Aiming to be the world's most travelled bunny, Harryshaw strikes again by visiting Greece for the very first time! Together with my family, we learnt about dozens of Gods and Goddesses, ate tons of delicious sausages, enjoyed some vitamin-Sea, and celebrated my quarter century year on earth. Before we dive into the details of my trip, there was ONE thing that was super annoying about Greece and that is parking in Athens. Don't do it.
We always thought Greek food was predominantly seafood due to it being off the Mediterranean but their staple protein seems to be meat! In any case, we ate tons of everything and it's true (albeit maybe random), the onions here are amazing. In fact, the first restaurant we went to had the most amazing sausages and chicken chop that we actually went back again a few days later for more! That's a successful holiday in my books.
In most restaurants / food establishments we visited, we were advised not to over-order and would be given a starter, palate cleanser and/or digestive on the house. One lovely restaurant in Athens even offered us bottled water as we were paying the bill so we will remain hydrated throughout the day. How did they know I have a problem with not drinking enough water!
We discovered that the Greek language and alphabet does not have another language that it is related too (Greek and Latin may be described as cousins, and vulgar Latin is the ancestor to the "romantic" European languages today). It's definitely different trying to decipher words in Greek. No worries though as most signs and menus are available in English and the majority of the population are able to communicate in English really well! So where exactly did we go?
Day #1: landed at Athens International airport and had lunch at Trigono (or The Triangle). As mentioned earlier, it was here they gave us really good chicken chop and sausages. Since the sausages were so good, we spent almost every meal after trying to find a place with better sausages (which we didn't). We also ordered lamb shoulder and lamb chops here, all grilled to beautiful perfection.. It was a chill start to our holiday as after lunch, we checked into our hotel/resort, admired the hotel's interiors and the private beach overlooking the Vraonas (bay?), visited MyMarket (Greek supermarket) to check out the local offerings, and then strolled around the neighbouring town of Artemidas before having dinner!
THE stuff to get at Trigono
Our accommodation for the first 7 days in Greece
Cats of Greece 1.1
Day #2: drove to Athens for the famous Acropolis. Surrounding the Acropolis is a bustling area called Plaka - all sorts of touristy shopping and restaurants here. We went to Το Καφενείο (To Kafeneio) for lunch, ordering their house specialty meatballs, a salted pork dish, and their chicken with mushroom was mind blowing. At some point the waiter mentioned that the kitchen just made a fresh batch of roast pork. We were actually full then but ordering a portion was no mistake. With a full belly, we tackled our main mission for the day. Admiring the view of Athens from Areopagus Hill and then walking through the Acropolis (including Parthenon, Odeon of Herodes Atticus, Temple of Athena Nike, Temple of Dionysus). After all that we decided to drive from our Acropolis parking to the Parliament. Horrible mistake, we spent a long time trying to find parking - should have just left the car and came back for it! At the Parliament, we observed the hourly change of guards and walked through Syntagma Square. Tired out from having to search for parking, we ended up at KFC for dinner (for all the amazing food we had here, oddly their KFC wasn't good). Just next to the KFC is the travel company Ixis. You see, we didn't quite plan the "mandatory" island tours in Greece, so we decided to check them out and they helped sorted out ferry and accommodation in Naxos and Santorini.
All the wonderful food from Το Καφενείο
Cats of Greece 2.1
View of Athens en route to Areopagus Hill
Parthenon and our super derp-face dog guide!
View of Lycabettus Hill
Odeon of Herodes Atticus
Propylaea
Day 3: We drove to Sounion today, home of the majestic Temple of Poseidon, the famous bearer of the trident and God of the Sea. This area gives you a gorgeous view of the Aegean Sea, a site worthy of it's significance. Next to the temple, an easy walk to the tip of the peninsula, now giving you a stunning view of the temple with the water in it's background.
Day 4: Today we drove to Delphi or Delfi. En route to the town, we stopped by McDonald's trying the Greek Mac (maybe avoid the international fast food chains in Greece). The drive to Delphi was incredibly scenic as we drove through the mountain ranges of Parnassus. Delphi is known for its Oracle and it's relation to Apollo, God of the Sun. Makes you wonder why they didn't name the famous Apollo fleets to the moon after his twin sister Artemidas, Goddess of the Moon. Anyway, we visited the museum and the archaeological site that houses the Temple of Apollo, Pillar of Prusias II, a Theatre, and a Stadium. What was really gorgeous in Delphi is actually the Delphic Tholos, part of the Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia, which is not actually in the same archaeological site but a few hundred meters away and it was FREE. The town of Delphi itself seems nice but dulls in comparison to the neighbouring town Arachova! There we strolled through the quaint skiing town, bought some souvenirs and had a nice dinner at Taverna O Karmalis!
Arachova from a distance
Cats of Greece 3.1
Temple of Apollo
Delphic Tholos
Squid, sausage, and roast chicken at Taverna O Karmalis
Arachova at night
Our souvenir shop guide in Arachova
Day 5: today can be described as my dad and I's most boring day. Why? Because mom and aunt went all out souvenir shopping mode in Plaka after lunch! Fortunately lunch was incredible! We went to a really small place called Aspro Alogo. The owners (we think) were incredibly friendly (they are the ones offering bottled water and digestive for us at the end). The food was also amazing, we ordered a whole grill fish, pork souvlaki, roast chicken, and sausage!
Day 6: thousands of years ago, an idea to have ships transport goods between mainland Greece and the Peloponnesian peninsula was born. Long story short, in the 19th century, that idea came to life with the creation of the Corinth canal and technical conversion of the peninsula to an island! We drove along the beautiful but narrow canal with the hopes of catching a ferry or two pass by, then off to Mycenae, Argos, and Sparta we went. Mycenae was the center of the Mycenaean civilization which dominated mainland Greece and the archaelogical site was home to their fortified citadel. But after visiting so many ruins we decided to just have a peek from outside and not go in. Argos seemed to have cute stores here, but they were all closed. Lunch was the most adorable little restaurant called Mezedokipos. Pasta and pork chop was amazing but they had a scrambled egg dish (server said it's traditional) that was just pure delight. Finishing this blog post so many days out is seriously making me hungry and I just had dinner. The town of Sparta (or Sparti) was cute but perhaps we arrived a bit too late, the main attractions were closing up and it just seemed like we missed the crowd a little with the town.
Corinth Canal
Lunch at Mezedokipos
Street of Sparta
Day 7: lunch at Trigono because I may be shit at planning trips but I am awesome at food planning and this was the last day we were able to eat there. So obviously we got the mouth watering sausages and chicken chop, and some other stuff but did I mention sausages and chicken chop? We also visited the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, so dad and I were happy campers. Two really awesome artifacts stood out, one is clay vase shaped as a hedgehog, honest to god sounds a bit useless but so adorable. Another one is supposed to be a horned deer. Its description says "a local craftsman unsuccessfully attempted to transform this Hittite vessel into a libation vase by drilling a hole in the muzzle", I found it comical that the mistake is still highlighted thousands of years later. Travelling with my family means I need to be super en pointe when it comes to time management, but bloody hell we missed the sunset at Lycabettus Hill. Fortunately for my family, we still managed to see the very beautiful Athens night lights slowly turning on and the sky had a gorgeous orange hue. Of all the really incredible foods we had in Athens, dinner at the next place may not be the most unique but it was closest to my heart. The restaurant is Πάμε στο Πέταλο, there is absolutely no way I can begin to translate that to English but food needs no translation. There is no menu, but we were walked into the kitchen to see what they have to offer. Turns out the owner's mother cooks food for the restaurant daily and there was a real sense of love in the food. We got chickpeas, spanakopita (?), meatballs with rice, a magical stewed chicken with spaghetti dish (and I mean unicorn magic because it was that good), and the most amazing dish of all, it's like this stewed sugar snap peas or snow peas dish? Yea it was better that the unicorn magic chicken. Food in this country blows my mind.
Deep fried zucchini / courgette & Pork Chop from Trigono
Museum hedgehog
Some mistakes are forever...
Colours of Athens from Lycabettus Hill
Unicorn magic chicken
Better than unicorn magic chicken dish
Day 8:we left the hotel super early to make our way to Piraeus port so that we can take an 8 hour ferry ride to Santorini! I can fly 21-23 hours any day between KL to Toronto but 8 hours on the sea and I almost gave up on Santorini. The only reason I didn't is because I couldn't get out of the ferry! p.s. if you're like me, you can fly to Santorini. Arriving at Fira Harbour, we drove to Mount Saint Elias, the tallest point of this volcanic caldera of an island. The honey here was really good eh. Then we meandered our way down the hill to Argyros Estate Winery. You know what the family said, they said we don't want to drink, my heart broke a little but I had other drinking plans so all is well. We were supposed to find some hidden cave churches and stuff in Messaria but that didn't happen. Then we made our way to Oia, the famous home of the blue domes and the most coveted area of Santorini. It's true the sunset here is GORGEOUS. Since we missed the sunset before I made sure we weren't going to miss it again. In fact I was being so extra I have a 15 minute video footage of the sun setting. The funny thing is that on Google, the reviews were this is the one place you see people clapping after the sun sets, as though it doesn't do that everyday. They are not wrong. My grand plan was to drink wine here and watch the sunset but it was so busy the serve didn't end up taking my order.
Saying goodbye to Piraeus Port
Stopped by Naxos but we're not going here... yet
And HELLO SANTORINI!
Church at Mount Saint Elias
Cats of Greece 4.1
The sound of a cat plopping on the ground, prompting you to give it a belly rub #precious
Oia for the Sunset
Day 9: Woke up with watch the sunrise with my favourite bunny / travel companion (first blog photo you see). It's cliche but I totally get the romantic getaway appeal of this place. After breakfast, we went to Kamari beach for the black sand. It really is nice but end of October isn't really beach weather. Somehow between a few failed plannings and just creepishly staring at the beautiful homes of Santorini, it was almost time for lunch. So we went to back to Oia to buy lunch from Pitogyros. It is said that they have the best gyros in all of Greece. I don't know how true it is, but we brought our food up the ferry and the captain seemed like he really wanted us to share the food (we did offer). A well stuffed tummy and a 3 hour ferry ride later, we ended up in Naxos, the biggest of the Cycladic islands. If there is only one thing you must see in Naxos, it's the Portara (door) of the unfinished Temple of Apollo. Guess what, they say you should view the sunset here and to make up for missing the sunset in Lycabettus, well we did. Though unfinished, the large marble doors didn't fail to take my breath away. We thought we would visit The Castro but it was a bit too dark by the time we were done with the door. Dinner was at a really lovely restaurant with a sea view called Flamingo restaurant and bar. I finally got my wine, a local Naxos wine, the server said something in Greece and it just went over my head. For our mains, we got tuna souvlaki, grilled calamari (it was huge), and the most amazing brandy and butter prawns with spaghetti. That prawn brought me to food heaven. I'm realising as I am editing my photos I didn't take one proper photo of the food in this restaurant but I blame it on the fact I was too eager to eat. It was SO good.
Goodbye Santorini
Gyros, souvlaki, kebab, and pork belly from Pitogyros
A portara in Naxos
The Portara of Naxos
Dinner at Flamingo
Day 10: breakfast at the hotel was prepared by the sweetest Greek auntie I will probably ever know. The world needs a food teleportation device so I can have breakfast prepared by her every morning. From there, we drove to the Archaelogical Site of Yiroulas, Sangri. Our next stop, Temple of Demeter even had a dog guide! Then we drove to Chalki because it is home to Vallindras Kitron distillery founded in 1896. Yes the distillery is still being used! Kitron can be described as quite a large citrus fruit and its leaves are distilled to create the liqueur. There's yellow, white, and green versions of the liqueur (highest to lowest alcohol content), and they also have some Raki for tasting. Of course we tasted all of them and then bought a whole load. Actually the family bought a bunch, I didn't because I thought I didn't have any space for them and yes I admit, it was a terrible mistake. After the distillery, we had a quick ice cream stop at Four Tastes, then drove through Filoti, Apeiranthos, then back to Chalki for lunch because we didn't know where to eat and it was sorta on the way back to Moni - home to the Panagia Drosiani church (Virgin Mary Monastery with nice paintings). There we got local sausage peinirli, local sausage omelette, local minced meat with goats cheese (I think we got arseniko), goat cheese & balsamic pizza. We also wanted to see Flerio (the marble boy statue) but we were a bit short on time. Went back to Chora (main part of the island and next to the port) where we bought ourselves more souvlaki and gyros from Yosouvlaki! Clearly we're making grilled food on ferries a thing. We also got ourselves some coffee from this one store and we literally just bought drinks but the owner was so nice she gave us free cake too and said thank you to us about a hundred times. 5 hours later we ended up back in Athens, checked into Hilton Athens for our final night #Hiltonworkperks
Dog guide at Temple of Demeter (tiny dad for scale)
Streets of Chalki
Vallindras Kitron distillery
Ice Cream / alleyway / wonderful shopkeeper of Chalki
The Kitron citrus fruit, quite a bit larger than I expected
Lunch at Dolce Vita
Cats of Greece 5.1
Day 11: today was a sad day as we didn't really have time to do anything aside from breakfast, packing, returning the car, and heading to the airport. Sad as in we didn't have time to eat more food.
With a heavy heart, I said goodbye to my brandy prawn, unicorn magic chicken, the amazing grilled fish from the uncle who keeps us hydrated, my favourite new breakfast auntie, and a grill house paradise - Trigono. Greece has been one of my most extensive trips and gosh, I still cannot wait to go back, not only because I need to go get my Kitron fix, but the warmth and hospitality of this country is truly magnificent. Special thanks to Andreas who helped with planning, you are the MVP of this trip.
Listening to "Wreak Havoc" by Skylar Grey
Images by me
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