THE GREECE DIARIES: 3 WEEKS

After months of lockdowns and cancelled plans, we finally caught one of the rare post-pandemic windows to travel again—three amazing weeks exploring Greece, a dream come true for the Greek mythology nerd in me.

Read on to hear all about our 3-week travel diary to Greece.

We had to jump through a few extra hoops in order to be able to visit the amazing country of Greece, such as getting our vaccinations and the documents to prove it. Additionally (for our paranoid selves), we took a Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test before our flight, just in case.

We arrived in the middle of the night but had no problem getting transport through the dark city to reach Athens Backpackers.

Waking in the morning, we were welcomed by the heart of Athens. The hostel was located in the perfect location to explore the main sights of the city, starting with a visit to the Acropolis Museum Cafe for our breakfast.

We learned that we are weird for eating early in the morning when the entire (large) cafe was empty, with no other tables taken. We took that opportunity to grab the best seats in the house. Did I mention that the Acropolis Museum has an amazing view of the Acropolis?

Afterward, it was as simple as walking back downstairs to enter the Acropolis Museum and see remnants of history from one of the most iconic archeological sites in the world. The highlights for us were the Magic Sphere of Helios, the Sphinx statue, and blocks of the frieze from the Parthenon itself. Oh, and also the walkable ruins left below the contemporary building!

Just a short walk away, we got to explore the Temple of Olympian Zeus and stop by Hadrian’s Arch as well.

After an excellent Greek lunch at Veganaki, we made our way to the Panathenaic Stadium. The size of the stadium is impressive (approximately 50,000 seat capacity), but the real show stopper is that it is made from marble. It also was built for the Panathenaic Games, which inspired the modern Olympics!

After getting into the active spirit at the stadium, we walked to the base of Mount Lycabettus and began the climb up the highest of Athens' seven hills. At twice the height of the Acropolis, we were rewarded with panoramic views of all of Athens. We meant to take the funicular down, but for some reason or other were unable (it was potentially not operating, though nobody was around for us to find out more).

To add to the perfect day, we also visited the one and only Acropolis at sunset.

There is nothing that can be said, it is just an amazing experience to be able to visit the Parthenon, and doubly so to experience it as the sun sets a golden glow over the beautiful city. I'm no history buff, but like many kids, I loved Greek mythology, and this was a bucket list experience for me.

When we got kicked out of the Acropolis (literally⁠—we stayed right up until the last moments we were allowed), we ended our first day with a visit to the charming Plaka district and its famous stairs for our first dinner, and our first litre of house wine, in Greece.

In the morning, which also happened to be Lucas's birthday, we had an amazing breakfast at a local bakery. One thing that made Greece so welcoming was all the little touches, like treats included at the end of a meal. When we had finished our breakfast, they brought out a sweet baklava for each of us as breakfast dessert on the house!

Next on the agenda we had intended to climb Filopappou Hill for another view overlooking the city. We succeeded—mostly. After exploring and taking photos while walking around, we were approached by a gentleman who informed us that we could not be on the hill due to the severe fire warning.

For context, we did arrive in Greece right after some devastating fires took place, so we were more than happy to make our way back down the hill and to Aeropagus (Mars Hill) for another perspective from the base of the Acropolis. Height restrictions for buildings allow the Acropolis to maintain its visibility as the focus of the city and skyline.

From there, we had the Ancient Agora to look forward to. Agoras were an open meeting place for citizens, and the Ancient Agora was home to political and social discussions on the issues of the time, in addition to markets and other activities. Two of the (many) sights in the agora—the Stoa of Attalos and the Temple of Hephaestus—are in remarkable condition, but while the Stoa was rebuilt in the 1900s, the Temple of Hephaestus has remained intact since it was built (around the same time as the Parthenon!).

For lunch, we visited a little place called Smak, which served pizza boats that were cheap and tasty. This stop was conveniently situated near the Monastiraki flea market, allowing us to wander through the busy streets filled with shops.

We passed the Roman Agora and made a short detour to visit Hadrian's Library while making our way back to the hostel for a change of clothes for dinner. For Lucas's birthday, I made reservations at A for Athens, a hotel and restaurant that has one of the best views overlooking the city.

We had a bit of a hiccup as the shoes I brought had rubbed open my heel on day one, and I had compensated by allowing my sock to fuse to the blister, but my shoes for our evening out were not meant to wear with socks. Luckily, leather sandals are plentiful in the markets so along the way we made another detour to grab a pair while trying not to be late for our reservation.

We arrived just in time and got to celebrate Lucas turning 27 with an amazing dinner, cocktails, and an incredible view as the sun set over the city.

Of course, we didn't end there. We still went to a popular, hidden-courtyard bar called Six Dogs and were seated at a "miscellaneous" table. This meant that other patrons might join our table, and we ended up meeting and drinking the night away with a hilarious couple from the United States who were on the tail end of their trip.

Although we spent the night celebrating, we didn't have any time scheduled to sleep in the next day, so we were off to the airport to pick up our car rental to begin touring some of our top picks for the mainland of Greece. We knew we had chosen budget for our car rental, but were surprised to find no matching car rental company situated at the airport. Instead, a shuttle van arrived to kidnap—I mean, take us—another 20 minutes to the location.

I joke, but the rental company ended up being great, and things went smoothly, so we were on our way to Delphi!

While driving the highway in Greece, we passed countless toll booths. The prices ranged based on the area, and the highway was well-maintained because of it, but on certain stretches, they were very frequent!

The roads as we got closer became a windy climb up, and when we arrived this resulted in a stunning view overlooking the valley. For only fifty Euros, we had a private hotel room with arguably one of the best views on our entire trip. After a quick lunch with the view in the background, we made our way to the famous Korykion / Corycean Cave.

Many people who make it to the area choose to visit in part due to the mythological history it carries. The cave has been associated with the cult of the goat-like god, Pan, and the Nymphs. According to ancient Greek mythology, the cave was named after Nymph Corycia, one of Apollo’s partners, and was part of the pilgrimage to the sanctuary of Apollo.

We had planned to potentially hike from the cave back down to Delphi on a famous hiking path, but rather than taxiing up, we had driven ourselves. So, we were unable to hike down. We did still end up doing a brief hike as the roads became a bit rough for a rental car, and we were not the only tourists who unknowingly turned onto the path and had to turn around. While exploring the cave, we also managed to leave a small offering to Pan!

For dinner, we visited the highly recommended Taverna Vlachos, known for good food and views. We didn't have reservations and were arriving at sunset, so they kindly offered for us to wait. They seemed surprised when we accepted and waited outside at a small table overlooking the valley, and after 15 minutes of waiting, they even brought us out complimentary bubbly! We ended up getting to watch the sunset with a glass of champagne before getting our table as the night sky took over!

Our stay in Delphi at the Hermes Hotel was an absolute highlight. We had a beautiful balcony room overlooking the valley. In fact, pretty much the entirety of Delphi offered incredible views!

Delphi is known for its archeological significance, and we had no shortage of it the following day as we visited the Ruins of Delphi, the Archaeological Museum of Delphi, and the Ruins of the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia. Along with seeing the Omphalos—representing the navel, or center, of the earth in ancient Greek mythology—we also got one of many stunning views on our trip.

Back in town, we skipped between a cafe with a view, a local restaurant called Taverna Gargadoyas for dinner (where we were once again gifted a delicious dessert), and a bar with drinks overlooking the valley as the sun set.

We enjoyed more drinks on the town and even found the most perfect all-black kitten along our way—which gives good insight into how much I was enjoying the mainland of Greece already (Greek food, great drinks, and plenty of cats!)

Although possibly with less pep, in the morning we were making our way to Meteora, but not before making pitstops at the mountain town of Arachova followed by the famed battle location, Thermopylae, to see the statue of King Leonidas and the memorial site for the Spartans and Thespians from the Battle of Thermopylae.

In the afternoon, we were able to settle in at Spartacus House Meteora in Kastraki. The town of Kastraki along with the nearly conjoined Kalambaka was our base to explore Meteora and the jaw-dropping monasteries built atop the cliffs between the 1300–1600s.

Spartacus House unsurprisingly offered excellent views of the towns. We visited our first monastery, St Nicholas Anapausas Monastery, that evening. Appearing to grow from the cliff it rests upon, this monastery didn't allow photos inside the chapel but offered a rooftop terrace with views of Kastraki and the Roussanou Monastery.

Our last stop of the day was Sunset Rock, where elevated views of the surrounding area offer a breathtaking landscape to enjoy at sunset. Although we were there at the right time, cloud cover meant we enjoyed the view minus a sunset, but it was so stunning we stayed until dusk anyway!

For dinner, we visited Taverna Batalogianni. The food was delicious, but our real favourite was ordering their house wine—easily a consistent theme in Greece because the house wines were not only excellent and cheap, but were also offered by the litre or 2 litres. This made the short walk to bed pleasantly fuzzy!

The next day was dedicated to visiting the remaining monasteries. To begin, we went to Monastery of Great Meteoron, which was the largest and oldest of the monasteries.

Next, we visited Varlaam Monastery, which was one of my favourites. Although newer ("only" 16th century compared to Great Meteron built in the 14th century!), the gazebo giving Rivendell vibes overlooking the region was enough to cement in as a highlight for me.

Roussanou Monastery perches atop a lone cliff and is also the only convent out of the monasteries. From the various vantage points of the monastery, we also saw peeks of the beautiful garden landscapes located within. Truly, it looks like the monastery was carved out from the cliff.

The Monastery of the Holy Trinity is most known for being a film location in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, but it also offered us wonderful views. I feel like a broken record, but this region really is beautiful! This ended up being our last monastery, as when we arrived at Monastery of St Stephen, it was closed due to health precautions arising from COVID-19.

By driving, we also got the opportunity to stop at many viewpoints along the roads between the monasteries of Meteora. Although we drove between each monastery, we got our exercise through the many stairs that were required to reach each of the locations!

If that wasn't enough, we also decided to complete a small hike to the Adrachti Pillar. This tiny pillar stands out between the hills of the region. Although not a difficult hike, we still were sweating from the effort and heat when we reached the pillar.

After all that we felt we earned our souvlaki dinner and house wine on the cute patio of Taverna Gardenia!

Additionally, we knew that our next day would involve more exercise: hiking to Refuge A on our way up Mount Olympus! We started at the Prionia parking lot, as it is the highest point that can be reached by car.

There isn't much to say about this portion of the hike, as it was fairly covered and within the trees, though still steep. According to what we read, it was about 1000 metres elevation gain over the approximately 3-hour hike to Refuge A.

We spent the night at Refuge A, enjoying a hot meal (spaghetti) for dinner, which beats most hiking food we have had!

We had a pre-sunrise wake-up call to ensure we would reach the summit. We started our day watching the sunrise over the valley before heading back onto the trail for another 3 hours to reach the second-highest summit, Skala. This portion opened up and became quite windy as we reached the 2866m high peak.

From here, we had to slowly descend briefly to cross the ridge between Skala and the base of Mytikas, the highest peak of Olympus at 2918m high. At the midpoint, the path narrowed and dropped off, with a 1000m drop on either side and it became very difficult to pass those going back in the other direction. Once past the sheer portion, we stopped to consider whether we would continue, watching those ahead as they climbed up the remaining portion and others as they struggled to get down over tricky sections.

At this point, I started to become fairly panicked and decided to stop my climb. A gentleman whom we had met at Refuge A passed on his return, and tried to convince us to continue, but nearly tripped, which internally validated my decision (at least to myself!). Lucas did decide to keep going, and was very happy he did, summiting Mytikas and signing his name in the guest book at the top of the Home of the Gods!

Since it wasn't far between the two peaks, I didn't have to wait long before he descended and we tackled going back to Skala and eventually back down—the hard part, honestly—to the parking lot.

The hike down was arguably tougher than the climb up, and we were exhausted when we reached our rental car. Luckily, we didn't have far to go as we spent the night at Litochoro, an idyllic mountain town and the primary base for climbing Mt. Olympus. Our stay was at another stunning location called Papanikolaou Guest House, and because we earned it we tried a gigantic dish at Meze Meze that was half a crusted bread loaf with meat, vegetables, and a pizza-like sauce on top that was filling comfort food! I am angry that I truly cannot recall the name of it!

The next day involved a longer drive back to Athens to say goodbye to our rental car; an overpriced and underwhelming kitschy drink at Little Kook while looking for a street art installation that was no longer installed; a rooftop drink and good intentions for food even though they didn't have any; and finally an incredible gyro on our way back to our hostel.

It was time for the islands, and we had a soft introduction with our first stop on the island of Naxos. After seafood (calamari) and Naxian Gruyere cheese appetizers for lunch, we checked into our beautiful hotel, the Hotel Anixis. We enjoyed our afternoon at Agios Georgios, the nearest beach to Hora, with a few drinks and our books before visiting the Temple of Apollo at sunset for a jaw-dropping view of the city drenched in sunlight.

Not to be limited to one beach day, we spent our next day at the more adventurous Plaka Beach relaxing and tubing on the ocean. We found a restaurant with a view by winding our way up through Hora for dinner, though the litre of wine may have limited our memory of the restaurant's name.

Needless to say in the morning we were feeling a bit worse for wear, but in our typical travel fashion couldn't let that stop us from taking the short bus ride to Filoti, the start of the Mt. Zeus (Mt. Zas) hike. The 2-hour hike to the top in the heat helped kick the residual wine fog, and we enjoyed the view of the arid, rocky island's landscape.

The real trouble occurred on our descent, when we missed a turn in the path, though where we missed the path is still unknown to us! We ended up back on the road before the appropriate point, which led to a much longer descent winding down the twisted roads to Filoti.

By the time we made it back to town, we had limited options for the bus back and missed our opportunity to visit Chalki and the Kitron distillery there. Instead, we enjoyed a well-deserved pizza at Platanos Cafe, and we did end up tasting the Kitron back in Hora to make up for our blunder!

We enjoyed our last breakfast and fresh-squeezed orange juice in Hora, before catching the chaotic ferry to the iconic Santorini. Departing the ferry, we managed to catch a bus up the (again) winding roads caused by the cliffs. This required the bus drivers to swing into the oncoming traffic lane on all the—and there were many—switchbacks.

We made our way to Oia and got into our swimsuits to head down to Amoudi Bay to swim in turquoise waters made more famous by the cliff-jumping scene in the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants movie! Lucas jumped off the ledge, but I didn't make the trek to the top or the subsequent jump into the water below!

While in Amoudi Bay, we had to visit the Amoudi Bay Fish Tavern for an early dinner of a seafood platter.

Then, full, we had to trudge up the ~278 steps back to Oia to watch the sunset from the Old Castle, which offers an undeniably amazing view of Oia and the ocean as the sun dips below the water.

Our stay at Marcos Rooms was one that we didn't enjoy per se but was affordable compared to the other stays available. Our main issue was the room compared to a hot box due to the lack of air conditioning and minimal to non-existent cross breeze while we were there.

With that said, we only had one evening there and how can you really complain about anything while in Greece, right?

Plus, we had our one luxury stay the following night to look forward to.

In fact, in the morning we took a Volcanic Islands Cruise and our guides were extremely confused when we showed up with full luggage to be dropped off in Fira following our tour rather than taking it round trip to Oia. In our defence, the boat picked and dropped off others in Fira anyway!

On our tour, we took the boat to Nea Kameni to trek to the crater of an active volcano before visiting Palea Kameni for a stop at a "hot springs" that was explicitly called out as not being a hot spring but rather more of a temperate spring.

Finally, we visited Manolas by hiking up more winding stairs to the village for views of the volcano and caldera.

Awkwardly departing in Fira, we made our way to the absolutely stunning Porto Fira Suites. We were welcomed with a complimentary drink while we filled out breakfast preference sheets. Preference sheets!

After squealing in our room briefly, we visited the pool and squealed some more while enjoying the sunset over the caldera and visiting with a small group from the United States.

Although we did not want to leave our accommodation for any reason, we did have plans to get to. We spent our day visiting the black sand of Perissa Beach by bus, followed by two scenic wineries, Venetsanos Winery and Santo Wines for a moderately sized tasting.

Before long, we found our way back to the pool at Porto Fira and spent our evening ordering poolside wine from the conveniently located pool phone—again, screaming!—and watching the sun set over the caldera.

Leaving the room the next day was tough because we knew we wouldn't be enjoying another night at the beautiful hotel, but we enjoyed our morning exploring Fira and visiting the Three Bells of Fira. In the afternoon we took another crazy yet impressive bus to catch another chaotic ferry to our last stop!

We arrived in Heraklion in the evening, perfectly timed for a visit to Peskesi and a fantastic farm-to-table style dinner.

We didn't plan to spend much time in Heraklion, so in the morning we prioritized a visit to the Palace of Knossos, which was the capital of Minoan Crete. These ruins also relate to Greek myth, and my desire to visit was largely centred around the legend that it was the source/inspiration for the Labyrinth myth: the Labyrinth was a maze made by King Minos to contain the Minotaur (half-bull, half-man), which was eventually slain by Theseus.

After that, it was off again, via bus, to Chania.

We spent our time in Chania in a private room at Cocoon City Hostel, and booked most of our day trips through them as well. We ordered pizza to go from Funky's and enjoyed it in the lovely common areas of the hostel.

Our first day trip took us to the pink sand beaches of Elafonissi beach. I was instantly sold on purchasing a (probably overpriced) floatie that was a bright pink flamingo, but I stand by my decision one thousand percent because I got to enjoy being dragged around the water by Lucas in my floatie that matched the sand and that memory is priceless.

We named her Ela and couldn't leave her behind so we packed her in our luggage and lugged her home with us!

Dinner could not have been more "Missy and Lucas" coded with fresh pasta and heaping parmesan at Laganon Fresh Pasta. If we previously enjoyed some kebabs throughout the day, who could blame us?

Plus, we needed the carbs and protein as the next day we spent hiking the 16km trek down and through Samaria Gorge. It offered beautiful valley (gorge? For those aware of whether there is a difference...) and untouched views. At the beginning, we started out with many other hikers, but as we progressed we saw less and less of the others and felt like we had it to ourselves.

At the end of the trek, in the village of Agia Roumeli, we had a snack of melted cheese with bread, a salad, and beer to celebrate.

Upon our return and cleaning ourselves up, we went out to a fancier Greek dinner at Tamam Restaurant Chania. I literally ordered fries and a plate of meat (pictured below) which seemed meant to feed an entire family, proof you can dress me up but you can't take me out.

As a martyr, I had allowed for one last day dedicated to beaches (when in Rome...) so in the morning we had our last activity: visiting Balos and Gramvousa Beach. Balos offered a dual beach with a sandbar separating a shallow, but large, pool of water on one side from the more common tide on the other.

Gramvousa Beach was part shipwreck, part fortress viewpoint, and large part clear water with rock and coral replacing sand. I enjoyed swimming in this beautiful water while Lucas did his duty and made the hot climb to the fortress viewpoint to ensure we had the best of both worlds! To be honest, I think we both wish we had enough time to do both together.

As far as last activities go, it ended up being a very enjoyable one!

To end the day, we had planned a midnight ferry to transfer us overnight back to Athens. Unfortunately for us, we went to the harbour in Chania instead of the Souda port slightly outside the city. We searched, panicked, then managed to get a taxi and arrive just in time to catch our ferry.

The ferry itself was so much more massive than we expected, with 10 decks. We should have brought some warmer outfits, because we ended up grabbing a couch open to the exterior which ended up being quite chilly, but the ferry was otherwise uneventful (thankfully).

Our last day was truly only to get our return PCR test and do some last minute gift shopping. Oh, and of course one last fresh squeezed orange juice and one last view of the Acropolis!

As we boarded our flight home, we couldn’t help but feel that even three weeks wasn’t nearly enough. Greece had been everything we hoped for and we’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.

If you've made it this far, thank you for following along on our adventure through Greece!