Greece - Kalambaka, Evia, Naxos & Patras and Italy - Florence, Pisa & Siena - Escape to Naxos and back to Portugal via Italy!
We catch the 7.30 am bus from Gjirokaster, Albania to Kalambaka in Greece. The bus comes from Tirana overnight and goes all the way to Thessaloniki, in Greece. It is messy, full of people with bleary eyes, and a bit dirty. The trip, which is supposed to last 4 hours, ends up lasting 8. Just the border crossing back into the EU, takes 3 hours and 20 minutes. Of course the bus is falling to bits and starts blowing smoke inside the bus choking us all. After hours of tinkering they finally fix it and we get going again only to stop for lunch just a few kms just before Kalambaka (our destination) What else could you expect from a company called “Crazy Holidays”? Once in Kalambaka we remember how wonderful this place is. BTW, if you’ve been following us, you know Greece is our favourite place in the world. Kalambaka is the base to explore the incredible Meteora monasteries, but as we’ve been to Meteora before and there’s a heatwave on, nicknamed “Lucifer”, we decide to take it easy and just wander around Kalambaka. The Galaxy Hotel, 35 euros, with very good breakfast, is nice and the staff are lovely and very helpful. We go out to eat and find the amazing Papariko Bar and have a great Greek lunch and lovely Greek wine. What an vibrant, noisy locals place, pure Greece, recommended!
The next morning we take the 8.20 train to Lamia and then a 70 euro taxi to the port of Arkitsa, where we catch our ferry to the island of Evia. Evia is our 16th Greek island and we have mixed expectations about it. We read a bit, it’s a place close to Athens, where lots of Greeks go on holidays. We arrive at the Iliotropos Studios and then go for dinner and rest till the next day. The studios are a bit worn out and the room is tiny but the next morning we ask the lady to change rooms and get a much more spacious one, still a bit run down though. We go for a long walk to explore the island. Good not to have high expectations as Evia kind of sucks. The room is not very nice, the WiFi works just enough to piss us off (found myself many times standing at reception in my PJs), the beaches are kind of crappy and so are most of the places to eat. Most people don’t speak English as most visitors are either from Greece or Serbia. We hire a car for the day for 65 euros and end up not seeing anything worthwhile, total waste of time and money. After 2 days (we are booked for 12 days) we decide we don’t like it here at all and immediately start planning our escape to Naxos! Even though we’ll have to pay a lot more than we’re used to it’s worth it to go to Naxos earlier than expected.
First step, call Angela at Stratos Studios (which we can do thanks to the end of roaming in the EU) on Naxos and check if there’s a place for us, After a few calls and emails, its all sorted bless Angela and we can go, Angela will find a place for Pavlos and Luiza, even if we have to change rooms a lot. Second step, talk to the owner of the studio and see if we can stay for four nights instead of 12 and she is surprisingly OK with that. So, we get the tickets back to Athens, the bus goes on the ferry, from there we catch the metro to Piraeus, go out for a nice Greek lunch (best souvlaki and cheap rose we ever had) and board our Blue Star Ferry to Naxos, where we should have been in the first place!
Operation “Escape to Naxos” completed successfully! We arrive at Alsos Studios, where we stayed last year, stay for 4 nights and then we go to Agia Ana for a couple of days as they are full here. It’s on the other side of the island, where the fabulous beaches are, but not as much fun as “our regular side” is. Of course, we go back to Maros, our favourite restaurant in the world, great food, fabulous prices and the best vibe you can find anywhere! After a couple of beach days, we come back to “our side of Naxos” and change rooms a few more times, till our regular booking dates come up.
As usual, we have a wonderful time on Naxos, eating and swimming and making new “instant friends” while eating out at our favourite (and only) restaurant, Maros. We also enjoy drinking lots of Greek wine and get some special homemade wine and cheese as well as plenty of fresh fruit, from our friends Angela and Nikos, the owner of the studios. We’ve just realised that over the years we’ve stayed with them, altogether for 7 months now. Confirming that the Naxos Castle is really our favourite place in the world, we go back every night to watch the sunset before dinner and we still find new places and corners to enjoy and take fabulous pictures, have an absolutely fabulous time again, on our 6 weeks on this island.
Well all good things have to end sometime so when it’s time we leave Naxos and start to make our way back home, and if you have been following our adventures, you already know that it’s never as simple as just going to the airport and taking a flight back home, so let me tell you guys how it goes. We take a ferry from Naxos to Piraeus, five and a half hours, then a train to Athens, another one to Kiato and then a bus to Patras, all together, 12 hours on the road. We get to Patras so tired, we just want to go out for a quick meal and back to the Acropole Hotel, 45 euros which is pretty good and it’s just across the road from where the bus stops, nice and well located with a good breakfast. We go out for some Greek food and a cold Mythos and retire for the day. The next day, we confirm our suspicion that Patras is a very nice city. It’s clean and not too busy and has a young university crowd. We go up a bunch of stairs and visit the amazing castle then come back down to visit the famous gorgeous Orthodox church. We go out for our last Greek lunch this summer and chill having some Greek wine, when we receive a text from the Grimaldi Company saying that our ferry to Italy is going to leave 1.5 hours late. So we decide to go for more wine as if you have to wait even longer, it may as well be over a fabulous Greek liquid lunch (ended uo being 1.5 litres of a lovely chilled white). We go shopping for some food and drinks for the trip and then back to the hotel to pick up our bags, taking a taxi to the ferry terminal and finally boarding the Cruise Europa ferry for our 22 hour journey to Italy, 80 euros per person to have an air seat which is supposedly reserved seating. The ferry is OK if a bit run down and it’s not too full, so we get 3 seats each to stretch out overnight. It’s a very long trip but not so uncomfortable, we recommend you bring some supplies as it can be expensive on board as per usual.
After the 23 hour ferry ride, we arrive in Ancona, Italy and grab some great take away pizza next door and retire for the day as we have been to Ancona before and we have a very early train next morning. The Albergo Gino is nice and just opposite the train station, Papa does it again. We get up at 3 am and catch the very nice 5am train to Florence. Arriving in Florence, we store our bags at the left luggage and go for a walk in the town. Florence is a nice place but teeming with tourists and we’re kind of underwhelmed. We then catch the afternoon train to Pisa, check in at the Corner Guest House and go out sightseeing. Pisa is a lovely city, very human, with enough tourists to make it lively but not hordes of stupid selfie sticks. Well there’s the obligatory “holding the tower” pics but nothing enough to annoy us. We also find an awesome local pizza place, near the guest house, with frisante white wine, which just hits the spot. Next morning, we take another train to the incredible gorgeous Siena, a broad walled medieval city, you can walk around for ages. We immediately fall in love with Siena and walk for hours, having lunch at a local tavern, after being rudely mistreated at another one, which clearly didn’t like serving tourists. Then back to Pisa for a bit more sightseeing before having more pizza and frisante wine and retiring to catch our very early flight back to Portugal. Again, courtesy of Ryanair, we get up at 3am then and walk, yes, you heard it, walk, to the airport, the freedom of carry on luggage! We catch our flight back to Portugal, just 3 hours, and our Portuguese friends pick us up from the station, kidnapping us to a very nice lunch, what a fabulous welcome home it was. Well, what an incredible journey it was, 3 months, 18 countries, 13 new countries and summer in Greece. That’s all for now, we’ll talk again soon!
