ABCDE
Travel
sunday, april 11, 2010
SIDE ORDER
Warrior Games
A Mongolian festival for manly men — and women. F6
Navigator Putting poochie in a purse to skirt that noxious pet fee. F2 Up(start) in the Air A small Canadian carrier challenges the big boys. F3
Impulsive TravelerWhitewater rafting and more, the man-made way. F8
CHAT 2 p.m. Monday at www.washingtonpost.com/travel
SMART MOUTH
Hot Jazz
In praise of a humble Big
Easy sandwich.
F6
actually
Greece,
This time, he wanted to see a different side of the country
by Tyler Guthrie
Special to The Washington Post
W
e’re squeezed onto local bus No. 96 to the Greek port city of Piraeus, surrounded by European holiday- goers. They’re all rushing to catch
the ferries and hydrofoils that will scatter them across the Aegean Sea to Minoan ruins, fancy whitewashed hotels and iconic beaches. My wife and I are after something different:
After two days visiting all the high spots of Athens, we want a night away from the tourist zone and a look at a different side of the me- tropolis that more than 15 million foreigners visit every year. We pass rubbish and graffiti all along this main road, and I’m reminded of how much I hate the bustle of Athens — the side that never makes it into my photos. As a Hellenophile and a general fan of antiquity, I have strong but fickle feelings for Greece. I love this country and relish the opportuni-
ty to touch the stones and buildings that have seen so much history, but whenever I visit, I have a hard time getting past the reality of the city I see before me. Each time I want it to be the way I’ve imagined it: grand yet quaint, bustling but without the tourists, and entirely old. Yet it never is. Greece often feels as though
it’s inhabited by more foreign tourists and souvenir shops than it is by native Greeks and any real local life. That’s why this time, I want to walk parallel to the crowds, to see a differ- ent side of the country and meet some of the Greeks that I — and the other tourists who flood the streets and clog the pipes every year —normally wouldn’t get to know. Because it’s my wife’s first visit to the coun-
try, though, we’ve made a point of hitting the must-sees — the museums, the tree-lined av- enues and the monuments that you can’t sim-
greece continued on F4
Go early, before the horde of tourists, to see the Acropolis, left, the way you imagined it. And you have to see Fira, above, if you get to Santorini, but find some out-of-the-way inn to get a real sense of the island.
PHOTOS BY RACHEL GUTHRIE
F
It’s no idyllic island, but Crete can bathe you in simple delights
Escape was hard to come by, but she finally found it
by Jane Black
It looked like a scene out of “Exodus” — if
the Jews making their way to Palestine had been wearing bikinis and carrying beach um- brellas. The ship opened its creaky steel doors and lowered the gangplank. And we stepped out onto the soft sand, blinking in the glare of the midday sun. The path to the promised land was a crystal pool of warm, ankle-deep water. In small groups, we splashed our way across to Balos Beach. The beach is a narrow strip of pink sand. On one side is a natural wading pool. On the other, the Sea of Crete, striped turquoise, em- erald, then sapphire, and surrounded by a ring of dusty cliffs. The waves are gentle but just feisty enough to elicit a bubbly foam. It’s like an amusement park wave pool as imag- ined by painter David Hockney. Balos is the kind of beach you envision
ucky tourists stumbling upon by accident. The kind of place you find when you get lost on a hike or if you’re lucky enough to sail your own yacht. And so what’s most miraculous
about it is that you can easily get there on a cheap tourist day cruise. Also included in the price are several hours of smooth sailing and a steep but rewarding hike to a 16th-century Venetian fort that once served as a base for Greek pirates. I had expected Crete to be full of sites as impressive as Balos. After all, it’s Greece’s most popular destination: A quarter of the country’s visitors head to this mountainous island that’s renowned for its food — Crete is the birthplace of the Mediterranean diet — its history and its beaches. The diversity is an at- traction in itself. Guidebooks tout plenty to entertain travelers for a week or more, with no pesky inter-island ferries or flights. Those were the reasons two friends and I had chosen Crete for a recent vacation. But the most hyped destinations didn’t quite meet expectations. Knossos, reputed in Greek mythology to be the palace of King Minos and home to the Minotaur, was a series of re- imagined rooms and temples, many of which came with the disclaimer that they may not have actually looked like that. Hania, which is advertised as a Venetian town with a maze of streets populated with boutiques and elegant churches, was overrun by traffic and Euro- pean chain stores.
JESÚS RONCERO
crete continued on F5
The best thing about Balos Beach is that a tourist can easily get there on a cheap day cruise.
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