Greece, continued...

Ah, Greece. What a lovely place. Land of friendly people, good food, and great scenery. It's a travellers paradise.

After Mel and EB returned to Crete for the last two weeks of my five-week stay, we kicked the travel up a notch: Athens the first weekend and Santorini the next. Most of you probably saw the hotel we were staying in...and it was worth every euro-penny.

Athens was fun - seeing the Acropolis for the first time on top of its mountain in the middle of a bustling modern-day city was roughly akin to walking out of the Colloseo metro stop in Rome for the first time: it just takes the breath right out of you. Several people told us that other than the Parthenon, et al, Athens was kinda lame. We beg to differ! Wandering through the shops and hills in Plakas was awesome, and seeing the change of the guard was pretty cool too. On top of everything, we jumped at the chance for a little ethnic food - you don't see many Chinese places in Naples, and the ones you find are still no where close to Chopsticks there in Athens.

The next weekend brought Santorini, perhaps the most beautiful and popular of the Greek islands. It'll will probably go down as one of my favorite locations in all of Europe, if for no other reason than the scenery alone. We spent the long weekend here, and never regretted it. Although our apartment was in Firostefani (both convenient to yet far-enough away from the tourist-centric town of Fira), we rented a little Nissan Micra (an adventure in itself) and tooled around the island. We saw lots of different beaches, scenery from every end of the island, and sunsets and food at the locations where most of the cruise-ship-folk never make it to. Our day in the rental car moved this weekend from a run-of-the-mill tourist hike to a seriously memorable weekend. In the end, I can totally understand why many people think Atlantis was here. It takes an extra few minutes, but try to read a little about the history and layout of the island here.

In the end, having spent enough time in Crete to probably say that I "lived" there for a spell, I can honestly say it was one of my favorite experiences ever, both personally and professionally. I made some long lasting friends and ate plenty of souvlaki (pork is best) and stuffed vine leaves, among other things! If you're coming this way and have a week or so to burn, don't miss Crete.

pac

PS - In an effort to keep my post length down and prevent scattering pictures everywhere, I'm adopting a new 2 or 3 picture limit on myself. Because I love sharing pics though, I'm embedding a neat slide show feature below that everyone can use to scroll through the pics - just click on the screen to keep scrolling through.

Oh, and thanks to Those Other Chockleys for giving me all my good blog ideas and not holding it against me when I steal them (can anyone say "keeping up with the Jones'...?")

I'm shameless.