Spectacular Trip to Greece

Greece | May 5 - May 15, 2026

Lana’s birthday trip to Greece was an unqualified success. You will recall that she alone coordinated with you for a variety of excursions and experiences. After the first draft was developed, she asked me for my thoughts; I do not recall suggesting any changes.
After arriving in Athens on Day 01, we rested briefly in the hotel and took pictures of the view out the window. It took us a day to confirm that we were seeing the Acropolis – but not the Parthenon because a building rose to perfectly block its view. That was rectified by going to the hotel rooftop at sunset on Day 02.
Our first excursion was with Katrine as our guide for a neighborhood food tour. While I am not a chef, and do not enjoy cooking, the details Katrine provided at each of the stops along the tour were quite informative. It was simply a superb start to our visit to Greece. If our tour ended with that tour, the trip to Greece would have been a clear success. Wonderful.
Our Day 02 with Michael was exemplary. While I had no particular interest in Greek mythology, he made the morning quite educational. It was only after another mythology tour on Mykonos with a delightful Elizabeth that I learned mythology provides a guidepost for navigating life, death, and a host of other challenges in life.
Day 03 began with different Elizabeth picking us up at the hotel in a snazzy Mercedes to begin a thoroughly enjoyable day at Hyra – and no cruise ships. When the church that she wanted us to visit was closed, we had a wonderful discussion on the ability to improvise without needing to be annoyed at the circumstance. Our engagement with the mules was fun – strangely, they did not appear to be stubborn! Our horse ride began on a low note - I was tethered to Lana’s horse whose bridle was being led by the guide – while two young Irish lasses were free to handle the reins of their beasts. On the return leg I was allowed full control and my ride was a perfect success – I even motioned the guide away when he attempted to regain control because the horse was nibbling at leaves on an overhanging tree. At the end of that day, I wished that Elizabeth could be our guide again – anywhere; she was incredibly engaging.
Day 04 at Mykonos was fun – the taxi driver humorously warned us that we would get lost in town. I’d not say we got lost, but the way back to the hotel was not perfectly direct. As we approached the hotel from our initial wandering, we stopped and watched the rehearsal of a community dance group in an amphitheater across from the hotel.
The start of Day 05 was an absolute success with Dimitri leading us on a hike from the family vineyard to the coast and back. It was more than exercise – it was pure entertainment and full of informative details about life outside town, careers, family, churches, religion, etc.
The second part of Day 05 was a bit of disappointment. The guide, Sylvia, made sure that we were photographed at all her favorite locations. That is not our style, but we accommodated her. Except for the windmills, we had already walked to the stops she led us too. Unlike the engaging, educational food tour by Katrine in Athens, Sylvia’s food tour was ultimately underwhelming. In fact, the meal that we had was the second worst of my life – and to be honest, I do not recall my worst meal. I nibbled at the gyros to be polite. At the conclusion of her tour, Sylvia insisted on guiding us to a pathway leading straight back to our hotel, before going in the direction of her car. When she was out of sight, we turned around and went back into town to wander. While hydrating back at our hotel, we spoke at length with another, engaging guest and then walked crossed the roadway to the amphitheater for the production version of the community dance group. While there were no subtitles (!) or translations available, it was enthralling!
Day 06 was fundamentally a rest day since Lana was not particularly enthused about a hike up Mt. Zeus. I was more than enthused, but that was not relevant, I’ll hike for three weeks come August.
The Day 07 bike tour on Naxos began with a hiccup. We generally are at meeting points ten minutes early and are present when the driver or guide arrives. That was not the case this day, so Lana coordinated with the hotel clerk to arrange a very short ride to the bike shop where we met Manos. We quickly made up for lost time and were soon on e-bikes headed for the hills. What an absolute gem of an excursion. The experience matched that of the Athens food tour with Katrina and Elizabeth’s tour of Hydra in terms of quality, content, and immersion into Greek culture. Time at the goat farm was simply priceless. Fabulous beyond words. The evening mythology tour, while somewhat repetitive, proved to be very enjoyable. I don’t recall ever listening to English being spoken with a foreign accent with such perfect enunciation and pronunciation -- and with captivating inflection. Elizabeth packaged an interesting evening and graciously melded the expertise of a very knowledgeable young member of our group.
Day 08 proved to be long and tiring. On the ferry dock we enjoyed conversing with our driver who also had driven us to the hotel on our first day at Naxos. While standing in the queue we had a good time with several fellow travelers. Since we had a reasonably late breakfast at the hotel, we were not hungry at (U.S.) lunchtime so we ate light snacks on the ferry. Another Dimitri met us at the hotel, and he was as energetic as any guide could be. Picking up on his energy, we told him that the performance bar had been set high by our previous guides. To give him full credit, he tried; but at a key point in the tour, he had to leave us to enter Akrotiri alone because he was not allowed to guide its tour. After he dropped us at the gate to Akrotiri, we had to navigate the site independently – no pamphlet was provided. I admit I did not research the site as I most certainly should have. Since we entered the site without a clue about its basics, I found a QR code that linked to an English website still in development. I also found a PDF I could download, but that was impractical on the iPhone. Halfway through the site I found audio snippets via QR, but the associated diagrams were tough to interpret and many of the objects discussed were not onsite – they were in museums. The breadth of the excavation was stunning – and I learned later that night that it might take another 100 years to finish excavation. After rejoining Dimitri outside Akrotiri, he gave us two options: visit another castle or nearby Red Beach. We chose the latter in hopes that it would bring the day to an early end. It did not and the lack of a lunch break began to take a toll on our energy and moods. After leaving the interesting beach he drove us slowly to another photo-op site and then slowly back to the hotel as if to end the tour closer to the contracted time. One last point about the tour – it was in a rattletrap vehicle that left me unable to understand much of Dimitri’s constant stream of data and eventually led me to tune him out. OK, to be fair to him, I wear hearing aids to restore consonants that over wise would be lost in the ethers. If the consonants were in fact restored during the ride, they were overwritten by the rattling. Lana and I ended the day with a short walk to a restaurant that tested my resolve to keep the hearing aids powered on. We did not get a seat with a wonderful view of the caldera, instead we were ushered to a table set partway into a serving isle. I asked to be moved inside where I then discovered I could not hear Lana over the din created by waiters, bar tenders, music, and acoustics. We asked to be moved again – and were offered a street side, outdoor seat on a very chilly night. All of that movement was of our making, and I apologized to the manager for being so picky at which point he entertained us with stories of really picky customers – a group in which he said we did not fit! We thoroughly enjoyed our meal and his gracious hospitality.
The single scheduled event on Day 09 is always one of Lana’s favorite events – a regional cooking class. The class was perfectly enjoyable; great hands-on participation. Oddly, the lunch and wine tasting afterwards was ostensibly redundant – the food was the same, but double in portion size -- and the wine was similar in the pairing. The only noticeable difference between the two sessions was the dessert. Regardless of the redundancy, the meals had exceptional Greek flavors.
The weather reports for Day 10 promised an overcast day with chilly temperatures matched by high winds which led me to research the possibility of cancellation – not a chance. We spent part of the morning stepping down the 588 steps leading to dockside. There I purchased a trophy (Greek) hat on the assumption that we would successfully ascend the staircase. We did so without the aid of mules and celebrated with ice cream cones. Following quick rehydration, we walked quickly north so we could walk out to the Rock. And then we stuffed warm clothes into a backpack and were driven to the port for our catamaran sunset cruise. The weather was not as forecast – we only needed sweaters. It was as glorious as every other day in Greece – a perfect conclusion to our very, very successful visits to Athens, Hydra, Mykonos, Naxos and Santorini.
Thank you, Sydney, for helping make Lana’s birthday travel a marvelous success.