I knew that June would be hot, but Brian and I had talked about just road tripping around the country to see it in all of it's glory...not just the famous places you see on Instagram. I did, however, want to cross Santorini off of our bucket lists because you can't go to Greece TWICE and not go to Santorini. I figured that, since the country was still just opening up, we could kind of plan as we went, but I secured flights and a nice hotel on Santorini at the end of the trip, just in case.
The flights that I booked started out really nice: A 3-hour layover in Philadelphia and then non-stop to Athens all in one day. Of course, they changed and left us leaving a day earlier than we'd planned with an 11-hour layover at JFK before continuing on to Athens. Flights were just barely starting to open up, but they were expensive, so I stuck with our revised flight and then found a day-pass to a hotel just a couple of blocks from the airport to rest in between flights. The forecast called for rain and I really didn't want to navigate Subways and New York City with backpacks in the rain, so it worked out perfectly and was actually amazing. We ordered lunch delivery, napped, watched movies, and I even relaxed in a bubble bath while we waited. Then we Uber'ed back to JFK and hopped on the 11-hour flight to Athens. It was American Airline's first flight back to Athens since Covid.
We landed at about 9:30 am (a 10-hour time difference from Arizona), and made our way to the main area about 30 minutes late, where a representative from our rental car company was supposed to meet us. Last time we went to Greece, we rented from the same company for our time in Zakynthos and showed up 30 minutes late, and they wouldn't let us take the car, so we ended up having to rent from a different company on the spot. I was worried that the same would happen this time, and the problem with that was that the rental was for 11 days and we'd booked it months ago, so the prices had tripled since then. We waited for about an hour before I began looking for rentals and just as I was about to purchase one, the rep showed up and whisked us away to the shop. We picked up our 2011 Fiat Panda with no radio or charger for our phones and hit the road northwest to Delphi.
Along the way were beautiful fields and the wildflowers were in full bloom so it smelled like sweet honey and went on forever. Brian was deliriously tired, so we found a quiet little road and pulled over in the shade so he could take a quick little nap and I set out to explore and enjoy the flowers. As we drove into the mountains, the road got windy and narrow and we went through various tunnels and through tiny villages.
Still tired, we kind of just rushed to the motel that I'd chosen for the night. We checked in, cleaned up, and set out on foot to explore the darling little town.
The next morning, we ate breakfast at the hotel and walked to the Delphi Archeological site (home to the 4th century BC Temple of Apollo with occupation as far back as the Neolithic period...10,000 B.C) just as they were opening it up, so we had the entire place to ourselves. They were setting up for a concert at the amphitheater and we were able to watch the show the following night in our room.
