After a ridiculously short flight of fifty minutes, I’m now on the island of Rhodes. This particular group of islands right off the coast of Turkey is known as the Dodecanese islands. Flying was a much better option than an eleven hour ferry. Rhodes is best known for its almost completely intact medieval old town. Most of what you see in Rhodes today was built by the Knights Hospitaller in the 14th century. It was a very important base of…
My next and final stop in Crete is in the largest city on the island, Heraklion. This is also where I’ll be ringing in the New Year. The Christmas music hasn’t stopped unfortunately. Anyway, this post is light on sites, but rich in hostel drama. Excited? Don’t be, it wasn’t that big of a deal, but here we go. Heraklion has a pretty awesome Archeology Museum. All the cool artifacts from most of the ancient sites ended up here. I…
Making my way east across Crete, my next stop is the town of Rethymno. This city was built almost entirely by the Venetians in the 13th century. Even though it’s a bit sprawling, it feels like more of a small town to me. There’s not a lot going on here, but there were some interesting sites in town. My first stop was the Archeology Museum. Right outside was this, what I assume is a Venetian Gate. There was no information…
The ferry times to and from Milos are not at all convenient. I left at around 2pm and arrived on the the next island at 7pm, checked into my hostel, grabbed dinner, and got ready to explore the next morning. Now, welcome to Chania on Greece’s biggest island of Crete. I’m starting my exploration of Crete on a Sunday, everything is usually closed on Tuesdays, and it’s Christmas week, so I’m making a mad dash to all of the places…
The airport in Athens is about twenty miles out of town. Thankfully, they have a good metro system and a train that goes all the way to the terminals. I hopped on a little plane and was off to explore some of those famous Greek islands, starting with the Cyclades. I’ve already been to a few Greek islands on this trip, but the remainder of my Greek adventure will be all island hopping. Naxos Greece has a total of around…
I had quite the odyssey getting from Eleusis into Athens. I don’t know if the traffic is always like that or if it was bad luck because of an accident, but holy crap! There was a lot of sitting still, eventually an illegal U-turn and an epic reroute (thanks to my excellent map skills), driving every crazy residential back alley in the suburbs, until I finally finished my twelve mile drive in just over three hours. Whew, I don’t ever…
It was about an hour drive from Lavrio north to the Piraeus port. I drove my tiny little Fiat onto another ferry and just like that, I was off to my next stop, the island of Aegina, smack in the middle of the Saronic Gulf. After driving off of the ferry I immediately headed clear to the far side of the island to see the amazing Temple of Aphaia. The whole island is only about seven and a half miles…
I caught a VERY early morning ferry from Euboea and sailed across the Euboean Gulf in the dark to Rafina Port. For the next couple of days I’ll be exploring the coastline along the Attica Peninsula just southeast of Athens. I first turned north to the ancient city of Ramnous. The majority of the site was off limits, apparently due to staffing issues. Lame! The only part that was open was the Temple of Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and…
I know, that was my first thought too. That’s a lot of vowels! Ha! Heading east from Delphi I made my way to the big and narrow island of Euboea. Access to the island is really easy, you just drive across a short bridge into the city of Chalcis and there you are. I’m not staying in Chalcis, but I did stop for a minute to check out the archeology museum there. The museum focused on the culture of the…
Just a short drive north from Nafplio and I’m in another ancient and famous Greek city, Corinth. It struck me recently that when I was young and learning about the history of this region, the true stuff and the mythology, the stories are so epic, the cities are epic, the characters are epic, but it all took place in such a teeny tiny little patch of earth. The cities are pretty small, Greece is pretty small. It’s really messing with…