Greece
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Gytheio: Final Call
And now, with just days remaining, we head to the very last destination of this 12-week tour, down to the coastal town of Gytheio, which neither of us had ever heard of until we started researching where to spend these last few days. Likewise, we knew nothing of Mystras until we take a diversion about an hour short of Gytheio, and discover a gem of a place – one last terrific historic site before we end this trip. The new Mystras is a lovely little mountain village where, it turns out, we would have been content to see out the rest of our stay. Way above this delightful village, on…
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Olympia: Stories Of Past And Present
It’s with a sense of anticipation that we collect our final hire car – our eleventh of the trip – and leave Kalamata behind after our very brief stay. It may be the last few days of this long adventure but we have some exciting places lined up before we are done. Throughout the 90-minute drive it is very plain that we are in different territory now; this area experiences much more autumn and winter rainfall than most of Greece, making for the kind of lush greenery which we haven’t seen for many weeks. There are deciduous trees, giant bamboos and even a combine harvester as hard evidence of change,…
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Athens & Kalamata: Tales From Two Cities
After eleven weeks in Greece and its islands we are into the last week of our journey through this sun soaked land, leaving the wonderful island of Milos and taking the short prop plane flight over the Aegean to Athens. Amusingly the bus ride from Athens airport to Syntagma Square takes considerably longer than the flight. It’s only two years since we were last here in the Greek capital so this visit is one of expedience and we are here just for a single night, in an 8th floor hotel room with magnificent views of the Acropolis. After so many weeks in an assortment of apartments and houses, a hotel…
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Last Of The Islands: Marvellous Milos
We have mixed emotions when we discover that our last ferry journey of this long Greek sojourn is a hulking great catamaran named Champion Jet 2. On the one hand, it’s disappointing that our final crossing won’t be on a quaint island ferry; on the other, there’s a gale blowing and the seas are extremely rough. The powerful craft ploughs through the heaving waves with barely a roll. And so on to Milos which, if we hadn’t been forced to change our plans back in the first week of August, would have been our third island call rather than our last. After Milos we will take six days touring a new…
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From Paros To Sifnos
“They are very bad people. Dirty money”. Isabella, the hugely likeable matriarch of our host family on Paros, is holding court. “Too many bad people at the top”, she says, “this is how Greece is”. Isabella always has time to talk, by her own admission she likes to get to know her guests, and our late afternoon ferry means we too have time to kill today. Now, the subject has turned to the recent summer fires across Greece, and Isabella is, disturbingly, the third person we’ve met on this trip to expound the same theory. There seems to be a widespread opinion that when the heatwave came, significant money changed…
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Paros In Perspective
Our conclusion after spending a few days on Paros and touring most of the island via hire car is that we probably chose the wrong place to stay. Exquisitely picturesque as it is, the truth is that there are some lovely little corners of this island away from the fat prices of fine dining restaurants and Gucci stockists of well heeled Naoussa and away from the quasi-city buzz of port town Parikia. Tucked away elsewhere are the beautiful hilltop villages of Lefkes (yes a tourist trap but wonderfully quaint) and Kostos (much more still a locals’ village), but take a drive around the coastline and you unearth some seaside getaways…
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Pricey Paros
Anyone who has used island ferries knows the drill: you place your bags in the rack labelled with the name of your destination, settle on deck or wherever, then return to pick up your bags just before disembarkation. So picture our reaction when we return to the car/luggage deck and find what looks like several hundred bags piled where our backpacks were and, when we pull and throw loads of them to one side, ours are no longer there. Just as panic sets in, Michaela spots hers, on a rack marked for a different port, several racks away from the correct one. Mine is even further away, and the two…
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Schinoussa & Iraklia: Further Down The Line
Schinoussa Whoever invented retsina deserves a medal. Whoever had the idea of drinking retsina to accompany fish was inspired, and deserves a medal. If the two were the same person, they should be made a saint. A few short hours after arriving on Schinoussa we are not only doing both, but we are doing it in a sun drenched beach bar where the tamarisk trees border the sand, the sun glints on the surface of the water, and just a handful of people share our space. There can’t be too many better feelings than this. Not long ago when we were being windswept on Astypalea and needing sweatshirts to deal…
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Sapphire & Emerald; Donoussa & Koufonissi
Donoussa On the first of our two mornings in Donoussa we are awakened not by revellers from last night’s festival still up, nor by the usual cockerel calls, but instead by the sound of …….wait for it…..rain! This is the first sprinkling of rain since we saw a shower through the train window on July 24th, some 51 days ago. This one has passed through and dried up before we’ve even had breakfast. The port village of Stavros on the island of Donoussa is the first of our quick stays in the Lesser Cyclades. Donoussa is one of the smallest inhabited Cycladic islands with a total area of just 13…
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Hopping Mad: The Lesser Cyclades
Here it is again, that feeling. It’s 7am and the sky is turning a blazing shade of tangerine as the sun raises its head above the mountain peaks. We chug out of Katapola and leave the beautiful island of Amorgos behind, and the feeling is here again: that heady mix of sadness at leaving and excitement at moving on, somehow even stronger when the leaving is early morning. As we bid farewell to Amorgos we have a distinct feeling – unusual for us – that we will return one day, not a reaction which we have commonly felt on our travels. Ahead of us now though is some old school…
