Greek Mainland Odyssey - Three Week Car Tour

Whenever we've been to Greece, it's always been to the islands. So in late September we bought cheap as chips air flights to Athens and hired a car for a month to roam around the mainland.

This is the route we did around Greece. There's a fair bit of driving involved, but what's nice about Greece is that there are plenty of small pretty seaside villages with pristine waters and great tavernas if the driving all gets a little too much. We generally booked places a night in advance. The season was finishing and accommodation was plentiful and cheap. We used booking online sites which gave us deals comparable and better than we could find by just turning up.

Our Three-Week Itinerary:

• Athens to Epidaurus
• Nafplion
• Monemvasia
• Gythio
• Kardamili
• Olympia
• Lefkada
• Parga
• Metsovo
• Kalabaka
• Delphi
• Galaxhidi
• Athens

We'd booked a hotel a few miles from the airport for the first night in a place called Porto Rafti. Just spend a moment, if you will, in our shoes. It's eleven pm. For some reason, the Google map app on my phone thinks I'm in Bootle. We're tired, not sure where we're going, the signs are literally all Greek to me, and like hire car companies the world over, this one is also unable to provide us with a decent map. In fact, the single page map they've given us is the crappiest one yet. It's a free-hand impressionistic sketch of about a quarter square mile of unlabelled roads around the hire car compound. Stuck in the corner is the Acropolis, which, if to scale, is the size of a Greek Island.

The airport junction itself has complex signage onto motorways into and out of Athens and we find ourselves quickly committed to heading for the toll roads. We're doomed! Our only navigation balls-up of the tour and it happens in our first hour on Greek soil. Still, we got to pay fifteen euros to the nice man in the motorway toll booth that we saw three times as we drove up and down the same section, repeatedly missing our junction. And, we now know that Athens has an Ikea. We very nearly ended up sleeping in their car park. Glad we didn't; meatballs for breakfast would have been weird.

Epidaurus

Refreshed the next day, we drove through Athens on the motorway, pausing briefly at our favourite toll booth guy to give him a cheery Kalimera and another five euros. Athens was easy-peasy and we quickly got out onto the road towards Corinth, stopping to look down at the canal. 

Our first port of call was Epidaurus, and we weren't disappointed. This is a beautiful seaside town and so much more than the amphitheatre, which is a must-see on any tourist route.

Nafplion

Nafplion was next on our list. It's apparently where Athenians like to go for weekends away. And I can see why. It's well-heeled and smart with quirky bars, restaurants and shops. The waters are perfect for swimming and there are magnificent views of the islands and shorelines across the Peloponnese. What's not to like? The parking. It's a bitch on a Saturday. But that's about it.

Monemvasia

Monemvasia

Think of a mahoosive fort on a rock in the sea and you've got Monemvasia. The old town clings to the side of the cliff and you can climb up to the top of it all and gaze over the sea, pretending you're an ancient Greek scanning the horizon for enemy boats. Whilst the old town is cashing in on the tourist euro with upmarket hotels and restaurants hammered into the rock, the mainland town has a great selection of more budget tavernas and accommodation where you also get great views of the sunset.

Gythio

Gythio

This was the first non-touristic town on our travels. We stayed right on the harbour front and had some of the best food of the whole trip, with seafood that was super-fresh. 

It's also the town where Paris spent his first night of love with Helen of Troy after he'd whisked her away from Sparta. Whatever legend says, when you walk over to the scruffy little peninsula where they are meant to have 'done the deed', you can't help but wonder if she'd had a couple too many beers.

Kardamili

This is a 'kick-back and relax' kinda place. We spent a few days swimming and enjoying the sunshine and the magnificent views. A short drive away is the Viros gorge where you can do some fabulous walks when the sun isn't too hot.

Olympia

Feeling suitably refreshed, we headed back onto the ancient history trail and took a trip to Olympia. We didn't really know what to expect. And the history here, it's kinda complicated. With the concentration spans of small mammals, we're struggling to know our Mycenaean from our Punics. And the museums can be quite high-brow. No buttons to press or knobs to pull. But in spite of that, we did love Olympia. Standing in the middle of the vast site, even though most of it has crumbled, you still get a sense of the scale of the place. You can walk out onto the running track and wander around ruins of buildings which would have been the hospitality tents and athletes' training and relaxation areas. The place has two good museums and we particularly enjoyed the Olympic games museum, even though there were no knobs to pull (unless you count the naked statues). Don't expect too much of the town of Olympia itself. It's geared up to squeeze your wallet until the pips come out. Our budget hotel was a time-warp from the seventies and the restaurant food was disappointing.

Lefkada

From Olympia, we headed up the coast and over the bridges to Lefkada, a large European marina resort with hundreds of yachts and some serious money bobbing about in the harbour. Strictly speaking, Lefkada is an island, and it has that same Greek island holiday mentality about it. It's bustling, touristy and a great place to people watch, but we didn't stay long. 

Parga

From Lefkada, we headed to Parga, where I'd been twenty-something years ago as an interrailing student. It was back in the day too, as a student that I used to watch chat show host Montel Williams solving America's heart-aches every afternoon at three. Montel told them, "Never go back." Of course, he was referring to some feckless boyfriend. For me, though, it's become a life mantra. And I should have listened to myself this time too. Because, as lovely as it is now, Parga is forever ruined in my head. From the sleepy seaside village where I spent a chilled-out week camping by a picturesque cove, it's now transformed into a full-on international resort, crowded with package holiday-makers, even in October. As we squeezed our way past the parked coaches picking up their airport transfers, I was glad to escape. And your words are still true, Montel. I will never go back.

Metsovo

Kalabaka

The weather was becoming more mellow on the coast, and the further north we headed, the more layers we began to wear. By the time we landed in the mountain village of Metsovo, sandals and T-shirts were swapped for hiking boots and fleeces. It was cold. And quite a shock to be plunged straight into autumn. Metsovo's pretty enough, but a world away from the beautiful Peloponnese fishing villages we'd been to so far. The hotel felt like we were staying in someone's Alpine home as we crept self-consciously through the front reception area/living room past the grandmother making lace and chatting to three of her friends. They were definitely a different type of people up here. A tougher mountain breed who cooked hardy huge meals of meat and potato stew with melted cheese topping. I went to bed feeling too full to move only to face another avalanche of food the next morning as plate after plate was piled up before us on the breakfast table. It was typical of the mountain hospitality of these warm-hearted, stern-faced people.

Kalabaka

Imagine pinnacles of mountains like flat table tops rising out above the clouds. Picture a string of ancient monasteries perched high on the hilltops, all with precarious access routes, steps and a rope bridge perhaps. Kalabaka is an iconic place. A once-in-a-lifetime you-gotta-go-to kinda place. It manages to combine the wonders of geology with the iconic culture of Greek orthodoxy. Look past the coach tours and the admissions tickets and take in the spectacle of this historic and ancient wonder.

Delphi

Delphi

I say Delphi you say Delfoi. Whatever it's called, this is another Greek wonder. Delphi itself is small, but surprisingly it isn't overridden by tourists. Most visitors arrive in loaded buses a mile further down at the archaeological site and spend a couple of hours there, before heading on to Olympia or back to the cruise ship.

But it's nice to be here in Delphi itself when the coaches have gone. The evenings are quiet, but Delphi somehow feels special. It has an energy and an air about it. Whether it's history or something more cosmic, you can't deny that Delphi has pedigree. And after all, tribunes from all corners of the ancient world paid insane sums of money to ensure that they kept the Oracle sweet and got all the good karma that was promised to come their way.

Galaxhidi

And finally, to our favourite place of all. So much so, I don't really want to write it down. But seeing as you've read this blog and we're friends now, I will let you into a secret. This beats every other spot we visited in Greece by a country mile. And it turns out that we've good taste, because it was the favourite rest-up of Greek sea captains too, many of whom chose to live here in between their sea voyages. There's not much in Galaxhidi, a couple of nice tavernas and a handful of shops selling local produce. But, what makes the place so special is the sea. The pastel-coloured town juts out as a peninsula from a sweeping bay, surrounded by the clearest turquoise waters. If I ever go to sea, it's Galaxhidi that I'll come home to, too.

Galaxhidi