward-facing port. In Patras, they know how to party and keep it real too. And The Bold Type hotel has just opened there. Sources tell us this is a five-star boutique hotel set in a building dating back to the 19th century attractively renovated to its former glory reflecting the local culture and history. The hotel has four floors and a total of 10 rooms and suites, a magnificent garden and restaurant with weekly open air cinema nights and hosts art exhibitions of local artists and authors—not including, we hope, any so-called author from the House of Plevris.
We suggest you drive from Athens (grab your rental car here) or fly to Kalamata and head up to Patras from there. Stay two nights, chill, then visit Zakynthos or Kefalonia.