Greece

GREECE: A DAY-TO-DAY IN GREECE NARRATED BY KRISTOPHER

Our next stop on this journey was Greece. We did a week here, splitting our time between the greek islands Santorini and Naxos, and then Athens, the greece capital. I’m going to take you through our 7 day journey in Greece. I never really had Greece on my list of places to visit before this trip but after all was said and done, I will definitely be back. This trip was pretty crazy planning wise, so I'll go through a quick recap of our day by day then provide some hopefully helpful tips on planning a trip to Greece and what we would do differently.

Day 1: We land in Santorini very early in the morning, check into our hotel room (Ether Studios in Oia—wouldn’t stay here again but not terrible). I booked this hotel the day before because our airbnb was originally in Naxos and navigating where these islands are on a map was very confusing. We made the most out of our first day though, going to Domaine Sigalas winery for a tour plus a wine tasting. If you make a trip to Santorini you have to do this. It was a four hour tour, which was originally supposed to be two hours. We had about 18 different types of wines, and brandy with food pairings for each of the wines plus dessert. I thought the tour was expensive at first ($120 pp) but it is definitely worth it. It was educational, the wines were all very good and different (they grow their grapes very differently from a typical vineyard), and the food was actually pretty good, no seasoning needed this time.
Highlight: The wine tour
Lowlight: Checking into our hotel. nobody was at the reception desk so we had to knock on a lady’s window to let us in

Day 2: We caught a ferry to Naxos, another island which is like 2 hours away. The ferry only cost about $20 to get there and it’s basically a big cruise ship. When we got settled in Naxos and we went to the grocery store so that we could cook breakfast lunch and dinner the next day. After that we did dinner at Scirocco ( which has the best stuffed tomatoes ever ) killed a bottle of rosé and hung out by our pool.
Highlight: The stuffed tomatoes
Lowlight: To get to Naxos city center was about a 10 minute walk, but we went the wrong way and it ended up talking us 45 minutes

Day 3: Our last day in Naxos before going back to Santorini , we just hung out by the pool all day, Keya cooked brunch and dinner and we watched Power. She also forced me to watch Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (some scenes where shot in Santorini, go figure).
Highlight: Chilling by the pool doing nothing all day
Lowlight: So the ferries decided to go on strike, therefore we were almost stranded in Naxos until God knows when. Luckily we caught the last ferry out at midnight, otherwise we’d probably still be in Greece

Day 4: We're in Santorini again (we definitely could have planned it better so we wouldn’t have to move around so much.) We stayed in the Kasimatis Suites which I would highly recommend you check out, not exaggerating but it has the best view of Santorini, so sunrises were lit. On Day 4 we rented an ATV and drove to the blue domes (the church that you see everyone who goes to Santorini post pics of) and got some bangers for the instagram and blog. We met up with one of Keya’s friends from Howard who was on vacation with her boyfriend. We all went to dinner at (Keya ask Ari bc I forgot the name). The restaurant was literally right on the water. We had 3 bottles of wine, talked for hours, watched the sunset, and then rode our ATVs back to the hotel. Side note, there are no traffic lights, street lights or anything here so maybe don’t have 3 bottles of wine and drive ATVS at midnight.
Highlight: Riding the ATVs and seeing the great views and sunset plus meeting up with another young black couple that loves to travel as much as we do
Lowlight: We thought our ATVs got stolen for like 5 minutes on our way up the hill from dinner lmao, we literally just walked right passed them (in our defense it was hella dark, plus wine)

Day 5: Our last day in Santorini before flying out to Athens we booked an all day excursion which basically was a boat that took us to the Red beach, the Black beach , and the white beach. The excursion included a swim and snorkel in the hot springs in the middle of the mediterranean sea, and a tour of the volcano that everyone talks about here. It also included fresh sea food, wine, and transportation to and from our hotel.
Highlight: The dinner the host made, probably the best meal we had in Greece. The mussels, shrimp, chicken all seasoned to perfection. 
Lowlight: Keya is AlWAYS gets seasick but this time It was my first time ever being sea sick so it was pretty much the worst 6 hours of my life since everyday of spring 2013

Day 6: We got to our airbnb in Athens and caught up on Power and Insecure. Afterwards we met up with our friend who we met in Iceland, Andre. We went to this pizza place which wasn’t that great to be honest, but oddly enough the margarita was amazing. Afterwards we went to the shopping center just to look around. We ended our night at this bar called Drunk Sinatra...LOL. We won’t go into the details on this specific stop but just know we all had a great time that we’ll never forget.
Highlights: Drunk Sinatra


Day 7: Our last day in Athens was filled with all the touristy things. First we had brunch at this rooftop hotel called A for Athens which happened to have the best view of Athens. Highly recommend if you find yourself in Athens, to make this stop a priority for good pancakes and coffee. Then we went to all the ancient towers, which was crazy to see and be at. One of the towers made the cut for being 1 of the 7 original Wonders of the World. Our stops included the Statue of Olympian Zeus, Acropolis, and the first olympic stadium from the 1896 Olympics. We ended our night at this bar which had great wifi, and again amazing margaritas, called Papia . All in all we had a very good 7 days in Greece.
Highlights: Being able to reflect, standing in the first olympic stadium
Lowlight: It was 105 degrees


What we would do differently:

• Cut Naxos out - I liked the island but Keya hated it, definitely not something you NEED to do or go see. Santorini and Athens is enough.
• Stay in one hotel - We stayed in 3 during our stay to Santorini/Naxos
• Book hotel’s far in advance - It happened that we were in Greece during labor day weekend so everything filled up pretty fast.

Things to note:

• Taxis in Athens are hella cheap
• 98% of the population in Greece is white. Enough said
• Greek salads are different in Greece vs America — to nobody’s surprise, a lot better in Greece
• No need to tip in Greece, or really anywhere in Europe. They pay their staff decent wages already, imagine that

Let us know if you have any questions or comments! 

SN: If you're still reading, it's Keya! I obvi have to put in my two cents. I enjoyed Greece overall but def didn't feel very welcomed by the Greeks. I even had to ask a restaurant manager if he had ever seen a black person before. So far my least fave country, for that reason.