Greeting Graceful Greece

Greece was full of lovely locals, great coffee and very diverse weather! We enjoyed glorious sunshine over Christmas and New Year, and then snowy cold during February. We didn’t expect it to get so cold in Greece, but it did make for some great pics!


We got to spend our Christmas and New Year pet sitting 3 lovely cats in Palairos on the Western coast. We stayed for 3 weeks, and really felt like we became one of the ‘locals’, enjoying wine on the square in the afternoon sun. Especially as during this time of the year most of the town is shut apart from a few bars, and of course the Gyros place. For those of you who don’t know what Gyros is, it is Greece’s ‘kebab’, with either chicken or pork, Tzatziki sauce, chips and salad. It is delicious, and very cheap! 

The cute cats we got to pet sit over Xmas
Traditional Gyros
The town of Palairos
Palairos square
Boxing Day swim, it was still about 20C

 

Getting friendly with the locals!





The perfect afternoon


We visited a couple of local towns whilst pet sitting, including Lefkada and Mytika.

The pretty Lefkada island
The quaint village Mytika
Enjoying a coffee with a view in Mytika








We then popped into the beautiful city of Ioannina on our way out of Greece, where we tried our first Greek coffee, of which I am a lover, Stacey is not such a big fan!











We came back into Greece after a few weeks away going back to Montenegro and Albania. When we re entered Greece we came through East of Albania, stopping at the first beautiful town Kastoria. We stayed here for a couple of nights, enjoying G&T’s with the sunset, pleasant walks and more Greek coffee. 


Our spot in Kastoria overlooking the lake
A pleasant walk


Sunset over Kastoria


Meteora is a big tourist destination, and you can see why. With stunning rock formations and lots of Monasteries built on top of them, it sure does make for some excellent photos. We, by chance, stumbled across Sunset Rock, just because we arrived about an hour before sunset and thought that it looked like a nice place to stop. Little did we know that within half an hour a bus load of tourists would turn up to also enjoy the sunset!


Our approach to Meteora
One of the many Monasteries built on top of the rock formations
Overlooking sunset rock


On our way into the mountains we checked out the Palaiokorya waterfall, and stayed a little further up, enjoying a BBQ in the snow.

Palaiokorya Waterfall

Woke up to deep snow!
BBQ in the light snow
































One of our favourite spots in Greece was the Lamia hot springs. It is this natural hot river, flowing in a strange place, with a motorway on one side and mountains on the other. It is a free spot and a popular one with campervanners. We enjoyed 2 nights here, fully embracing the very cold weather and the hot springs. It was always easy getting in the water, but quite chilly getting out!! After our 2 nights we sadly needed jump starting, but luckily some friendly Italians came to the rescue.










Volos was a nice university town where we enjoyed a coffee overlooking the marina, and then spent the night on the other side of the bay overlooking the town, and waking up to snow on the beach!


Volos Marina
Volos snow on the beach 


























We wanted to visit the infamous Mount Olympus, but sadly we were unable to do any hiking as we are not very experienced and it was covered in deep snow. We did drive to the top though and walked to see a mini waterfall! We then got to spend the night at the foot of it, enjoying it in its full greatness!



Our spot overlooking Mount Olympus - a night with the Gods!

Frozen 'waterfall'

Views over Mount Olympus

Our last place to visit before we headed on to Turkey was Thessaloniki. We checked out the Olympic Games museum in the hopes to learn more about the history of Greek Olympic Games, which we did a little bit, but it did mostly focus on the modern Olympic Games. We also checked out the famous white tower, which was a bit underwhelming! But we enjoyed a walk up to the very steep old town, and had a drink overlooking the sunset on Valentine’s Day.


Overlooking Thessaloniki sunset
A Valentines treat!


We always enjoy shopping at the supermarket’s of each country we visit, and we found the name of the Greek’s most popular one, Sklavenitis, quite funny. We thought it sounded a little bit like an STI!



Anyway, it would have been nice for us to spend more time in Greece and venture further south to Athens, but sadly due to Brexit and our time allowed in Schengen countries we had to high tale it out.


Next up Turkey!



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