Where to begin... Because our trip to Greece was a bit longer than all of the others, I think I will spare you all the details and just give you the good, bad, unusual, scary, weird, etc. highlights from the trip. Overall, it was an amazing trip and I know Eric would agree that we most certainly had no desire to leave and return to gray, saturated London.
Friday night - we left Heathrow on a "red-eye" flight that put us into Athens at 2:30 a.m. We stayed at a very cool boutique hotel in the center of Athens called The Classical Baby Grand. The pictures should give you an idea of how unique and boutique it really was.
Saturday
We basically did all of Athens in a day. We visited: the Agora, Parthenon, Acropolis, the 1896 Olympic Stadium, the 2004 Olympic grounds, the Olympein and Arch. The Acropolis is quite a sight and very impressive. However, aside from the popular sights, Athens is quite a dump. Outside of the main tourist areas, it is almost scary. Graffiti is everywhere (sadly, even on landmarks) and in general just appears tired and rundown. We spoke to a local who said that the city was initially reinvigorated after winning the 2004 Olympic bid, but shortly after the close of the games, the city was back to the way it was before.
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| Construction at the Pantheon |
1 other interesting fact about Athens is that it never really rains there in the summer or fall. But...because the Wilson's were there, it sprinkled that night. It was actually so absurd, it was funny.
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| 1896 Olympic Track was cut into a hill. Fielding Yost must have been inspired. |
Sunday
Took a really early ferry to Santorini. Although it was high-speed, it took almost 5 hours to get there.
Arrived at the port and got a taxi to our guest house called Ikies (pronounced Ee-KEY-uhs) in Oia which is on the northern end of the island and has a reputation for beautiful sunsets. Santorini, in general, is more known for their views and sunsets as opposed to beaches. The main cities are perched on cliffs and therefore beach access is restricted to only the southern coast of the island. The island itself is quite small and can be driven around in just a few hours by ATV.
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| The stairwell at Ikies |
The views at Ikies were breathtaking. It was almost surreal how beautiful the surroundings were. It sat on the edge of Oia, overlooking the cliffs facing the Caldera. The staff could not have been more accommodating as well. We stayed there for lunch and sat buy the pool, offending the locals with our whiteness. Eventually we wandered into town, walking through the tourist-clogged walking streets. Everyone started to gather on the western-most facing cliffs to watch the sunset. Apparently this happens every night. We were still 1-2 hours away from sunset, so we walked down a steep stair path down to the water. Near the water were a few restaurants, but we decided to head back up to watch the sunset. There must have been 1,000 or so people gathered on the steep streets and when the sun went behind the clouds before reaching the horizon everyone gave a half-hearted applause. We wandered back into town and found Seagull Restaurant...long on the view, short on food and atmosphere. It overlooked three of the blue-domed churches made famous by numerous postcards.
Monday
We rented a 4-wheel ATV (aka by the locals as "quad-bikes"). We drove to the east part of the island to a beach town called Perivolas. We laid in some lounge chairs on the black sand beach all day and went for a swim or two in the sea. The most surprising thing for us was seeing so many people topless. I think it was a first for both of us. In the early evening, we explored the island on our ATV and headed to Fira for drinks and to watch the sunset. We landed at a place called Franco's which is one of the top 100 bars in the world. The drinks were ridiculously expensive so we drank (the one each that we had)slowly and quickly ate up all of the free snack mix. We chatted with a few Aussies who were on a 6 month trip around the world. It was so fascinating to hear where they were going and how they were trying to hit the big festivals in each of the countries. They had quite a trip ahead of them. I think we were a bit jealous.
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| Watching the sunset with thousand of others |
We left Fira and headed back to Oia. We ate in town at a place called Lithos. The food was good -Eric had Moussaka (basically the Greek combo of lasagna and shepherd's pie) and I had a spinach salad. The house muzak left something to be desired. They had one playlist that included Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" as the 1st and 3rd song followed by the theme songs from Ghost, and Top Gun. We enjoyed a leisurely meal and I am pretty sure we got through at least 2 rounds of the playlist.
After dinner we strolled back to our villa. Along the way, there was a live concert taking place along the footpath by one of the churches. It was a really nice night so we ended up taking in the music for a bit.
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| Our last Santorini sunset from our Ikies terrace |
Tuesday
The morning started with another awesome breakfast on the terrace outside our room at Ikies. Yogurt with honey, bread, fresh fruit, cheese, and cappucinos. Mmmm. Then it was off to scuba. One of the guides for our trip, Manthos, was the former equivalent of a Greek navy seal, national water polo player, etc. Needless to say, he was experiencing little fear as we raced across the Caldera in our inflatable speed boat to our dive site. I was so scared I started to cry, at which point Eric realized it wasn't quite as funny as he thought at first. But as always, once we got all our gear on and got in the water, I was fine. There wasn't a ton to see in terms of sea life, but the "new" volcano, the tip of which has only recently (10,000 years ago) started to crest out of the water in the middle of the Caldera. The second site was at the bottom of cliffs atop of which an old lighthouse sat. Again there wasn't much to see but we did navigate some very dark caves (which of course made me a little uneasy).
Following scuba, lunch was a mini-market meal on our terrace. We hung around the villa by the pool and just soaked up as much sun as possible. Dinner was at the villa, then we walked into town for some sorbet. Our final night at Ikies was in yet another room - the house of the cook. This was the best room of the 3. It was big and had our own private terrace.
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| Bougainvillea |
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| Postcard shot |
Wednesday
We left Santorini via ferry for Paros. The ferry was not high-speed and seemed very low rent. It was an old retired cruise ship from the 70s. I haven't been on a cruise for 9 years, but that boat was so much more luxurious than this boat ever would have been. We arrived in Paros about 4 hours later and to our hotel Stelia Mare. This was a boutique hotel about a block from a smaller inlet beach. We were starving so we wandered into Naoussa and searched for a lunch spot. Oddly, the small town seemed deserted. We settled on a place near the harbor, that was about 1000 yards from where about 3 dozen octopi hanging to dry. The rest of the day we spent reading on the small beach near our hotel. No dinner for us that night because we ate lunch so late.
Thursday
We got up early and went for a swim in the sea near the hotel. We were told by our googly-eyed hotel manager that the water is especially warm around 8 in the morning. We rented a scooter for the rest of the trip. When the bike was dropped off, the gas gauge needle was below the E, but the rep insisted we were 24K away from needing to fill the tank. How about 25 feet! I'm w were at least near the hotel when we ran out of gas! The guy came back with a liter of gas and we were on our way. First stop - petrol station! Armed with a few beach recommendations from the hotel, we scooted our way to the south side of the Island to Golden Beach. It was a really pretty beach with crystal clear water. We did some open water swimming while there and just lounged on the beach.
After a pretty tough day at the beach, we scooted to a recommended fishing village for some dinner, but alas this restaurant was out of fish. Whoops. Eric got the largest plate of lightly fried calamari either of us had ever seen and I had chicken souvlaki. It was good, but we were hoping for some really fresh fish.
We headed back into Naoussa for a drink and a bit of shopping. This time of night the place was packed with people. It must have been nap time when we first ventured into town on Wednesday afternoon.
Friday
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| Hiding from pirates in Lefkes |
Following a hearty hotel buffet breakfast (that had everything you could hope for including spinach pie!!), we took the scooter and headed south again. This time, we made a pitstop at a small town called Lefkes. It was a hill-top town in the center of the island built to insulate itself from pirate attacks. There were quite a few windy streets, making it easy to get lost - which we did. We spent the rest of the day again at Christi Aki (The Golden Beach). This time we had some totally naked sunbathers was even more of a shock. They were male, which made naked paddleball quite a spectacle.
On our way back to Naoussa, we stopped at a roadside bakery so that Eric could get some baklava. It was the biggest piece of baklava I have ever seen, but Eric had no problem taking it down.
Lunch was at Meltami once again. Not sure why we didn't try anywhere else. I guess we just liked the food and knew what we were going to get. Or maybe because there was something on the starter menu called "Strange" and we were determined to try it. Just kidding, we didn't actually try it. That will continue to be a mystery.
Our trip was coming to an end, sadly. We boarded an even more disgusting ferry to head back to Athens that evening. It took about 5 hours ,and we were insanely bored. We picked up some bread, cheese, and meet and some really disgusting wine for dinner on board. We tried to sleep, but were sat upright in some dirty chairs on the upper deck of the boat. When we were able to get a few winks, we were soon woken up by cigarette smoke being blown in our faces. Needless to say, we couldn't wait to get back to Athens.
Once back in Athens, around midnight, we took a taxi to our last hotel for the trip. We booked the cheapest hotel we could find - The Best Western. It was exactly what you would expect and what Eric and I were looking for - a somewhat clean bed to sleep in. We left around 6 the next morning and headed to the airport for our flight back to dreary, damp England. Greece=best trip yet. We can't wait to go back. Anyone care to join??
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| Eric accessorizes: hat, shirt, bike. |
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