The art is worth spending a day here, but there weren't many Italians, except ones who zoomed past on mopeds through the narrow streets. Checkmark city. There are more photos below.... read more

I went here, to the Island of Odysseus, to walk to some mythic sites, hiking along the roads to the beach (pictured) where Odysseus supposedly landed at the end of his journey, but though it was pretty (again, the photo, but that is a misleading angle), it was full of lounge chairs and a bar that unsurprisingly exploited the said footnote. The 15 hour ferry left Greece from Patras, picked me up in Ithaka, and went to Ancona, Italy, where I took a train to Rome. The seas were rougher than normal and I was deathly ill, probably from the ice cream I had the night before, and then having to sprint around the mouth of the harbor to catch the boat in the late morning, so I splurged, switching from a space on the deck ... read more

Patras wasn't the nicest town and is only worth a night to get a ferry to the unbelievably gorgeous Ionian Islands. I stayed at the HI Hostel there (see photo), which is apparently permanently closed. It was an SS Headquarters during WWII.... read more

Poros is such a short trip from the capital and is worth it to get away from Athens and to see the white rocks of the hills peeking through smattering of vegetation and contrasting with the heavy blue water and the bare firmament in the Mediterranean breeze.... read more