Destination
Greece, twice over
24 stories · Athens and Mykonos · 2018 and 2023
The first time I came for four weeks and stayed the whole summer — a 30-day metro pass, a bag of cat food in my backpack, an Acropolis I kept putting off, and a month of teaching English online from a kitchen table near Larissa Station. The second time I landed with almost nothing planned, to meet my sister on Mykonos for three nights. Same country, two completely different people arriving. Every Greece story I have written is on this page, in the order I lived them.
Before · March to July 2018
A one-way ticket, bought in the dark
It took years of contemplating before it took one night of actually doing it. I sat in the kitchen with my laptop, sweating, and booked a one-way flight to Athens. No return leg, no itinerary, and on purpose:
“I am not setting expectations prior to my travels because much of the beauty lies in the mystery of it all.”
Greece was a deliberate choice, not a romantic one. As an American I had 90 days inside any 180 in the Schengen zone, and starting that clock in Athens left the rest of Europe open afterwards. I planned for about four weeks. I stayed for the summer.
Getting there took nearly a full day door to door, with a layover in Rome long enough to remind me I need to go back, and four separate trips through Italian customs that ate a whole page of my passport.
Salad with Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Molto bene — the free meal box on the flight over.
Night one
Lost in Athens before I had even unpacked
I had screenshotted maps before I left. They were in English. Every street sign in Athens was in Greek, so when I stopped people to ask, they could not read my own map back to me. My data would not connect. I walked for close to two hours in the dark thinking “I have absolutely no idea where I’m going.”
A taxi eventually took pity on me. Five euros, ten minutes, and I was at the door by 2 AM — which told me exactly how far the wrong way I had walked. A local SIM card on day three fixed the part of that night that was actually fixable.
If you are landing late: plan the leg from the airport to your bed before you fly, not after you land, and do not trust an English-language screenshot in a city that does not sign in English.
I Bought a One Way Ticket To Greece at 3 AM The night the whole thing became real — and why I refused to over-plan it. Read the post Blog post 
I Made It To Greece Alive & In One Piece Nearly 24 hours door to door, four Italian customs stamps, one free meal box. Read the post Blog post 
Lost & Alone in Athens On My First Night in Greece English map screenshots, Greek street signs, and two hours of walking the wrong way. Read the post Athens · July and August 2018
Learning to live in a city, not visit it
Figuring out how to get around Athens was my first priority, so that is where this starts. Then came the food I could afford to eat every day, and then the parts of the city that only show up once you stop behaving like you are on holiday.
The card
A 30-day pass, and one very long queue
My first morning I went to Syntagma Square for a monthly pass, having already learned the hard way that they are not sold at ordinary stations — I had to buy a single ticket to my stop the night before, then another one back into town in the morning just to buy the pass.
Thirty euros got me a personalised Ath.ena card covering every metro, tram and bus line in Athens. They wanted a passport. I had a driving licence and a passport photo, and I did not want to lose my place in a line that long. They made an exception.
Prices then were 2018 prices. What it all costs in 2026 is in the planning panel further down.
The personalised Ath.ena card — metro, tram and bus, thirty days.
Syntagma, where the monthly passes actually live.
The koulouri
A sesame bread ordered by accident
In Greece it is not uncommon to see people running to work in the morning with a koulouri — circular sesame bread — and a coffee. I found a place called Oven Sesame on a side street off the Syntagma to Monastiraki strip and ordered a spicy one stuffed with beef, lettuce and tomatoes.
Something else had been bothering me. Days had gone by and I had not once seen two men holding hands in Athens, which after Spain felt like a completely different country to be gay in. A conversation over that koulouri turned into an unplanned walking tour, and it turned out I had been standing in the gay part of Monastiraki the whole time — near the church of Agia Eirini, a street away from Rooster.
Koulouri.
Oven Sesame.
Monastiraki.
The strip between the squares.
The choir
“That’s the sound of justice!”
I was writing in my notebook in Syntagma when a group of American tourists marched past singing, behind a banner that read TOURISTS AGAINST TRUMP. I filmed a few seconds and they vanished into the city. That night I could not identify the song at all — I tried to Shazam my own video and got nothing.
The next day I was eating noodles near Monastiraki when I heard them again. That is how I ended up on Filopappou Hill at a birthday party where I knew precisely one person, and then at dinner in Exarcheia where the Stop Shopping Choir sang again. Their whole argument is about consumerism, and they make it land hardest on tourism, which is a strange and useful thing to hear while you are standing in someone else’s city spending money.
Filopappou Hill.
The choir, again.
Dinner in Exarcheia.
My Personalized Ath.ena Card For Transportation in Athens How to get a 30-day Athens transport pass — and the queue that nearly beat me. Read the post Blog post 
Ordering Koulouri Helped Me Find The Gay Part of Monastiraki By Accident A sesame bread run turns into an unplanned walking tour of Monastiraki. Read the post Blog post 
A Beautiful Night on Filopappou Hill With The Stop Shopping Choir I heard them singing in Syntagma, could not Shazam them, then found them again. Read the post Athens · August 2018
Finally — the ruins I kept putting off
Weeks went by before I made it to Greece’s most famous attraction. Living somewhere does that — the thing everyone flies in for becomes the thing you will definitely do next week. Someone told me waits can run over two hours. Eventually we just decided to go no matter what.
The Parthenon was absolutely stunning, and the detail I did not expect was the colour: the restored pieces are deliberately a different shade from the original marble, so you can read at a glance what is ancient and what is repair. The uphill walk is full of things to stop at on the way, and the Acropolis Museum is worth the separate ticket.
“The Acropolis (and Museum!) were well worth the visit.”
Standing at the Acropolis
The queue trick
Buy the pass somewhere else
Current 2026 prices and opening hours are in the planning panel.
Athens · August 2018
The people who turned up
I travel alone happily. That is not the same as being alone, and the summer in Athens is the clearest proof of it I have: two people crossed the whole of Europe to be in the same city as me, for two completely different reasons.
Brittany
Indiana, Canada, New York — and now Plaka
We met in 2015 at Leadership Academy in Indiana, in the last class to ever pass through that programme. Since then it has quietly become a rule:
“After attending Leadership Academy together in 2015, we took a propeller plane into Canada in 2016, visited NYC in 2017, and NOW we crossed paths in Athens, Greece this year!!!”
We spent the time in Plaka, the old historic neighbourhood under the Acropolis, and the next day took the train down to Piraeus before she carried on to Mykonos without me. I did not know yet that I would end up there too.
Leadership Academy Class of 2015
(Overly tired campers laughing to the point of tears)
Athens, three years on.
Jorge
A poem, and a year of not speaking
We met when he came to my university on an exchange programme from Spain, and when he flew home our lives went in two directions. Almost a full year later it was a Rupi Kaur poem from Milk and Honey that put us back in touch.
“Be it by chance or by choice, these were the words that helped to bring Jorge and I back in touch with one another after nearly a full year had gone by since we broke up.”
He arrived in Greece in mid-July. We marked it the only sensible way — milk chocolate shakes and honey-soaked baklava, which was easily the sweetest thing I ate in the country. He is in most of what follows: the Acropolis, the cats, the ferry, Mykonos.
Honey-soaked baklava.
Milk and honey, literally.
Athens · September 2018
Athens is a city full of cats
They are everywhere. I would not necessarily call myself a cat person, but I really enjoyed seeing all the gentle, little cats strolling through the streets with such poise and attitude. So I bought a small bag of Whiskas in a supermarket — small enough to live in my backpack, big enough to matter — and from then on we fed every single cat we met.
the one that followed us home
Count them
One spot, eight cats
Near one of my favourite metro stations the group just kept getting bigger. Tap a number.
First, there was one. (Or so we thought.)
This was the first cat that we fed in Athens. He was spotted a few streets away from Syntagma Square.
This adorable little guy was extremely vocal upon meeting us.
One night, we found two cats chilling by the famous Agora near Monastiraki. The black cat actually started following us after we fed him.
I’ll miss the cats of Athens.
Athens · the part nobody posts
What cheap actually buys you
To save money I booked a ground-floor place in a somewhat-sketchy neighbourhood near the Larissa Station metro stop, just outside the centre. It had a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, and one feature the listing left out:
“In the place we stayed at, cockroaches would come UP THROUGH THE DRAINS.”
Which would have been survivable, except I was teaching online from that kitchen table. One came up the sink drain mid-lesson, while I was teaching Cinderella and required to give a student my undivided attention for twenty-five straight minutes. I tried to kill it with my foot, off camera. I missed. With about sixty seconds of class left it came up my leg, across my hand, and onto my keyboard.
I have never felt so personally violated in my life. I am keeping the story here rather than hiding it, because “live somewhere cheap and work remotely” is advice I genuinely give — and this is the other half of it.
Living near Σταθμός Λάρισας (Stathmós Lárisas)
The kitchen layout — and the desk.
The cockroach on my laptop.
Photoshopped cockroach for a visual.
Athens · the job that paid for it
Can you actually work from here?
This is the question I had before I left, and the one I get asked most now. I spent a month in Athens teaching English online for VIPKID, which meant my income depended entirely on a residential Greek wifi connection holding up for twenty-five minutes at a time. Here is the honest report.
Smoke from the Attica wildfires, visible from the city, July 2018.
Does this still work in 2026?
Partly. China’s July 2021 private-tutoring rules ended the arrangement I was working under: VIPKID stopped putting teachers based abroad in front of students inside mainland China, and its China-based customers moved to licensed teachers living in China. The teaching side I used now runs as VIPTeacher, it was still recruiting in 2026, and it advertises roughly $14 to $22 an hour with bonuses on top. Applications go through vipkid.com/teach.
The part that has not dated is everything above it: what a Greek residential connection is actually like to work on, why you carry a hotspot, and knowing whose fault a dropped connection counts as. That applies to any remote job, on any platform.
Piraeus · September 2018
Which island can you actually afford?
After spending most of July in Athens I started thinking about the islands. Greece has over 6,000 of them, although only 227 are currently inhabited — which still leaves rather a lot of choosing to do. We were travelling on a budget, so the brief was simple: cheap, nearby, easy to get to.
Both of the two that made my shortlist go from Piraeus, and you get to Piraeus on Metro Line 2. Hydra is about an hour out, has no cars at all — donkey, bicycle or foot — and is peaceful and very pretty, though the beaches are pebbly. Aegina is even closer and cheaper, the sand is more of a powder, and the Temple of Aphaia there looks strikingly similar to the Parthenon. The catch is that the best beaches are the far side from where the ferry drops you, so factor in the island bus.
And then my mum told me to aim higher, and Mykonos is one of the most gay-friendly destinations in the world, so we looked up the cheapest ferry we could find and booked it for the next day.
“Traveling on short notice can be one of the cheapest ways to go about it!”
I still have not made it to Hydra. Someday.
The upper deck of the Champion Jet 1. We were blown away, quite literally.
Mykonos · October 2018
Welcome to Mykonos. You have no reservation.
Mykonos is an expensive island, and to make it affordable you have to cut costs somewhere. We cut them at the Paradise Beach Resort, which is not known for its amenities but is walking distance from one of the two big LGBT-friendly party beaches, and we were both pretty darn excited to be staying there.
It began badly. We came off the ferry into a mob and went looking for a shuttle driver holding a sign, walked past twenty buses without seeing the hotel’s name on any of them, got on the pink one on the strength of a guess, and rode it to the resort entirely alone. The welcome sign was falling apart. It read, more or less, Par Dive Resort.
Then the desk could not find my booking at all — “Yeah. Sorry, Rocky Balboa. I’m afraid you do not have a reservation here” — until Jorge slid his ID across and it appeared instantly. I had booked it on my account and listed him as the guest. No apology, no explanation.
“The ocean was unreal. It was gorgeous, almost unbelievably so.”
Worth knowing: on a third-party booking the reservation can end up filed under the guest’s name rather than the booker’s. Ask the desk to search both before you start panicking.
Paradise Beach.
Arriving.
Aqua blue water, crystal-clear sand.
And then a stall door took a piece of my thumb.
The review
One light, no wifi, and sheets that did not fit
The clerk framed the room as an upgrade he was doing us a favour with. It was a ground-floor room in an ice-cube-shaped block, with a single overhead light fixture for the whole room, a window pointed at the wall of the next unit, and a wifi network that did not work. The advertised queen bed turned out to be two twins pushed together.
And the sheets were too small for the mattresses, so the bare mattress showed at the top while the word PARADISE sat printed across the linen. Taking the key card out of the switch by the door kills all the power in the room — light, air conditioning and fridge included — which is standard across a lot of Europe and worth knowing before you wonder why your fridge is warm.
One more thing that applies all over Greece, not just here: the toilet paper goes in the bin, not down the toilet.
This photo isn’t a joke. I wish I were kidding.
The only light installed in the entire room.
Lights on. What a difference. Don’t you think?
The Mykonian curved-wall shower — the least offensive part of the room.
Welcome To Mykonos! Sorry, Rocky. You Don’t Have a Reservation Here. Twenty unmarked shuttle buses, an empty ride, and a booking under the wrong name. Read the post Blog post 
Time For The Beach! Oh Wait. Ouch, My Thumb Is Stuck In the Door A rusty stall door, a piece of thumb left behind, and first aid off the floor. Read the post Blog post 
I Didn’t Know “Paradise” Was Sleeping With Sheets That Don’t Fit Your Mattress The full Paradise Beach Resort review — one light, dead wifi, sheets too small. Read the post Mykonos · the gay guide
Paradise and Super Paradise are not the same beach
We booked the night before and thought we had a room at Super Paradise Beach. We did not — we had one at Paradise Beach, and they are absolutely not the same thing. Thankfully the two beaches sit beside one another, and this is the part of Mykonos I would send anyone to.
Every figure above is from 2018 and is here as a sense of scale, not a current price list. Mykonos has not got cheaper.
Super Paradise Beach — a popular gay destination!
The boat between the two beaches.
The Tropicana.
Paradise Beach after dark.
Cavo Paradiso.
Front row, eventually.
Little Venice, on the way to the port.
The waterfront.
Mykonos town.
The long view.
Mykonos · the departure
Old Port, New Port, and a kiosk we could not find
Leaving Mykonos was, without exaggeration, the hardest part of being on Mykonos. We arrived with SeaJets at the New Port. We were leaving with Hellenic Seaways from the Old Port. Those are two different places, and we took a water taxi from Little Venice to get to the right one.
Then we could not find the check-in kiosk, which matters because that is the only place your boarding passes get printed. We had left extra early on purpose and still started to believe we would miss the boat. In the end we phoned the agency and they told us we were nowhere near where we should have been.
Boarding was chaos — no staff directing anyone, no discernible seat allocation, a ticket printed in Greek that neither of us could read, and people asleep on the floor of the corridors. We picked a room, took two seats that were almost certainly not ours, and sailed to Athens undisturbed.
Two things to take from this: confirm which port your ferry actually leaves from when you book, and find the check-in kiosk before you relax anywhere near it.
The Old Port.
Waiting to board.
Last look.
Mykonos to Athens, Athens to Madrid.
Mykonos · June 2023
Five years later, and for a completely different reason
I had spent a year living in Spain, having uprooted my life to try to make a long-distance relationship work by removing the distance from it. It ended anyway. And then my sister happened to be on holiday and heading to Mykonos.
“My sister and I are incredibly close. She’s not only my sister, she is my best friend.”
I did not want to intrude on someone else’s holiday, so I asked for two or three days and flew out of Madrid on almost no notice. To make it work at all I booked, for the first time in my life on purpose, a genuine 1-star hotel. It made sense the moment I arrived: not even toilet paper was provided.
Google Maps said twenty-two minutes from there to my sister. There was an eight-minute version that involved a dirt path and a cobblestone wall, and at 1:30 in the morning, by phone light, I threw my body over it. By the end of the trip I was doing that walk without thinking about it.
Plane flies over Mykonos
Meeting my sister in Mykonos
The wall I had to jump over
Mykonos at night
Little Venice, again
The same lane, a different person walking it
Being back in Little Venice with my sister was so surreal. I had been there for the first time only a few years before and never so much as dreamed I would return. This time I was much less focused on the touristy things around me — I needed to be around people I love, and heal, and that was the whole itinerary.
So: gyros, ouzo, white walls, and the cats, which reminded me of feeding the wild ones in Athens. Mykonos is famous for its salt, which you can find forming on the rocks. The island feels incredibly safe to walk around in the evening, and walking it with my sister made it better.
“Despite it being such a generally sad time in my life, the memories from this trip make me incredibly nostalgic.”
Little Venice at night
White buildings in Mykonos
Cats in Mykonos
Ouzo — the drink my first Athens host welcomed me with.
Can you really travel to Greece and not order at least one?
The ultimate reason I decided to return.
Booking a Last-Minute Trip to Mykonos to Meet My Sister After My Breakup Out of Madrid on no notice, into a 1-star room, over a wall at 1:30 in the morning. Read the post Blog post 
Revisiting Little Venice, Mykonos On My Second Trip to the Greek Island The same lane as five years before, walked for a completely different reason. Read the post Mykonos · Kato Mili
The Island of the Winds
On an island where the breeze never stops blowing, it makes perfect sense why locals have chosen to harness the power of the very strong winds. The northern winds — the meltemia — blow constantly across the whole of the Cyclades, which is how Mykonos got its nickname.
So, fair warning: forgive every photo with our hair blowing in every direction, because the wind literally never stopped.
The mills were used for crushing agricultural yields, and the island had sixteen of them in operation. Each one is a three-storey circular stone tower with twelve wooden blades carrying triangular sails of the same cotton canvas used on sailboats. The wind turns a central axis, the grindstones turn on the top floor, the flour is gathered on the second, and the ground floor stores the grain going in and the flour coming out.
The cluster everyone photographs is Kato Mili, sitting just south of Chora in front of Little Venice. Geronymos Mill and Bonis Mill can still be visited, and Bonis has been fully restored to preserve its original features.
“If you visit Mykonos, stopping to see the windmills before you go is a must.”
twelve blades, and the wind never stops
A trademark of Mykonos.
Forgive the hair. The wind literally never stopped.
Mykonos · after dark
I could not come back without making an appearance
Mykonos is known first and foremost for its party scene, and going back meant going back to Cavo Paradiso, which has been voted one of the top 25 nightclubs in the world. The crowd there is mixed but skews thirty and upwards — the prices see to that. Down at Paradise Beach, at the Tropicana and the Paradise Beach Resort, it is twenty-somethings, and the parties are so close to the water they practically are on the beach.
Super Paradise is the gay beach next door, crossed from Paradise by small boat, and Mykonos is one of the most LGBT-friendly destinations in the world. Party buses run from the hotels down to the beach clubs, so you do not need to solve transport yourself.
The part I did not expect: this was the first time my sister and I had ever gone out properly together. It was so spectacular to return to Paradise Beach, only this time with her.
Tropicana party in Mykonos
Party bus to Paradise Beach
Bar at Paradise Beach
I even got a Cavo Paradiso bird shirt!
Mykonos · the other end of the scale
Paradise, properly this time
My sister and her partner made it possible for me to stay three nights at the Myconian Kyma, which is about as far from a 1-star room with no toilet paper as it is possible to get on the same island.
“The Myconian Kyma Hotel in Mykonos was one of the most impressive hotels I have ever been to.”
It is a five-star property in the Myconian collection, on the north side of the island and within walking distance of the Old Town. The room was a Horizon Superior Room with a Sea View and a Private Pool, and the private pool attached to the hotel room was everything. No children splashing around. No noise. Just the three of us, looking out over Little Venice and the windmills.
The breakfast buffet I could write about at length: the most expansive selection of dehydrated fruit I have seen, dried hibiscus flowers, real unprocessed honeycomb. The salmon, cream cheese and arugula sandwiches from room service I reordered three or four times, and you can build your own Greek gyros.
“The Kyma is a prime example of all around excellence. Location, hospitality, amenities, and even design.”
And the numbers, since this is the other end of the scale and the scale is the point. My own room on this trip — the 1-star Marcos Beach — was the $300 pauper room. My sister’s room here was $5,250. The Kyma’s rooms run around $750 a night, and honestly, it is fair to expect excellence at that price. Rates are what the post recorded in 2023; check Booking.com for current ones.
The private pool.
The Hot Tub
The Dynamic Duo
Looking out over the island.
Breakfast.
Real, unprocessed honeycomb.
Build-your-own Greek gyros.
The same island, both ways
Mykonos on a shoestring, and Mykonos done properly
I have stayed at both ends of this island, on the same trip. Drag the handle. Left is the room I booked myself when the only thing that mattered was getting there at all — $300, and not even toilet paper. Right is the one I got to stand in because my sister made it happen, at roughly $750 a night. Both of them are Mykonos.
Plan your own
Everything I wish I had known first
What I paid is from 2018 and is here for scale. The 2026 figures beside them are current at the time of writing and worth re-checking before you travel — Greece changes its fares and its ticket prices more often than it changes its opening hours.
Transport was the very first thing I sorted, and it is still the first thing worth sorting.
Two crossings, two operators, two completely different experiences — and one mistake worth avoiding.
I put it off for weeks. Do not do that — but do use the queue trick.
I spent a month teaching English online from an Athens kitchen table. Here is what actually held it up.
2026 figures checked September 2026 against athensmetro.org, This Is Athens, acropolisathens.org and athenstickets.org. Everything attributed to me comes from the posts linked on this page.
The whole archive
All 24 Greece stories, in one place
Every post I have written about Greece, oldest first. Search it or filter it.
Showing all 24 stories.
I Bought a One Way Ticket To Greece at 3 AM2018 · Getting around 
I Made It To Greece Alive & In One Piece2018 · Getting around 
Lost & Alone in Athens On My First Night in Greece2018 · Athens 
My Personalized Ath.ena Card For Transportation in Athens2018 · Athens 
Ordering Koulouri Helped Me Find The Gay Part of Monastiraki By Accident2018 · Athens 
A Beautiful Night on Filopappou Hill With The Stop Shopping Choir2018 · Athens 
Crossing Paths With One of My Best Friends in Athens2018 · Athens 
Milk and Honey… Reconnecting a Relationship One Year Later2018 · Athens 
What I Learned After FINALLY Making It Up to the Top of Acropolis Hill in Athens2018 · Athens 
Little Whiskas to Feed the Cats of Athens (CAThens)2018 · Athens 
A Cockroach Crawled Across My Body in Athens2018 · Athens 
Teaching English Online As a Digital Nomad in Athens, Greece2018 · Athens 
Which Greek Islands Can You Visit Cheaply?2018 · Getting around 
Sailing with SEAJETS to the Island of Mykonos2018 · Getting around 
Welcome To Mykonos! Sorry, Rocky. You Don’t Have a Reservation Here.2018 · Mykonos 
Time For The Beach! Oh Wait. Ouch, My Thumb Is Stuck In the Door2018 · Mykonos 
I Didn’t Know “Paradise” Was Sleeping With Sheets That Don’t Fit Your Mattress2018 · Mykonos 
Travel Recommendations For Gay Men Who Want to Visit Mykonos2018 · Mykonos 
The Struggle Was Real While Trying to Sail With Hellenic Seaways2018 · Getting around 
Booking a Last-Minute Trip to Mykonos to Meet My Sister After My Breakup2023 · Mykonos 
Revisiting Little Venice, Mykonos On My Second Trip to the Greek Island2023 · Mykonos 
Checking Out the Iconic Windmills from Mykonos: The Island of the Winds2023 · Mykonos 
How Is the Nightlife in Mykonos?2023 · Mykonos 
The Myconian Kyma Hotel in Mykonos Was Paradise on Earth2023 · Mykonos Nothing matches that. Try a shorter word, or clear the filters.
Before you go
Go back to places
The first time I came to Greece I had no idea what I was doing and it cost me two hours of walking on night one. The second time I knew the island, knew the walk, and the thing that mattered was who I was walking it with. Returning somewhere is not a wasted trip — it is the only way to find out how much you have changed since the last one.
The Rocky Safari · Greece · 24 stories from two trips, 2018 and 2023.
