A Travel Blog
After our stay on tiny Astypalea, we took an early-morning ferry to the island of Naxos, the largest island in the Cyclades group. We are staying in Naxos Town (Chora) where there’s a lively port area with many restaurants and bars, as well as a fascinating labyrinth of streets that lead up to a Venetian castle.
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While in Astypalea we have rented one of 11 small houses in a complex located just between the Chora and Livadi beach. Each house has separate access, but they are connected to some common areas, including a beautiful little patio where the staff serve great breakfasts each morning. It’s an interesting mix of having the privacy of your own place with some of the conveniences of staying in a hotel. Very low stress!
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Our final destination in Crete was the capital city of Heraklion (also spelled Iraklio). We used the city as a base to visit the Palace of Knossos before flying back to Athens to begin our journey home. Heraklion is the busy capital of Crete and it doesn’t get a lot of love from locals or tourists, but we found it an easy place to spend a couple days.
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The town of Rethymno (also spelled Rethimno and Rethymnon) is a town on the northern coast of Crete, roughly halfway between Chania and the capital city of Heraklion. We took a public KTEL bus there from Chania, a journey of just over an hour.
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For our second weekend in Greece we took a two-and-a-half-hour bus ride northwest to the town of Delphi for an overnight visit. Our main purpose was to visit Ancient Delphi, home of the famous Oracle of Delphi, but modern Delphi is also a nice small town that is worth exploring, with stunning views of the surrounding mountains.
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When researching places to stay in Malta we came across Valletta Vintage. The renovated apartments they rent are beautifully styled and unique, but usually quite expensive. But in the off season — including January — the prices are more reasonable, in line with a slightly-above-average Airbnb. So we went ahead and booked their “Retro Pad” apartment.
Read the full post »After three hours on a pretty comfortable ALSA bus, we arrived in Granada early on a cloudy Saturday afternoon.
We took a taxi from the bus station up into the Albaicín neighbourhood where our hotel is located. Like Alfama in Lisbon and the Judería in Córdoba it’s a neighbourhood of steep hills and impossibly narrow winding cobblestone streets.
We braved the humidity, downpours and dripping air conditioners of New York City for an August long weekend getaway. We usually avoid summers in NYC, but we had the travel bug after our London and Iceland adventures and snagged a good summer rate at the Nolitan Hotel in Nolita near Soho.
We took things easy and spent a couple days mainly along the Upper and Lower East Sides of Manhattan.
One of our first stops after we checked into the hotel was the nearby Elizabeth Street Garden. This small park is an oasis filled with lush plantings and stone sculptures, located on the site of a former public school torn down in the 1970s.
We are staying in the Southwark/Bankside area of London, which is on the southern side of the Thames, about a ten-minute walk east of Waterloo Station. It’s a former industrial area that’s become trendy over the past few decades, but many signs of its grittier past remain, including numerous arched brick railway overpasses.
We are staying at the CitizenM hotel, the London offshoot of an Amsterdam-based chain.
The hotel is very hip and modern with hi-tech rooms where all the lights, television, blinds, heat, wake-up alarms and other things are controlled via tablet app. There is a distinct lack of stuffiness, with efficient friendly service and minibar fridges stocked with free (non-alcoholic) beverages and snacks that are replenished each day.
This archival post was migrated from an old Facebook album, so please excuse the choppy writing and odd formatting.
Entrance to the Dakota apartments, where John Lennon was shot and Yoko Ono still lives.