Hello, Chester taking back over here for the second half of our Greek travels. Nikita pulled double duty with Cappadoccia and the first half of Greece, so it is my turn to write.
Milos
Much of our trip planning revolved around being in Milos the first weekend in September. This is because my friend Alex had invited us to his wedding on Milos that weekend - and when you are already planning on being in Greece and you are invited to a wedding, you say yes. It ended up being a great weekend spent celebrating Alex and his wife Yasmine along with some friends of ours that flew in to celebrate.
We arrived in Milos from Santorini early so we could explore before the festivities began. Nikita and I had rented a car, so we used our first full day to explore the southern beaches, which were famous in Greece for their beauty (or so we heard from the hotel staff in Santorini). It turned out, yup - pretty gorgeous. We lounged under our umbrella and took dips in the calm waters. This was probably my favorite beach of the whole trip, it was stunningly clear beneath the water and the perfect temperature to soak up the endless Greek sunshine, plus a few trees on the beach for shade.
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| The coastline of Milos. |
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| Our crappy little umbrella doing its best in the wind. |
For lunch that day, we drove quite a ways from the towns of the island out to Embourios Tavern, which sits alone perched on the caldera bay that scoops out the center of Milos. This taverna had all the usual things we had come to expect out of a lunchtime taverna - perfect fried calamari, crisp cucumber and tomato salads, piles of french fries, cold Alfa beer - but also an unexpected feature. Being built right up to the water's edge, soft and shallow waves would often wash across the taverna floor as we ate. Whether this was an intentional feature or an unexpected side effect of rising sea levels is uncertain, but it left an impression.
The next day, we got up early to explore Sarakiniko, a beautiful limestone headland of sculpted rock and blue water which is probably the biggest single tourist draw on Milos. From numerous tips, we were told to get there early to beat the crowds. Arising bright and early, we stared bleary eyed out at the beautiful rocks and churning Agean along with a couple dozen other Americans who also had been told to get there at 7AM to beat the crowds. By the time we left an hour later, I swear the parking lot was less full than it was at early morning - definitely some irony there.
The rest of that day did not quite unfold as planned; the friends we were supposed to pick up from the airport at midday, Paige and Benoit, hit some travel snags and had to change their plans to an arrival at the ferry port past midnight, which left us the day free. We used it mostly to catch up on some things and do travel planning for our last two months in Asia. In the evening, we went to the colorful fishing village of Plaka intending just to take some pictures of the sunset, but we got pulled into a lovely taverna for dinner where we could watch the sun set over the water and a distant island while sipping on wine.
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| Just goofing around. |
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| A brief stop at Firopotamus |
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| Stunning Plaka |
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| Sunset in Plaka |
We started Saturday by picking up our friends at the port at 1AM, they were surprisingly spry and cheerful after 24+ hours of travel delays and headaches, but I suppose happy to have finally landed in Greece. We all caught all the sleep we could, then when morning came around headed down to the dock for the first official activity of the wedding: a boat cruise for the day to the south side of the island. It was an absolute pleasure to spend time catching up with our friends and meeting other old friends of Alex and Yasmine. Alex was my college roommate for my last two years at UBC, and had met his wife Yasmine at their graduate program at Georgetown. Her family has roots in Lebanon and France, so aboard the catamaran we had people hailing from Beirut, Paris, Rome and all over the States. Quite a cosmopolitan mixture! It was a massively enjoyable day and we enjoyed in particular the swim stop at Kleftiko, a heavenly cove of towering rock formations and clear blue waters.
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| The rocks at Kleftiko |
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| Happy guests splish-splashing in the water. |
After the boat, we scooped up Tiger, the last member of the friend group and a college friend of mine. Tiger was an absolute madman - and by madman I mean loyal friend - who flew all the way from Oregon to join the wedding for 48 hours before flying all the way back. We then all joined for a welcome dinner on the beach of Pollonia, the town where we were all staying. We caught up and enjoyed the food and wine, but kept things fairly chill as we knew the wedding was still ahead of us.
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| The wedding crew all together on the beach. |
Finally, Sunday came around, the day of the wedding. As Alex did not have a proper bachelor party, at his request we made a last minute scramble to get the boys to the beach so we could at least have a few beers before the ceremony. After that, the wedding itself took place at a beautiful restaurant terrace overlooking the sea in the afternoon and everything went off perfectly for the couple. They looked great and we all enjoyed spending time with each other, soaking in the beauty of the setting as a live band played. Later in the night, things got a little blurry as platter after platter of doudou shots (a Lebanese specialty of vodka, chili, lemon and an olive) came out from behind the bar and a DJ took over. At 3AM the last bus came to take us back to Pollonia, and we said our goodbyes on the dark and windy streets after a very fun night.
Safe to say, Monday was not a day of vigorous activity or exploring after our near zero hours of sleep. We did have a nice lunch in town and a lovely soak on a beach, but the excesses of the previous night wore pretty heavily. We enjoyed some pizza and had some last drinks at Alex and Yasmine's suite before saying our final goodbyes and catching all the sleep we could.
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| Exploring around Milos. |
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| Tiger and Benoit having a little float. |
The wedding was something Nikita and I had been looking forward to for a long time, but it was over before we knew it. Like many things on this trip, it felt a bit surreal - are we really here in Greece with friends, dancing to Abba? It does not feel real sometimes, and the wedding was definitely one of the biggest unreal moments of the trip and we were so glad we were able to make it work.
Sifnos
The last of our quartet of Greek isles, Sifnos was an easy choice as it sat on the ferry route back to Athens from Milos. Sifnos is known for being a culinary island, birthplace of the famous cook and father of Greek cooking Nikolaos Tselementes. The island is eager to keep his legacy alive with a bevy of good restaurants using locally sourced ingredients. We spent two days on Sifnos.
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| Waters off of Sifnos |
On the first day, we explored the town of Kastro. It was about a half hour walk through scrubby olive groves and rock stairs down to the town, which was the island's original capital and has been occupied for thousands of years. The town was a maze of quiet white alleys, mostly occupied by dozing cats and a few other curious tourists dumb enough to be out in the midday heat. We had a lovely talk with a charming boy leaning out of a window to show off his new fishing rod and brag about the fish he had caught the previous day with his grandfather that was a highlight of the day. Outside of the town, we marveled at the Church of the Seven Martyrs which sat on a headland perched above the aquamarine sea, as lovely a picture of the Cycladic vibe as I can imagine.
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| Approaching Kastro |
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| Kastro, rare red doors! |
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| Monastery off of Sifnos | |
That night, we splurged on a fancy seafood dinner by the beach as we wanted to experience a bit of the island's culinary charm while we were there. It was a great meal complemented by some crisp white wine and man, can the Greeks do some interesting and delicious things with octopus. It was a very nice meal to cap off many great meals that we had enjoyed across Greece.
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| Nikita ready to jump in. |
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| Sunset vibes. |
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| Wine before dinner. |
The second day on Sifnos involved a sad goodbye. After much enjoyment of its welcoming blue waters in Italy, Montenegro, Turkey and Greece, it was time to take our last dip in the Mediterranean sea. We headed down to the beach at Chrisopigi and had a last day of sand, sun and splashing plus the required taverna lunch. If there is anything I will be taking away from Greece, it is how relaxing a day on the beach with a nice little casual taverna can be.
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| The beach at Chrisopigi |
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| Beach tavernas forever. |
The next morning, we took the bus down to the port and killed some time on the beach having some drinks and reading our books at a faded beach bar before catching our ferry to Athens, thus returning back to the mainland.
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| Last views of Sifnos |
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| The ferry approaches. |
Athens
Athens! It had been a while since we had been in a really large city, spending most of August and September exploring coasts and smaller towns in Turkey and Greece. So suffice to say when we jumped in feet first to the Athens hustle and bustle when we arrived, it was a bit of a shock to the system, but in a good way.
Our first two days were mostly focused on exploring with a focus on markets. The first market we explored was the central market which was a large food market selling lots of different items but with a strong focus on meat and seafood. I have to say, walking down a hall of meat
stalls with the steady thwak-thwak-thwak of butcher's cleavers, meat and entrails hanging from hooks all around you does make you doubt your carnivore lifestyle.
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| Seafood diet. |
That night, Nikita found a fun open-air cinema where we could enjoy a movie, something we had been saying we wanted to do. We watched Materialists (meh) from earlier in the year with Greek subtitles, but the movie was secondary to the experience of watching a movie in the warm night under the lit-up acropolis. The theater was sold out and full of young couples and tourists.
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| Movies in open air. |
The second market we explored on Sunday was the weekly flea market in Monastiraki. Every trinket and tool imaginable was for sale, from souvenir statues to second-hand dental tools to old records. We were a little baffled on the practicalities of some of it, such as booksellers who simply dumped unsorted piles of old books around them and hoped someone might bite.
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| Dental tools for (re)sale! |
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| Can I interest you in some vintage Greek pornography? |
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| A million other things under the sun. |
That afternoon after a quick gyro lunch, we headed over to an art museum, the Basil and Elise Goulandris Collection. This was a collection of a Greek shipping scion who, along with his wife, had a sharp taste for art and donated their collection to the public when they died. We had not visited a museum for a while and it was a nice little collection of paintings including Van Goghs, Cezannes and lots of lesser known Greek artists.
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| A luminescent Van Gogh at the museum. |
Monday we awoke early to see the Acropolis, the set of ancient Greek ruins sitting a plateau above the city and the icon of Athens. After a long summer with a lot of looking at ruins, these would be our final set of European ruins which, to be honest, we were ready for. Looking to finish strong, we hopped off the bus and ascended the hill. We used another Rick Steve's Audio Tour and joined the throngs pushing up the marble stairs up onto the hill with the majestic Parthenon. Luckily it was not too hot (we heard at times it got so bad they shut the site down entirely) so we were able to take our time exploring and learning from Rick. I really enjoyed the views as it gave me a holistic sense of the city that I hadn't gotten navigating the tights alleys around the markets.
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| Pantheon at the Acropolis |
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| Nikita at the Acropolis |
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| Tourists out, tourists in. |
Tuesday afternoon, I took an unusual tour called the Awful Athens tour from a tour company called PlanetWonk. I went for this as I felt something was missing in my Greek experience. We had gotten the idyllic summer islands and a taste of Greece thousands of years ago, but I felt I owed it to Greece to understand what it means to be Greek today beyond the beaches and ruins, and this tour would show participants some of the less-touristed parts of the city. Nikita was less interested so I flew solo.
I learned a lot on the tour. We had noticed that many Athenian neighborhoods resembled each other, with largely charmless concrete blocks of 1970s apartment buildings and haphazard street planning. Turns out, Athens is both an ancient city and a very recent city, but for many years was nothing more than a small village at the foot of the acropolis. After being chosen as the Greek capital in 1831, growth was still slow until the 1960s and 1970s when population exchanges with Turkey along with massive emigration from the countryside led to massive, haphazard growth in Athens giving birth the confusing and chaotic city of today.
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| Faded glory of a hotel. |
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| Visual cacophony on the corner |
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| Art scene. |
Some other themes the tour touched on were the migrant crisis, Greece's extreme politics and the way the two often interact. We toured a central neighborhood that was once an affluent shopping district but now is a center for drug dealing and prostitution while also offering low-rent apartments and shops for recent migrants. Throughout, we saw graffiti from various left-wing and anarchist groups plus heard about the prominence of far-right groups and the corruption of the police. To me, it was a perfect deepening of my understanding of Greece and I greatly appreciated the PlanetWonk for setting up a tour that was willing to show the less glamorous side of Greece.
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| 1970s office tower. |
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| Anarchist graffiti. |
Reflections and Projections
Three weeks in Greece was a true pleasure, doubly so as we got to spend a few days celebrating with our friends. Beyond the enjoyment of the beaches, sun and seafood, Greece also left me with a irreplicable sense of the bigness of time. There is a certain je ne sais quoi here, but it was perhaps best captured for me by seeing the abandoned marble statues on the hillsides of Naxos, a reminder that people have been building lives and startling rich cultures out of the land for millennia. It certainly puts some perspective on your life.
Some big changes are ahead for us. Currently we are spending our last few days in Germany before we run out of days on our visa for the EU and our Asia chapter begins. We are down to just two months (!) before our return flights but they will be quite busy and different - less on the ground travel and more long flights between very different and distant regions. We are getting a little more worn with all the constant travel after four months, so these changes of place and pace will hopefully give us the energy to get us all the way to the finish line in November.
Until next time!
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| Octopi drying in Pollonia. |
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