This was a long trip, with three distinct parts to it: a few days of tourism around Athens together with attending the wedding of Charmaine and Petros; seven days of excellent hiking in three areas - Zagori, Pindos, and the climb to the top of Mount Olympus; and finally, four days on the beautiful Island of Milos, with two days kayaking, one day-trip on a sailing boat, and a day spent in the amazing Sarakiniko area. In Athens, we stayed in The Editor, and later in The Athenaeum Grand hotel. The former is a smallish boutique hotel, with wonderfully friendly staff; the latter had a room with a great view of the Acropolis, but the hotel felt somewhat tired. During the hikes, we stayed in two absolutely wonderful spa-style places, probably the best I can recall, perhaps even better than the beautiful mountain lodges of Peru in our Cusco-Machu Picchu trek. In Zagori, we stayed in Mount Grace Suites and Spa for two nights in Monodendri, and two nights in the 1700 Hotel and Spa in Mikro Papigo. At Meteora, we stayed in the Divani Hotel - not much to say about the hotel, although the breathtaking beauty of Meteora made up for it. We overnighted in the Petrostrouga Refuge, which is pretty barebones, and typically quaint like all Alpine refuges. It was operated by a couple of young men, at least one of them was part-timing there, while training for ultra marathons. Finally, in Milos, we staying in a Greek version of AirBnB sort of village apartment, Matilda's apartments. This was conveniently located, although it is a bit of a walk down to Adamas (where there are some nice restaurants). The place is run by a young lady, Matilda, and her family; they are wonderful folks and made our stay so much nicer.
The Food
Athens has a variety of restaurants, among which we liked Soil the best, and also Spondi. On most days, we just ate at any decent restaurant near whatever tourist spot we were in. The best of the lot was probably The Yard near the Acropolis museum. During the hiking, we obviously ate in some local tavern-style restaurants in the villages where we were. Food was generally nice, greek style, lots of really tasty fresh vegetables, tons of olive oil, feta cheese (grilled slabs of feta are amazing!), excellent salads (we had Dakos almost evey day), lots of grilled meats, really tender octopus, apart from the usual suspects like various forms of moussaka and dolmadakia.
Hiking/Kayaking:
The entire hiking trip was organised (including all transfers, hotels, guides, driver) by Konstantinos, via his travel company Unlimited Adrenaline. They are thoughtful and all planning and advise was excellent, so we also asked them to arrange all details of the Milos trip. Everything worked perfectly. The travel team is constantly in communication via whatsapp. During the entire hiking trip, we were driven between the differnet places in a large (seven seater) Mercedes car, driven by Adonis (also a partner in the company) - a wonderful person, and who went the extra mile to accommodate any need. For example, the sole of my hiking boots came apart just before our climb up to Olympus, he called up the guides to confirm that we may not get new ones in Litochoro, the starting town of the climb; and then he drove us around in a nearly town until we found a suitable pair. Also wonderful was our Kayak guide, Dario, in Milos. The other hiking guides, particularly Dimitris who walked with us up and down to Olympus (although the actual scramble was guided by a different professional climber) were very knowledgeable and wonderful people. I have used imported data from Terri's Corus watch to make maps of the main hiking; also drawn up approximate maps of the two kayaking days in Milos. These are linked below.
June 14: Bridges of Zagori Google
June 15: Monodendri walk, Vikos gorge Google
June 16: Dragon lake of Tymfi, Mirko Papigko Google
June 17: Pindos national park, Epirus Google
June 18: Meteora Google
June 19, 20: Climb up to Mytikas, Mount Olympus Google
June 22: Mandrakia-Sarakiniko-Glaronisia Kayak, Milos Google
June 23: Old Supphur Mines Kayak, Milos Google
About the photos
Gear: Sony Nex7 with a Sony 18-200 lens, and a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra.
