Kiriakou on travel
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Asked which country is the most beautiful, has the best food, is cheapest and is easiest to navigate, John Kiriakou calls it "a wonderful question" and answers each in turn.

Greece

He declares his bias immediately: "my favourite country is Greece. I go to Greece two, three times a year. I was there 2 weeks ago. I'm going again in 2 weeks. I'm going again in November. I was there in March, so four times this year." Greece also takes the food category outright, "hands down, no comparison. I eat like a pig when I'm there, and invariably, I always always lose weight."

The award is not unqualified. Speaking from Cyprus earlier the same year he gave the island's cheeses the advantage over the Greek ones, and reported having been talked out of frappé by a cousin in Rhodes on the ground that it is made from instant coffee, both set out at Kiriakou on Greek and Cypriot food.

Oman and Syria

For beauty he splits the question in two. Natural beauty goes to Oman, on the south-eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula: "You've never seen landscape like this before. Thousand-foot cliffs going right to the ocean. Incredible." He notes the local practice of camping at the top of the escarpments, where "The view is unlike anything you've ever seen before in your life."

For the beauty of a civilisation and its culture, "it's got to be Syria. You go to Damascus, and you're looking at stuff that's mentioned in the Bible, like by name. Damascus Gate, and there are cars driving through it." The example that struck him hardest is domestic: "there's this little house over here. That's the house where Saint Ananias lowered Saint Paul in a basket so he could escape from the Romans. It's just an incredible thing to see."

Chile

The cheapest country produces the longest story. On honeymoon at a Chilean vineyard, going through a tasting, Kiriakou asked for fun what the most expensive wine in the house was and was told it was the director's special private reserve, expensive, and locked up. "I said, 'Ah, we're on our honeymoon. Let's break open a bottle.'" The man returned with a ring of keys, opened the room, opened the bottle and poured. "we drink it and it's magnificent. And so I said to him, 'How much is it?' And he takes a calculator and he goes He goes, '$8.50.'"

Kiriakou's reply was "You guys have a really nice country here. You need to raise your prices." He bought a case of the wine, Concha y Toro, and shipped it home, where "The shipping cost more than the wine did."

Still going

He closes by noting he is not finished: he had visited Norway and Sweden for the first time two weeks earlier, is baffled to have missed Sweden for so long, and is going to Vietnam the following week, "I'll do the show from Vietnam. So I'm still out there exploring the world."

See also

- Oman
- Greek death rituals
- U.S. foreign policy process
