Greece (feat. family)

Birds are singing outside as we lie in bed in our cottage at Lupaia. Montepulciano is perched over patchworks of vineyard just outside our window. Today is just about the typical day on our Tuscan roadtrip: an hour’s drive after breakfast with our top down from one property to another, a light lunch and some downtime before wine tasting and dinner, as the rolling hills around us begin to bathe in a warm sunset glow.

Alice was the one who had pushed to spend an extended time in Greece. We had considered going to Amanzoe for our honeymoon but the timing hadn’t worked out, so in some ways this trip has been several years in the making. We found out a few months ago that our parents were also eyeing a Greece trip, and so we decided to turn the whole thing into a second sabbatical family outing.

Years of lunch delivery from mediocre Greek restaurants in midtown NYC had set low expectations for me, and I was pretty worried about spending almost two weeks in the country. Those expectations were blown away by the perfectly grilled fish we had in a remote corner of Santorini, the orangiest oranges offered to us from a taverna’s grove on the outskirts of the Topolia Gorge, and just about any Greek salad or tzatziki we had (and we had a lot).

But even beyond the food, the colors of Greece might be what will stick with me the most about the country: the deep blues of the Aegean Sea and of Santorini church domes, the hazy purple that distant Peloponnese mountains faded into, the emerald water off Cretan beaches, and the pastel pinks and yellows that filled the sky before each sunset. 

Family time

We spent about three weeks on holiday with our parents during this sabbatical. We’ve had an exciting run of far-flung family vacations over the past few years, between Sunset Keys, Brazil/Argentina, and Greece, and my guess is we’ll keep the next few vacations a little more local and low-key. Then again, Alice really wants to revisit Hong Kong with family to have the full banquet experience that we couldn’t get on our own when we were there.

City on a hill

We spent a quick two days in Athens, highlights being the perfect fluffy and oiled pitas that we didn’t find again anywhere else in Greece, and the sheer cliffs of the Acropolis from our balcony and all around the city. The Puritans called Boston a city on a hill, but the ancient Athenians clearly have the first claim to that phrase.

Oia from Fira

This photo of our first Cyclades sunset was taken just after we had dinner in Fira, where Alice got a high-five from a waiter for ordering a giouvetsi. Two days later, we walked from this viewpoint all the way to the tip of the island that appears in the hazy distance here, before having a homecooked dinner on our rooftop.

Santorini blue

When we were planning this trip, we considered skipping Santorini entirely, with all sorts of people on the Internet panning the island as overcrowded and too touristy. But as we learned in Kyoto and Honolulu, touristy places are often touristy for a good reason. Having to squeeze through a few crowded streets is a small price to pay for the sheer sense of scale of looking out over the caldera into the endless deep blue sea beyond. The Mediterranean had a quality that I couldn’t quite put my finger on until after we’d left; unlike the ocean, it was almost perfectly calm and flat and even-hued, almost like a rendering of the ocean in a half-finished video game.

Imbros

Crete is home to Europe’s longest gorge, Samaria. The dads were set on hiking through it, and spent one last-minute evening figuring out the logistics of ferries, snacks, and separate routes for the moms and dads. But ultimately their plans were foiled by some combination of strong winds and (maybe?) earthquake tremors. Instead, we hiked through Imbros Gorge the next morning, while Alice stayed at home and had a morning to herself scrolling Instagram.

Shengji

Every family trip has to involve an extended game of shengji. The guys came back from being down 6-2 on the first night of cards in Oia to a big win on our last night in Crete, just a few hours before Alice’s parents had to wake up before catching an early morning flight back to Athens. 

Nafplio

We stopped for a night in the seaside town of Nafplio for dinner on our way to Amanzoe, catching the sunset over the port just as we arrived. The sunsets in Greece might have been the most consistently beautiful out of any country we’ve been to on sabbatical, and the pastel shades of purple and yellow that this sunset painted all across the sky was one of the most striking. We also had our first taste of seeing layers of Peloponnese mountains in the distance, something we’d see a lot more of in the coming days.

Working From Peloponnese

We’ve gotten used to a slower pace of travel over these past eight months, but our time in Athens, Santorini, and Crete was jam-packed. If we weren’t hiking, eating, or seeing sights, we were playing cards, and Alice and I found ourselves with plenty of errands to catch up on. There probably aren’t many better places to do that catching up than at an Aman overlooking the Mediterranean.

Unfired clay

I saw Alice’s time in pottery class pay off firsthand when a server brought a pile of plates to our dinner table, and she intuited that the plates were likely made of dried (not fired) clay for easy recycling. She was on a roll that night, and also suggested this angle for a photo, which is a much more interesting one than whatever I was thinking of taking at the time.

By the sea

There was one table at the resort set away from the others, right at the edge of the cliffs. For whatever reason, it was empty when we arrived for dinner. So we had our last meal in Greece looking out over the sea, watching the sky move through pale golden tones to pastel oranges to a dusty purple haze.

Hard product

Amansara showed us what more or less perfect hospitality looked like, and I left thinking that it was soft product that was taken to the next level by the top tier of hotels. After all, beds can only be so comfortable and a hotel room is a hotel room at the end of the day. Amanzoe showed us that you can in fact take hard product to new heights as well. The main entrance to the property was probably the only time on this trip that I’ve thought a manmade view was worth being called stunning.