Athens & Greek Islands, Greece

Travelling would be a lot more boring without its unexpected hurdles. Greece kept us on our toes with a sewerage system that refused entry to toilet paper. That’s right: no flushing loo roll. Let the record show that I never exploded a Greek toilet by failing to use the bin provided. I’m not saying there weren’t some close calls, but we’ll leave it at that.

Greece arrived in a blast of sun and heat. Having had maybe three hours of sleep, our little travel group was wobbling on its feet as it entered Athens. My own fatigue soon translated into a delirious enthusiasm for the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum. But it was not to be.

Greece seems to operate on its own time, generally rejecting anything you’d expect based on clock faces. On the Greek islands, this led to interminable ferry delays. In Athens, it meant that the Acropolis Museum was unexpectedly and unapologetically closed without notice due to the next day’s election. This wasn’t actually the worst imaginable consequence of the Greek election – my father had predicted euro-abandoning doom – but it was still quite annoying at the time. 

Having stumbled, sun-dazed, around half the Acropolis in our effort to find the museum, we decided to hop on an open tourist train to get back to our hostel. We enjoyed its unique style of commentary. A sample: “This building was [muffled static] 18- - [static]… Turkish occupation.” The evening was saved by a lovely Greek restaurant where we sat outside, ate chicken gyros, and were given a free shot of mastikha (alcohol of the Greek tree sap variety).

Early next morning, we took a choppy five-and-a-half hour ferry ride from Athens to Mykonos, the first island on our tour. The wind on the top deck was crazy, toppling everything from deck chairs to full-grown men.

Upon arrival in Mykonos, we suffered a sardine-packed bus ride to the hostel, which fronted the aptly named Paradise Beach. And then we swam in the blue, blue water, and ate delicious, cheap gyros.

We ate dinner with the busabout group in town, where we admired the famous Mykonos windmills and pub-crawled our way to dancing.

Next day, we did absolutely nothing. I lay on a sunbed and read a total of 38 pages of my book. At around 7pm, the five of us took the bus into town and found another restaurant, where Niki and I shared tsousoukakia, delicious Greek meatballs. And then we returned to Paradise Beach and sipped daiquiris from the beachfront bar.

We left Mykonos next afternoon for Paros, where we were booked to stay for the next four days. We were meant to leave at 8:30am, but this apparently equated to 1:45pm in Greek Island Time. It was not, however, the worst delay in the world, lounging in the shade at the edge of Paradise Beach.

Paros was a much cheaper, more relaxed, more authentic-feeling island than Mykonos.

Authenticity arrived in the form of laser-guided killer mosquitoes on the beautiful Krios beach. Apparently sunset is feasting time.

We spent our second day in Paros on a daylong boat tour around the nearby island of Anti-Paros. This was the absolute highlight of the whole trip. The sea was the same sort of spectacular blue-green that generally features in James Bond and Charlie’s Angels movies.

The boat stopped at various intervals around small coves so that we could swim. We lunched on a beautiful desolate beach and ate barbequed skewers, Greek salad, dolmades and throat-scalding ouzo. We were also supplied with a bite of fresh octopus (caught while sailing, dried in the sun on the mast, and barbequed on the beach by the drunken captain). This drunken captain, incidentally, was quite a character. For our entertainment, he did such things as drag an octopus over an unsuspecting girl’s behind, and eat fruit out of a bowl balanced on another girl’s behind with no hands. He was almost redeemed by his companion, a dog called Cookie, who was perpetually seasick but adorable.

The next day was a not-much day, spent lounging on a couple of town beaches and exploring the little boutiquey shops near our hostel. On our final day in Paros, Kathy, Edward and I took a ten-minute ferry to the gorgeous beach directly opposite the main town while Niki and Tash took advantage of a second boat tour.

We left for the third island, Santorini, in the early afternoon. Upon arrival, we found we had just enough energy to seek out a fro yo before collapsing in our rooms. Santorini was by far the most visually spectacular of the islands that we visited.

On our first night, we went to dinner at a restaurant set in a cliff face overlooking surrounding islands and Santorini’s trademark caldera. Later, we went to a bar for cocktails and dancing.

Our second day was spent on a bus tour that encompassed a ‘bucket list’ of Santorini’s principal sites of interest. We started by driving up to Mount Profiti Ilia for amazing panoramic views. Next was Perissa, a black sand beach, where we had a swim and tripped over the treacherous lava-formed seafloor.

Kathy, Edward and I were dropped off at an indoor exhibition of the ruins of the ancient Minoan town of Akrotiri, which had just opened. As the bus driver had warned, we only got a ‘looky looky’ as opposed to a ‘talky talky’, but most of it seemed self-explanatory. Like Pompeii, Akrotiri was swallowed up by a volcanic eruption in the distant past – but unlike Pompeii, Akrotiri had been mysteriously deserted prior to the eruption, as if the town’s residents had been warned of their impending doom…

And then we walked up to the famous Red Beach (which had rocky red sand). This walk took massive effort due to the scalding heat and shifting rock-sand underfoot.

The bus tour finished at a winery featuring another crazy epic view of the island. Santorini is basically just one massive crazy epic view.

In the evening, we drove out to Oia, a picture-perfect town that looked like everything you’d expect from a Greek island: blue-roofed churches, smooth white buildings, blue sea, blue sky, windmills, etc. We picnicked on the edge of a cliff overlooking the sunset. Views, views, views. You get the picture. 

Two days was far too brief a time to spend in Santorini. We could have very happily passed another two days exploring the island and maybe bathing in the hot springs near the caldera, but instead we ferried off to Ios, our fourth and final island. Unlike the previous three islands, Ios was incredibly hot due to a lack of breeze. It felt even hotter after climbing the billions of stairs to our hostel with suitcases in tow. (The views maybe kind of made up for it.)

I couldn't find a picture of the views. So here's a picture of Niki eating tsousoukakia!

We spent our first afternoon browsing the shops and then resting in our room, swapping photos and generally charging our batteries for the epic Ios night ahead of us. Ios is roundly acknowledged to be the ‘party island’, a title earned through its 90+ bars and clubs and lack of actual Greek population. In fact, if Melbourne has acquired a massive Greek population over the years, I’d imagine it’s a fair exchange for the sheer number of Melbournians beached in Ios.

I found Old Gregg. He runs a bakery on Ios now.

Ios lived up to its reputation. We joined the busabout pub crawl, which was to include eight bars of various ‘quirky’ themes. These themes included ‘Irish pub’, ‘fifties American memorabilia’, ‘Wild West’, and ‘Scandinavia’. We made it to a total of five: respectable. We got home around 3am, just as a group of people from our hostel left to begin their night.

In the morning, I dragged myself out of bed to join Kathy and Edward for a kayaking expedition around quieter parts of the island. The town was dead during the day. We headed down to the beach, only to take a 45-minute bus ride to an even better beach with actual powdered sand and the requisite rows of beach umbrellas. From there, we kayaked to a sheltered area where we snorkelled before heading to a burning hot pebble beach for a barbeque lunch. We soon discovered that walking on our towels was the only possible mode of transport. (Some intelligent expedition leader had told us that there was no need for thongs.) We then kayaked back to the main beach, where the three of us hit a ball with a beach racket in a round robin. While we improved loads over the course of an hour or so, we never quite reached the local levels of expertise.

When we got back to the hostel, we had a rest before meeting the others for dinner and crepes. Niki, Tash and I hit the town again with a particular bar in mind, but ended up bumping into busabout people. We joined them at a circus-themed bar, where the bartender speed-juggled flaming vodka bottles behind the bar. Very safe, obviously. I swear he burned himself multiple times. Eventually, we found the bar we’d been aiming for at the beginning, had a couple of drinks and wobbled home for a wifi party.

It wouldn’t be Greece without ferry delays, so we got back to Athens a good two hours after expected. This meant that we couldn’t go to the Acropolis that night as planned, so we farewelled Niki and headed directly for our favourite fro yo spot. As you can possibly tell, our Greek experience largely revolved around yoghurt. Yoghurt and sunscreen, and, belatedly, mosquito repellent.

Our last day in Athens was a triumph. We clawed our way through the tourists to the top of the Acropolis, took millions of photos of ourselves in front of the Parthenon, and finally headed off to the airport.

And there ended my year abroad, with only a million hours of 30 Rock episodes between me and home. Thanks so much to everyone who made the ten-and-a-half months spectacular. Northern Hemisphere: I’ll be back.