The Greek Islands: Hop 'til ya Drop.

The Greek Islands are a trap. We have met so many people during our travels that have planned a trip to the Greek Islands for a few days, and stayed there for weeks. It was easy to see why; with all the beaches, party life, beautiful old towns, sunny climate and warm seas, life is easy in the Greek Islands. It’s the kind of trap we would happily sail into, if we had enough money to blow on things like that. But we don’t. We really, really don’t. Instead we decided to do a two-stop hop from the top of the acrop’, to Santorini and Rhodes, arguably two of the most beautiful (and consequently the most touristey) islands.

 Phoebe was dropping before we'd even started hopping. Traveling is tiring for a Phoebe.

Santorini is a postcard (metaphor alert: it’s not actually a postcard it’s an island but it’s so beautiful that it looks like a postcard). If you haven’t seen pictures of Santorini, it’s basically the remains of a huge crater rising out of the Aegean Sea, left over from one of the largest volcanic eruptions in the history of volcanoes. The island is all volcanic rock, so it’s pretty barren, but what really gets the tourists going are the white-washed houses and the blue-domed churches that are found mostly in the main towns of the island.

We stayed in Perissa, the cheaper, more lively part of the island. Had a few too many drinks with a bunch of kiwis we met from Taranaki (are there any kiwis left in New Zealand???) which was a laugh. We regarded the hangover we had the next day as a sort of sacrifice to Dionysos.

It seems that the thing to do in Santorini is to hire some sort of motorised vehicle and hoon around the island. Given our lack of funds and basic license level, we went for the quad bike option.

Felix found Phoebe's driving a bit scary.

 

Told ya Santorini was a postcard. One of the classic white-washed buildings of Oia perched on the cliff, looking over the caldera and turquoise sea.

The only disappointing part of Santorini was the Red Beach..It wasn't particularly red, and it was littered with rubbish.

The sunset in Santorini is a huge deal. All the bars and hotels on the western side of the island advertise "the best view of the sunset" or better still "the most unique view of the sunset" (lol). Missing the sunset in Santorini would be an insult to Apollo himself.

Next stop on our hop from the acrop’: Rhodes. Rhodes is so close to Turkey you can almost hear the call to prayer from the Turkish mosques, bit greedy on Greece’s part to claim it as one of their islands, really. The old town of Rhodes is the main reason tourists come here; it’s the largest inhabited medieval town in Europe, completely surrounded by walls and a moat. Being so large, it’s easy to escape the crowds – the tourists mostly mill about the entrance to the old town where all the market stalls are, like a herd of baffled sheep who have too much money to spend and loud American accents (or worse, Australian). If you wander a bit further into the town you can get lost in the narrow streets for hours without seeing/hearing another tourist.

 

 We got a bit lost in the middle of nowhere, trying to find our hostel in Archangelos, a tiny town halfway down the island of Rhodes. The owner of the hostel happened to drive past on his scooter and ask if we were the two kiwis he was expecting, and gave us a lift one by one on his tiny scooter, bag and all.

 

Archangelos was pretty bangin'. So much quieter than the town of Rhodes, and hardly anyone spoke English which made it quite interesting. It even had its own acropolis, which was infinitely less crowded than the Acropolis in Athens.

One of the Knights of the Order of Saint John, patrollin' the walls in the medieval town of Rhodes.

 Rhodes is meant to be the Greek island with the most sunshine hours, and the most flowers.... Good on ya Rhodes. But seriously, it was pretty lovely.

We love the Mediterranean. We'll miss ya.

Next time: Gobble gobble gobble!