To finish the tour of greece, Santorini was the last island on the tour and it was beautiful. In hindsight it was indeed worth more time than Mykonos, although 2 full days is enough to see most important things, 3 days in Santorini is not a bad plan either.
Boat arrived quite late (close to midnight), it was nice inside and fairly empty:
the boat being chronically late, opens its doors while still arriving in port to save a few minutes
better late than never...
I'll skip the terrible experience with the rental car dropoff at the boat, and the village idiot we ended up being stuck with and that wasted an entire hour making himself feel important, and eventually arrived quite late at the beautiful hotel with fantastic views:
The next morning, after some needed rest, enjoyed a great breakfast with view:
and then it was time to drive around the island to see the many viewpoints:
still a volcanic island
A lot of history on this island, all the way to potentially being the lost island of Atlantis (the part of it that ended up being swallowed by water after a volcanic eruption)
this used to be an entire crater filled with water
how things changed
One level down, there are actual leftovers of a city:
this is one of the most famous paintings
From there, I went to downtown Fira to enjoy some tourist stuff:
Lots of viewpoints on the road:
cable car from old town
The heart of santorini is a nice hole in a rock:
Next was another archeological site, interesting ruins:
Plenty of cats in Santorini too:
Then continued the island tour:
From there, drove up to ancient thera, another archeological site, which unfortunately was closed early and closed the next day. It's supposed to not be essential, but kind of sucks to get all the way there, just to be turned back at the gate. At least there were good views form the top:
So instead, I opted to visit a couple of wineries. Santorini is very arid, but somehow they still have a tradition of making wine:
The first winery also had an art gallery:
The 2nd winery had a fantastic wine museum that was beyond expectations, literally one of the best such museums in the world:
Then went to the museum:
Cool to see what happened to Santorini:
After that, time to grab dinner and enjoy the view from the hotel and sunset:
Fun to compare with the next morning:
For the 2nd day, I picked a boat tour recommended by the hotel, which ended up being the wrong choice. I did want to see the craters and actually "do stuff" like get off the boat and be on islands, however this boat did not offer that, and felt like mostly a waste of time, even if it did offer some views:
intersting colors on the rocks
other people in the boat went to bathe, but water was kind of cold and I don't really go in the water unless it's to snorkel or dive :)
they offered a nice lunch
After the boat tour that burnt most of the day, there was a bit of time to drive around:
While I thought it would be a tourist trap, in the end Lost Atlantis Experience was actually an interesting interactive museum that makes plenty of fair points that the Lost City of Atlantis, if it existed, may very well have been in Santorini as a good portion of it did sink under water level due to volcanic activity:
This video does a good job explaining what happened to the island:
From there, it was time to drive to the north side by Oia to visit this charming little town where many go see the sunset. The route there was interesting:
Finally, Oia:
then an early morning flight the next day to fly to Malta. Santorini was a beautiful island, great to have seen it.
Delos is an impressive archeological site from ancient greece. You can only access it from the nearby island of Mikonos, and there are several tours per day although on that day due to orthodox easter, there were only one left, but that was all that was needed.
The Island is still an active archeologic site, it's a bit amazing that they let us walk around unsupervised, walking on the actual site, and probably causing some light damage to it:
the famous Delos lions
Friendly cats were an unexpected part of the attraction:
I might have had a few snacks for them :)
After about 2h on the island, it was time to get back, the boat was waiting for me :)
Mykonos was the first island on the trip. Taking the "fast" ferries is supposed to be part of the experience, but while they are fast for boats (up to 65kph or so), it's still 15 times slower than a plane and the boats cannot take the most direct route. Sadly those greek ferries are also chronically late because of bad schedules, and while this was the first ferry of the day, it still arrived about 1H late for no good reason, preventing taking the morning boat to Delos :-/ In hindsight, taking a plane would have probably been better and barely more expensive (those boats are not cheap).
not bad for a boat, but not fast compared to a plane.
The first stop was another island, further delaying the already late arrival:
finally, 1H late....
After arriving, picked up a higher power quad (thankfully, the cheaper lower power ones would have been totally useless on that hilly island):
A few museums to visit:
wonderful old mosaics left over
Mykonos has lots of friendly cats:
And of course Mykonos is well known for its pretty painted houses and churches, as well as windmills:
The old town was fun to walk through, lots of small streets:
Then, due to timing not lining up, time to burn before the late boat to Delos:
absolutely overpriced dessert, not bad, but sold for 27 times its price of 1E
After the tour, went back to the very nice hotel for the night:
The 2nd day was a toss, either take an early-ish ferry around noon, or go around the island. In hindsight, going around the island wasn't that interesting and the noon-ish boat was probably 1H late anyway, so it would have been possible to go around for a while and then take the boat to Santorini. Taking the later boat to Santorini was a mistake, itwas very late and got there past midnight.
found a nice bakery
Then had some time to burn for late lunch and then time to check out a few beaches, although they were windy:
rode by the airport I never used and maybe should have
And after the ride, went to the boat, and waited for it over 1H since it was late like every day...
Initially going to Delphi didn't seem like a fun drive, just going to Olympia was already a fair trek, but I didn't originally factor it as a day trip from Athens with a tour bus (to avoid the 4H+ of driving). But due to limited time, I picked from getyourguide, which offered 2 tours, one that stopped 2H at Arachova and said pretty much nothing about what Arachova was or why it was a good idea to stop there.
As a result of the very poor getyourguide site (and you had one job), I picked what they called the "most popular" day trip which was indeed to Delphi only. Once on the trip, driving through Arachova and realizing how beautiful it was and why it was on the other tour that I didn't pick because I had no idea, now I had deep regret. Thankfully I was able to work something out to rescue to the day, do both Delphi and Arachova (With 2H in Arachova), and still catch the bus back to Athens.
Let's start with Delphi, though. It was another one of those pretty impressive places back in the day, of which there is only so much left today, so you have to read the descriptions and use your imagination along with the audioguide:
found a beautiful and probably poisonous spider on the way ;)
For comparison, thi is what the site used to look like back in the day:
The highlight was the top forum that is still in good shape:
From there, the rest higher up was apparently closed, but I managed to miss that and went to the top:
the top arena was not well maintained and probably hadn't been for a while
From there, I felt I saw all that could be seen, so I went to check out the museum which had a decent collection:
Once done with the museum, took a cab to nearby beautiful Arachova:
super colorful church
Lots of yummy and cheap shopping:
Cute little museum inside town:
The town was full of friendly cats
and after about 2H in town, walked to the bus pickup area, for the IG crowd ;)
and then, longish ride back to Athens, but so happy I didn't have to drive :)
Athens had been on my TODO list for a long time of course, and while Rick Steves recommends 3 full days to do a good visit, it became clear after the first day that most everything else would fit on the 2nd day, so that freed up the 3rd day for a day trip to [Delphi and Arachova, the latter city was actually super fun and pretty (blog clickme)|].
So, I'll start by mentioning cabs. They have a monopoly and too many are crooks that refuse to use their meters. If you step in one, they'll decide how much they want to charge you (usually double or triple the meter rate). Also, they hang out outside monuments and wait for "customers" to fall into their trap:
The only way around is to uber which calls a cab, about half will refuse to take you unless you turn off uber and give them the same flat fee, but eventually one will be honest. Still, pain in the ass...
Athens Day1: Parthenon, Agora and Roman Agora, Pssyri, and Kerameikos
Day #1 hit all the spots on the Parthenon combo ticket:
Aacropolis
theater of dionysus
ancient agora
roman forum
temple olympian zeus
library of Hadrian,
keramikos cemetery
Some of the sights are on their own page, starting with the obvious:
This is where I'll admit that it was only 16:00 and therefore there were 4 more hours of museums that could been done, but due to travels, lingering cold and short nights, the day ended here. That said, still time for dinner:
and got to learn more about the olympic games. You do get a reasonable distant view
A short walk away was the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Honestly there is very little left of it and it's skippable (nice history, but there isn't much left of it, and the unfinished restoration didn't bring it back to its original grandeur). The Roman Hadrian Gate outside is more interesting in my opinion.
Next was Archeological Museum (blog clickme). It's somewhat out of town, and sadly due to orthodox easter week, some amount of staff did not show up for work, so 1/3rd of the museum was closed, pretty vexing. That said, was was open was definitely a very good collection (read blog for details)
From there, museum street was next, and five different museums to visit:
Byzantine and Christian Museum was another half closed museum. The collection was interesting and unique, but also showed that the artist skills from those times, were not good ;)
it's an interesting fork of christianity, with its own written language
ouch
also ouch :)
The National Gallery was a cool building, various kinds of art, not essential but it was a short walk away;
National Museum of War showed some wars as seen from the Greek involvement in them. Always interesting to see history from another perspective:
The Museum of Cycladic Art was next down that long museum street, nice collection and ancient history:
Last was the Benaki Museum of Greek History and Culture, an impressive private collection:
Athens Day3 Evening: Walk Around the Parthenon
Most of Day 3 was on a day tour, but there were a few hours left over in the late afternoon to walk around. Because of orthodox Easter, it was all fun and games until we hit a procession of thousands of people, ran away the other way, and the poor taxi that tried to drive us around had to go 3 times longer around town as most of the streets back to our hotel had been blocked and it took forever to find a path back.
A walk down Anafiotika
more cats :)
checked out a few tourist stores:
AFter finishing the loop of the Parthenon, ran into an easter parade, so I knew it was time to get the hell out before everything got blocked. By then many streets were already blocked and the uber had a hell of a time to get us back (took more than twice as long):
And that was it for Athens, time for bed and an eearly 07:00 ferry to Mykonos the next morning
