DAYS 204 - 221: GREECE
SANTORINI, GREECE
I’m pretty sure that if I didn’t love my mom so much I’d still be in Greece. Basking in the sun at some little cafe overlooking the ocean - perfectly content to never return…
I mean it’s a bit of a dream, really. A land of olive trees and ancient cities atop marble mountains. Beaches fit for mermaids and secret pirate coves. The home of Athena. Apollo. Poseidon and his Trident. Achilles and his heel.
We spent most of our time on islands. Naxos, Milos, Peros and Santorini - and they’re every bit as whimsical in person as they are in postcards. Tiny houses, the crispiest color white, sandwiched into cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean - a sea painted a shade of blue that’s all her own. One that smashes against turquoise and squishes with navy and bobs under bright orange buoys - and still manages to roll itself on shore transparent as a sheet of glass.
Life on the islands (at least in April) is slow and easy. Tall grasses sway in the breeze. Waves wallow around nearly abandoned beaches. Wildflowers gracefully dance through fields. There’s no sense of urgency, no evidence of hustle. Just a few fishermen hanging out on their boats, a few round bellied fellows smiling behind gyro stands, a few little old ladies in babushkas opening their second story windows to usher in the ocean air.
The people are absolutely wonderful. They go out of their way to smile and give you directions when you’re standing on a street corner looking lost. They excitedly invite you behind the counter for a lesson on how to make Greek coffee when they discover you’ve never had it before. They clap for you at climbing crags, and if you happen to be hiking up a trail next to a road, they’ll cheer you on from their car. When they spy you wandering around all the closed restaurants on a Sunday in search of dinner - they’ll invite you in and feed you the same spaghetti and meatballs that they had prepared for their family.
We filled our days biking up to gorgeous mountain views, losing each other in the winding cobblestone streets, getting drunk on sunsets so intense they seemed to light the sky on fire. Day after day we’d find ourselves alone, on a some new beach - so beautiful and different from the last, I would have to retreat from it backwards trying to absorb every second into my memory.
I honestly didn’t think I would walk away from this trip with a favorite place. They’ve all been so beautiful and different in their own ways. But for me, Greece totally takes the cake. Her beauty, at least in my opinion, completely beyond compare.
