Danielle Grant and her husband Russell with their daughter in Greece (Image: Danielle Grant/SWNS)
A woman who swapped the UK for Greece has shared five aspects of her former life in Britain that she’s glad to leave behind. Danielle Grant, together with her husband Russell and their daughter, who was only three months old at the time, relocated from Essex to Crete in November 2024 after growing “sick” of life in the UK.
Danielle and Russell had previously holidayed in Crete, and celebrated their honeymoon there in 2023. It was during that trip that they began searching for property on the island, ultimately completing the move the following year. Now Danielle, who boasts more than 7,600 followers on Instagram, where she frequently offers glimpses into her new life, has revealed five things about the UK she’s happy to be without.
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Danielle Grant with her daughter in Greece (Image: Danielle Grant/SWNS)
In the post she wrote: “Five things I DON’T miss about the UK and why I think Greece does it better.”
She began: “In London it takes one hour to move three miles… and somehow everyone accepts this as normal behaviour. Meanwhile in Greece, traffic is so rare that if there’s six cars at a junction people start apologising for the ‘rush hour’.”
However, some commenters pointed out that this doesn’t apply across the whole of Greece, with congestion in major cities such as Athens considerably worse than on the islands. One said: “Traffic in Athens, which would be the accurate comparison with London, is insane.”
Danielle continued: “UK coffee tastes like overpriced bean water. £6 for a latte that emotionally disappoints you. Meanwhile Greece gave us the freddo espresso… which might actually be one of humanity’s greatest inventions.”
Despite its name, the freddo espresso bears no relation to the beloved frog-shaped chocolate bar. It is, in fact, a variety of iced coffee prepared with freshly-brewed espresso, reports the Mirror.
Danielle’s following observation was an fairly obvious one. “The UK gets about three weeks of sunshine a year and everyone loses their minds immediately,” she said. “I can’t do the grey skies at 2pm any more! Greece gets around 260 days of sunshine a year and honestly? My nervous system says thank you daily.”
She went on: “The UK feels like: work, stress, traffic, repeat. In Greece people actually LIVE. Long dinners, family time, slow mornings, coffee with friends, kids playing outside at 10pm in the summer. Nobody acting like life is a race… They understand life is supposed to be felt… not just survived.”
Her concluding point centred on food. “In the UK you need a small business loan to buy decent organic meat,” she said. “Here in Greece fresh food is everywhere. Local meat, local eggs, local olive oil, real ingredients. And because island life is more connected to the land, food actually tastes like FOOD. Funny how eating real food and seeing the sun changes your entire mood.”
Concluding, Danielle said: “Moving to Greece didn’t just change my location… it changed my nervous system, my health, my happiness, and the way I experience life. Turns out… slower mornings, sunshine, good food, and actually living life outside does heal parts of you you didn’t even realise were exhausted. I didn’t need ‘more’. I just needed different.”
The couple have previously revealed their three-bedroom villa with a pool in Greece costs £300 a month less than the one-bedroom flat they left behind in the UK. “We want to give our daughter the best quality of life possible and whatever country that takes us to, that’s where we’ll end up,” Danielle added.