Every time someone visits your website, information is recorded. How they got there. What device they used. Which pages they looked at. How long they stayed. Where they went next.

Then I got a dog.

And my dog, it turns out, is the best creative director I've ever had.

If you've ever thought about running a half marathon — or if you've run one elsewhere and want to do it somewhere extraordinary — put the Athens Half Marathon on your list.

Not because it's the easiest course, though it is one of the flatter ones. Not because of the organisation, though it's excellent. But because running through this city, on closed roads, past its monuments and through its avenues, cheered on by the people who live here — it's one of those experiences that stays with you.

There are a lot of website platforms out there. I've worked with several of them. I build on Squarespace because, for small businesses, NGOs and individuals, it is genuinely the best option — and I'll tell you exactly why in a moment.

People don't just want a product or a meal anymore. They want to know who made it and why.

This is actually great news if you're running a small business, because that story — your story — is the one thing a large competitor can never replicate. A chain restaurant has no grandmother. A corporate hotel has no reason it had to be in this building on this street.

You do. Use it.

This is the Athens I know. It is a city that respects its heavy history but refuses to be defined purely by it. It’s a city building the future, one perfectly designed cafe, innovative startup, and creative project at a time.

Creativity needs input. It needs the world coming in before anything can go out. And some places give you more to work with than others.

Athens gives you an almost unfair amount to work with.

Athens is a walkable city in a way that surprises most visitors — the centre is compact, the hills give you your bearings, and the metro is clean, cheap, and takes you everywhere the feet don't.

The reason people fall in love with a city is never the monuments. It's the people running the small shop on the corner. The person who makes your coffee and remembers how you take it. The family who has been cooking the same recipes in the same kitchen for forty years.

Athens is full of those people. Full of them.