Vacation in Greece

Dan diving into the crystal clear Aegean Sea

I have wanted to visit the Greek Islands for 20 years and finally I have been able to do it! The ability to travel easily within Europe was one of the main drivers for our relocation to Berlin, and I’m very thankful for that right now. Plane tickets from Berlin to Athens were €60 per person, and ferry tickets to Naxos another €40 per person. So €100 lands us in the middle of the Cyclades!

Sunrise behind the Acropolis

First stop, though, was Athens. We arrived at night just in time to check into our hotel and go to sleep. The next morning Dan and I got up early to see the sunrise. We climbed up to Mars Hill (Areopagus), where the apostle Paul addressed the philosophers of Athens (Acts17:22-31) Then we continued to Philopappos Hill for a different view. We were surprised at how many people were up and about with us, and even more surprised that most of them hadn’t woken up early like we did; they had been up all night! There were a lot of members of the party crowd taking in the sunrise in various locations.

The city lit with morning light

Looking out at the Acropolis from Philopappos Hill

We went back to the hotel and had to wake the kids, who were still sleeping. After breakfast we headed out to explore, using a Rick Steves self-guided walking tour. We got an overview of some of the history of Athens: the invasions, the conquerors, the golden period, etc. Afterwards we toured the Panathenaic Stadium, which was one of the highlights of our day. The stadium has existed in one form or another since antiquity, several hundred years BC. It was used for ancient games and then gladiator battles before its marble was hauled away for use in other buildings. Many years later it was rebuilt and was the site of the first modern Olympic games in 1896, and it was the site of the archery competition and the finish of the marathon in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. I love the Olympics, so I really enjoyed being in a place with so much Olympic history. It was really cool to sit on the marble bleachers, walk down the stone tunnel that leads into the stadium, imagining ourselves to be gladiators, and run around the same track where Olympians have competed.

Greek and Olympic flags fly in front of the stadium

Ready, set, go!

They had a room with torches and posters from
most modern Olympics. It was fun to see the
Atlanta display that was so familiar from 1996.

Throne seats, reserved for the king and queen!

Standing victoriously on the podium!

So so so hot. Haley tries to cool down with
her fan and the cooling towels Dustin
& Becky gave us.

Afterwards we ate our first souvlaki (which was actually the best souvlaki of our trip) and went back to the hotel for a rest. I had booked a tour of the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum with a private guide, and our tour started at 4:00 in order to bypass the morning heat and crowds. We were a little skeptical of this approach, because normally we try to beat the crowds by going early, not late. But the guide company knew what they were talking about, and this was a perfect way to do it. Crowds were light in both the museum and the Acropolis, and by the time we went outside the air temperature was actually comfortable and the sun was going down, which was a beautiful time to be there.

Mariza with Dan and the kids

Our guide was amazing and held everyone’s attention for four hours! She was really great with the kids. We started in the museum, which not only allowed us to have 2 extra hours of air conditioning, it turned out to be an excellent way of introducing all the historical material. Since the Parthenon is, of course, a ruin, we were able to see models of what it used to look like and what the statues were, so that when we went outside to see the real thing we could make more sense of it. Both the kids have read quite a bit of Greek mythology, but our guide was able to bring many of the stories we already knew to life and she taught us how to recognize different gods by the symbols that are portrayed with them. We learned that the Parthenon was destroyed once by the Persians and was later rebuilt in grander style. The second instance of the Parthenon was as much a tribute to the pride and power of Athens as it was to the gods it was nominally built to honor. If anyone is planning a trip to mainland Greece I would highly recommend our guide - Mariza from Athens Walks Tour Company. She guides multi-day trips and is incredibly knowledgeable.

Model of what the Parthenon used to look like

Haley and Mariza pretending to be
Athenian women processing to the temple
of Athena with a new dress for the statue of
Athena as part of the Panathenaea festival.

The ancient Athenians assembled their huge
columns in pieces and fit them together
like this. Wow - they must have been the
inspiration for IKEA!

The Acropolis, as seen through a huge bank of windows in
the Acropolis Museum

A gift to the museum from an Australian man: a huge
Lego model of the Acropolis and other ancient sites in
Athens, complete with cameos by Elton John and Gandalf

Silliness! Mariza had us act out the birth of Athena. Dan is Hephaestus knocking Zeus (Carter) over the head with an axe.
Out springs Athena (Haley), while a shocked witness (me) looks on. 

Erechtheion, temple of Athena and Poseidon

After our tour we had a very LATE and yummy dinner in Monistiraki and metroed back to our hotel to shower off the day’s grime, pack, and fall into bed. It was a very busy day in Athens! We had originally planned to spend two full days in Athens; when I made the plans we were hoping to spend one day touring and one day visiting with friends Greta and Paige Brooks from Mobile. But unfortunately our friends were traveling outside of Athens during our visit, so we decided to cut our time in Athens down to just one day in order to have more time in Naxos. Before our visit I hadn’t heard many good things about Athens from friends or from reviews, but we actually really enjoyed our time there. I think we could easily have stayed a couple more days and done some more interesting things, plus not had to cram everything into such a short period of time! It would be fun to go back.

Boarding the ferry to Naxos

The next morning we were up super early again for a 5:25 cab to the port. Our BlueStar ferry was really crowded and felt a bit like a cattle car, but it delivered us safely to Naxos six hours later so I can’t complain too much. We checked into our hotel and hit the beach immediately; it was beautiful and refreshing.

Naxos has been a wonderful spot for us. I was overwhelmed with the number of islands to choose from when I was planning this vacation, but I chose Naxos because I was hoping it would be less crowded and less expensive than some of the more famous islands, plus it is a fairly large island so it has lots of room to explore, since we were planning to spend a week. It is also close enough to other islands that we could day trip if we wanted to. We probably would have had a wonderful vacation on any island, but Naxos was an excellent choice. It’s not totally packed with people, prices are reasonable, and there was plenty to do.

The cheery room where we had breakfast each morning.
Too bad, I never took pictures of the food!

There are beaches all over the island, each with a different personality, and there is lodging available pretty much everywhere. I chose St. George Beach (Agios Georgios) and it was perfect. Our hotel, Ilion Hotel, was just steps away from the beach and a very short walk from Naxos Town. This allowed us to have immediate access to the beach and very easy access to town, but gave us a nice quiet location away from the chaos of the middle of town. The lady who owns our hotel cooked up an amazing breakfast spread every morning. There was always coffee and juice, Greek yogurt with this yummy date syrup, bread and cheese, hard boiled eggs, etc. The other selections varied every day. Usually there were nutella crepes, omelets with ham and cheese and peppers, muffins made of Naxian cheese, custards with fruit. She made small fried pies, sometimes with Naxian cheese inside but one day with an amazing apple walnut filling. She served kind of a breakfast pizza some days with ham and hot peppers and cheese on kind of a pizza crust. Every day there was at least one dish that could have easily passed for dessert but it was served for breakfast. One morning we had kind of a chocolate cream cake, one morning it was a sweet rice pudding-y thing. There was orange pound cake and fried eggs made to order and muffins with chocolate chips and a sweet sticky orange concoction. Need I go on? I’m positive that I gained weight that week. One morning our hostess brought Haley and Carter a slice of chocolate fudge pie from the kitchen and gave it to them for breakfast! We called her “our Greek Aunt Hedi”, because Dan’s Austrian Aunt Hedi is famous for feeding the kids chocolate pudding with whipped cream for breakfast one morning while Dan and I slept late. Our Greek hostess spoke very little English but she did a lot of smiling and nodding and we learned to say “good morning” and “thank you” in Greek so we could greet her every day at breakfast.

Climbing in through the back window

On our first full day on the island we rented a jeep-like vehicle to go explore. The kids were lobbying for four-wheelers, which are everywhere on the island, but I was skeptical about their safety so I vetoed that idea. We spent the day driving around, enjoying the scenery, visiting small inland towns, and eating at the island’s Mexican restaurant (we thought it was just okay). We drove back to our hotel with time to hit the beach until sunset.

Up in the hills on Naxos

One of many gorgeous stretches of beach

Sunset on St. George Beach

Tuesday the plan was to rent bikes, however it proved difficult. The shop we had read about didn’t seem to exist and we wandered around forever looking for it or any bike rental place. The scarcity of bike rental locations should have clued us in to the fact that biking isn’t exactly the thing to do on Naxos…but we persisted until we finally found a place. We quickly realized our mistake. Despite the interesting scenery in the interior of the island, there really isn’t any off-road experience. So we had to bike on narrow, winding roads with a fair amount of traffic from cars, four-wheelers and motorcycles. And have I mentioned the hurricane-force winds yet? Naxos can be very windy and several beaches are known as amazing places to windsurf and kitesurf. In addition, we found out that every couple of weeks the island gets hit with high winds that persist for several days. It just so happened that the wind came in with our ferry on Sunday and didn’t let up from 35 or 40 km/hr until Friday! We hadn’t realized the extent of the wind problem until we tried to pedal in it. The kids, especially Haley, were really unhappy, and they didn’t have sunglasses to keep the sand from blowing into their eyes. We only made it to a nearby beach, Plaka, where we had lunch next door to the Mexican restaurant we had eaten at the previous day. We ate and played chess to improve everyone’s moods, and then Dan offered to watch the kids at the beach while I continued on the bike ride.

Biking around Naxos interior

It was a really tough ride, basically climbing up, up the middle of the island, but I enjoyed the exercise. My destination was the ruins of Demeter’s sanctuary, but I never made it. There are very few roads, so the route to many places isn’t a direct one. I don’t know how many kilometers I biked (I didn’t turn on my phone’s GPS to save battery life) but by the time I got to the turnoff for the sanctuary I was out of drinking water. It was 3 more kilometers to the sanctuary and 3 back to that spot and who knows how long that would take me on these winding hilly roads, plus I wasn’t exactly sure how far it was back to the hotel. So I chose to turn for home. And thank goodness because it was a long ride home including climbing a mountain pass. I was dying of thirst, seriously, like you would imagine someone who had been lost in the desert would feel. Water was all I could think about. When I finally reached the hotel Dan and the kids weren’t back yet, and I realized that they had both our keys to the room so I couldn’t get in to get water. I also didn’t have any money, so I couldn’t buy a bottle of water. The tap water on the island isn’t potable so I couldn’t just find a bathroom and drink water from the sink. I called Dan to see where he was and he said they were heading back and should be home in 10 minutes or so. I sat outside to wait for them, thinking constantly of water. 10 minutes passed, then 15, then 20. I thought about my options: the easiest thing to do would be to try to get another key from the hotel. But this wasn’t a Best Western; the keys are large and brass and I wasn’t even sure there was another key. If there was, I wasn’t sure I could find our hotel owner; she’s pretty much never at the reception desk. And even if I could find her, I wasn’t totally sure I could communicate with her about the key. So I thought about walking down the street to the corner market. Maybe I could get a water and let them hold my phone as collateral until I returned with the money? What if I sat at one of the roadside cafes and ordered a drink and just didn’t offer to pay for it until Dan and the kids came by, and hopefully they would see me and could pay for my drink? I contemplated all my options, thinking that any minute I would see the bikes coming up the road, but they never did. I finally gave up and went to the reception desk. There was a bell to ring and I rang it. Our hostess appeared moments later and she knew the word “key”, so without further ado she handed me the spare. Well. That wasn’t so hard. Should have done it half an hour ago! I got to our room and was just finishing guzzling a bottle when the rest of the family returned. It turns out it was a miserable ride back from the beach for them, and they had to stop and walk their bikes a long way because of the wind. Lesson: bikes on Naxos are okay for transportation of short distances, not for touring.

To appease the kids after a challenging day, we allowed them to choose dinner. As kids will do when given the choice, they chose waffles with ice cream! It was quite tasty, if not exactly nutritious.

One of Dan’s preferred activities on the island was kitesurfing. We checked out the kitesurfing school on Monday and decided that Dan and Carter would take lessons. I thought it looked like fun but it’s not something you learn quickly and I didn’t want to devote the time to it. So Wednesday morning we dropped Dan and Carter off at the kitesurfing school and Haley and I drove to the town of Filotis to hike Mount Zeus, the tallest mountain in the Cyclades. We had all kinds of trouble finding the trailhead and then once we got on the trail we found our way blocked by a gate about 10 minutes into the hike. In my US experience gate = private property = do not trespass, so we turned around and walked back to the start to see if we went the wrong way, but couldn’t see any other route. A memory tickled in the back of my brain about a review that I read somewhere saying that you have to pass through unlocked gates. So we decided to walk to the gate again and consider going through it. It was tied but not locked, so we passed through it and fastened it back behind us, hoping we weren’t going to be arrested for trespassing! It turns out that we had to pass through several gates like this along the trail. There are houses on the mountain with herds of sheep and goats, and I guess the gates and fences are for the livestock, not the people.

Path blocked!

Sheep clogging the road on the drive to Mt. Zeus

The cave opening

After a while we came to the Cave of Zeus, which was inhabited as early as the Neolithic period (around 10,000 BC)! Slowly, slowly we made our way to the top and were rewarded with incredible views in every direction. It was really extraordinary.

On the way up

View from the top!

The way down

We didn’t enjoy it for too long because it was a long way down and we had gotten a late start. I opted to go down a different way than we came, in order to avoid some challenging stretches of rocks and boulders that I was afraid might be dangerous (and slow) to descend. I was hoping that even though the trails finish at different places that it would be easy to connect between them and return to where our car was parked. At first it looked like I had made the right decision. The path down wasn’t steep and we didn’t need to use our hands to climb down rocks. Also the path was pretty, winding down the mountainside among cactuses and stone walls. We were tired, having hiked 6 miles or so, so we were joyous when we reached the bottom of the trail after a really short time, just 5K. But our joy was short-lived when I realized how far we were from our car! A quick Sygic map check confirmed that we were about 6K from Filoti – an easy downhill car ride, but a long torturous walk on winding switchback roads that added miles to the distance, which wouldn’t have been too bad as the crow flies. I hunted in vain for a way to cut across the mountain instead of following the roads, but the land was crisscrossed with fences and gates and stone walls to separate people’s properties and we would never have been able to navigate it. So we started walking. Haley stuck out her thumb a few times to hitchhike, but I could never bring myself to do it. I really thought some nice tourist might see a woman and young girl walking by the side of the road and offer us a ride, but no one stopped. The roads were steep and winding and there wasn’t really a place to pull over, but people probably also assumed that we were just out for a walk. The road was narrow and there was often no shoulder and many blind curves so I was constantly concerned for our safety. But we eventually made it, blistered and exhausted, to our car. Sitting down never felt so good! My legs were sore for days. It was beautiful though, I would definitely do it again, I would just return by the same route we came on!! Haley was a real trooper and hung in there the whole time with minimal complaints. After the bike ride the day before, I had cut a deal with her whereby she could only whine/complain 3 times during our hike. And amazingly she made it to the top and back and only used 2 of her whines!

Conked out after a long hot hike

The Portara, gate to Apollo's temple, with Naxos town behind.

The kids were exhausted after hiking and kitesurfing, so Dan and I took the opportunity to go on a date. We ordered them a pizza and left them in the room with comforting electronic devices and books and we walked into Naxos Town and visited the Portara, the famous symbol of Naxos. It’s the gate to the former temple of Apollo. After the sunset, we had dinner at a yummy Greek restaurant in town. All the restaurants seem to serve nice Greek wine in carafes for almost nothing, so we enjoyed the house wine each night including this one.

Geared up for kitesurfing

Thursday morning was a continuation of the kitesurfing lessons. Having spent several hours the previous day learning about the wind and the equipment and how to control the kite, Dan was able to finally take a surfboard to the water and actually try to stand up on it. Some others with more experience were making it look easy but it definitely wasn’t. The wind was whipping and on Dan’s best try at standing up he was yanked up out of the water into the air and then dropped into a belly flop! This is a sport with a big learning curve and unfortunately there wasn’t time to get good enough to go zipping over the water with the kite flying above. Carter made progress but was a few lessons behind Dan, so he didn’t get to try the board. Haley read on the beach while I watched Dan and Carter and took videos.

Paradise! A gorgeous spot for a meal, or to spend the afternoon

After kitesurfing we drove south down the island and had a lovely lunch at a place aptly named Paradise on Kastraki beach. Then we kept going south to Alyko Beach near the cedar forests. I had read reviews claiming this area had the most beautiful beaches, some of them secluded. The beaches were indeed beautiful, but they certainly weren’t secluded on this day. They were much smaller than the other beaches we had visited, so they felt crowded even with a lot fewer people. Probably this was because people weren’t able to spread out much due to the wind. It was whipping so hard on some of the beaches that you really couldn’t stand to be there. The place we stopped to swim was a protected inlet and there was relatively deep water with rocks on the bottom that was good for swimming and looking at fish.

Alyko beach

Back at the hotel, the kids chose to eat the leftover pizza and Dan and I were able to go out alone again. It’s great to have this kind of freedom on a vacation; we have never been able to do that before! We went into town to watch the sunset over the Portara and then made our way back to the beach in front of our hotel where there is a lovely restaurant and bar with cozy seating. The setting was better than the food, but still we enjoyed it a lot.

Windy, as usual!

Lovely beach setting

The next morning was an early start for our 8:30 sailing trip. For the first time since we arrived in Naxos the wind had died down. Apparently the boat hadn’t been able to sail for the last 4 days due to the weather. So it was a full sailboat, with 17 passengers. There was room for everyone, though, and we had a great time. We sailed/motored (not enough wind today!) to the island of Koufanisia, about 2 ½ hours away. We had hoped to see dolphins along the way, as they often do, but alas they were hiding that day. We stopped in several beautiful places around the island to swim in the crystal clear water, which was surprisingly cold! We also stopped for lunch at a taverna by the beach. We had a great day with Captain Panos and were well cared-for by his first mate, Modestus, who kept us hydrated with water, Frappés, Coke, and beer, plus a watermelon snack. Our kids were the only kids on the boat, so they got to spend extra time on the very front of the boat, riding the waves. And best of all, no seasickness!!

Beachside taverna in Koufonisia 

At the harbor in Koufonisia

Jumping from the rocks!

Diving off the boat

Lovely cove for swimming

 Saturday morning we had to say goodbye to Dan, who boarded a ferry back to Athens and then a flight back to Berlin to get back to the business of earning money for more vacations. Carter had another kitesurfing lesson, in order to try to get to the point of being able to stand up on the board. We needed transportation to the kitesurfing beach and had arranged with the car rental guy we had rented from several times during the week to meet us at 8:30 and get the only car he had available. He didn’t show up and we waited and waited. Finally we called the kitesurfing place to say we would be late and they said “Take your time, there’s no wind right now!” The guy finally showed up about 8:50, hopped out of the car he was driving, told me he was sorry he was late, that he had forgotten his keys and had to go back home to get them. He told me to take the car he was driving, so I climbed in and took off, no paperwork or anything! Ah, small towns; love them. When I returned the car about 4 hours later I asked what I owed him for the car and he said, “I don’t know, what do you want to pay me?” I looked in my wallet to see what I had and offered him 15 euros. “Sure”, he said, and I gave it to him and that was that.

Carter with his instructor

Carter had fun in his lesson and got to make a bunch of attempts, some of them semi-successful, to stand up on the board. Meanwhile Haley and I got our nails done at the spa next door. After returning the car we got a souvlaki snack and the kids chilled out in the room while I went walking around Naxos town. We had dinner right on the beach, with our toes literally in the sand. Ahhhhhhhh.

At dinner on St. George Beach

Feast for the eyes and stomach!

Sunset silhouettes

Sunday morning we enjoyed our last yummy breakfast from our hostess, spent one more lovely hour luxuriating in the water at St. George Beach, and then packed up and drug our bags into town. We had some time to kill and the kids wanted one more gelato from the amazing Milkato Gelateria, so we found a spot in the shade and ordered gelato. I allowed the kids to get WHATEVER they wanted and they both took full advantage and ordered multiple scoops of ice cream. Haley's stomach got full about 2/3 of the way through and she felt sick by the time she ate it all. Do you think that will teach her a lesson about how much ice cream to eat in one sitting?? Probably not.

We boarded our next ferry to the island of Rhodes and began the next phase of our summer adventure in Greece, which I will leave for another blog. Farewell Naxos! Here are some parting photos.

Cats were everywhere in Athens and Naxos. They have a
real problem with strays and feral cats. They would patrol
the restaurants, swooping in to pick up dropped food and
were often hand-fed by patrons (including us). You didn't
want your hand too close though, because they really
were wild cats and would swipe at you.

I love this little scene. Cutely decorated shop, sleeping cat
on the wall, directional signs to the castle and the port.

Haley showing off her manicure on our tablecloth/map

Ships in the harbor at sunset

Bustling Naxos town outside Milkato, a super yummy gelateria