After a loooong travel day yesterday, Marcia and I tumbled into our (best) bed (ever) in Des Moines to try to get our body clocks readjusted for regular life again. Our 30th Anniversary Trip was truly amazing, with great stops in Santorini, Mykonos and Athens. Some quick thoughts and observations from a still-travel-addled brain:

• Santorini was sublime, unique, and captivating, though with the caveat that it has become one of the main cruise ship stops in the region, so its hip destinations (most especially sunset at Oia) can be annoyingly swamped and commercialized, their magic tamped out by hyper-tourism. (We are not fans of cruise ships, as they tend to blight their ports of call, alas). We stayed on the quieter Eastern shore of the island, in Kamari, and I would recommend you do that as well if you visit. The sunrises on that side of the island are spectacular too, and you can get over to the crowded/sunset side of the island fairly easily if/when you want to. I would also most heartily recommend taking a sailboat cruise around the archipelago, with a stop at the volcano at the shattered island’s heart. And also eat lots of the local Santorini Fava, om nom nom!
• Mykonos was probably our least favorite (barely) of the three destinations, as it really favors the sort of tacky money/party/beach/rave scene in ways that aren’t quite aligned with our lives at this point, and that tend to attract a bit more drunk/criminal element than is optimal. That said, we stayed at an isolated resort called Kirini My Mykonos Retreat that may well have been the most spectacular destination we have ever over-nighted, and the boat trip to Ancient Delos was well worth the stop at Mykonos in its own right. I guess I would have raved about Mykonos if we just went there and nowhere else . . . but seeing another Aegean Isle and spending time in the Capital just made this stop seem a little bit crass, comparatively speaking. Plus, we had the experience of getting into a cab one afternoon, only to have our vehicle pulled over by armed police officers a few blocks later, one of the gendarmes using a power drill to remove its license plates while we sat inside, caught in the middle of a local power/shakedown play. That put us off our feed a bit.
• I loved Athens. Which, honestly, was a little bit of a surprise because so many people have complained (crowded, noisy, smelly, hot, etc.) or said “one day was enough” to me about their own visits there. It’s a big city, sure, but I guess having lived in one of those for most of the past five years, my tolerance for the urban experience may be a bit higher than that of a casual suburban tourist type. We had great food, great walks, a great hotel, our visit to the Acropolis was no more harried or frenzied than what one experiences in any major global destination, and I found the parts of the city we explored to be lovely and engaging. I hope to return with more time at some point, and will gently chide anybody who makes sniffy noises to me about it in the future. Philistines.
• We booked this trip using the independent travel option with our long-time favorite U.S. Travel Agency, Gate1 Travel, and I have to say they absolutely hit it out of the park in terms of the quality of the package, and the support available in-country from their local teams. Just superb. You could book it yourselves here. When you get to the lodging options, I’d recommend you upgrade to the premium level . . . it was totally worth it, every penny, in terms of the quality of the experience.

Okay, that’s about as much as the brain can handle this morning, so let’s send you to the photos, if you care to see more. Click the image of Marcia and I doing our best jobs to find the selfie lens below, and see what it looked like for us while were there: