The Lonely Planet guidebook was pressed against my shuddering tray, but the words were plain.
“April, May, September and October are ideal times for visiting Greece, as you won’t be jostling with crowds and most days will be pleasantly warm.” However, the wire service report (“Four Britons killed in a Rhodes flash flood while riding in a rented car…”) impacted my gut with a realism rivaling a shot of raki.
It was the end of the third flight on a 25-hour journey to Greece from Madrid, and the Aegean looked green-angry and gothic.
Outside the tiny plane’s windows, it was raining like hell.
Delayed by a strike on the final leg from Athens to Crete’s main airport at Iraklion, passengers were strapped in and swaying like troops bound for Omaha Beach. Because of the strike, the pilot was lucky to get a smattering of applause when the aircraft’s wheels finally touched the earth.
“I was born and raised in Athens,” said Nicos Velonis in a later conversation, “and never,” he promised, “have I seen a month like last October.”
The guidebook was partly right. There was little jostling during our “shoulder season” visit to Crete and a few beautiful Cyclades islands. What there was, however, was recurrent squishing: two-thirds of the trip was rainy.
Our poor timing, concocted by three reuniting friends, was surely unlucky. Yet for several reasons, April, May, September and October are still, arguably, the best months to visit the Greek islands.
Of Greece’s 10 million annual visitors, fully 80 percent come during the hottest summer months. We didn’t want to be among them. Besides, between October and May, most hotels offer 20 percent to 40 percent discounts, while intra-island flights and ferry-rides are readily available without advance booking.
Normally, even the weather is supposed to be good. Ask the Cretans. Their island, the largest in the archipelago, is host to nearly a quarter of all visitors to Greece, and only a few were there in October.
“There are two kinds of travelers,” said Velonis, a spokesman for the Greek National Tourist Office. “Some go for sunbathing and swimming. Some go for sightseeing. They don’t like the extreme heat and the crowds of August.”
A third group–mine–doesn’t mind a little of each. Undaunted by the weather early on in Crete’s capital, we visited the colossal and fascinating ancient history museum and enjoyed the Minoan art there, especially the hundreds of tiny figurines (suspiciously reminiscent of Joan Miro’s drawings). Lively frescoes depicting leaping dolphins and bulls, lifted from the nearby Palace of Knossos, were highlights. The museum took a morning, but the rain was continuing.
A visit to the awesome palace, now partly reconstructed, further dampened our spirits. It was closed, due to another strike, this time by government employees. We hopped a barbed-wire fence anyway and shot a few photos, commando-style.
In Iraklion, the feta cheese, seafood and vegetables were fresh and reasonable and the people were reasonably friendly. They were more helpful in the smaller towns. Between downpours, the city came alive with local election rallies and the blared accompaniment of bouzouki music, something like a Greek version of the blues. In one party’s campaign posters, the leading candidate was a dead ringer for Ernest Borgnine. With the rain, we felt part of an old sit-com anyway.
A later bus trip into the countryside offered a few tantalizing glimpses of sunshine over the scrubby hills and out into the Aegean, with its dazzling gradations of bluer and bluer water. But when the rain returned, we figured it might be stuck over Crete, so we headed for the nearby chain of Cyclades islands.
After several hours of confusion over ferries canceled by the storm, we disembarked, Dunkirk-style, for the famed island of Santorini. Really a small series of islands, Santorini is the crowning remnant of a volanic eruption in 1450 B.C., which may have destroyed the Minoan civilization.
Theories that this was the ancient site of Atlantis have fired tourists’ imaginations for centuries.
At its best, Santorini is what the islands are supposed to look like. White-domed churches survey dramatic cliffs and now, even occasionally blue skies. Out of the main town, the narrow streets of Oia, lined with immaculately white galleries and guest houses, wind down perilous streets to the sea. There, the staff of half-empty restaurants beg tourists to try their grilled snapper, swordfish and lobster.
With the off-season discount, the elegant Hotel Panorama had $90 doubles, with views of the sea that would impress an Onassis. Maybe there was even one down there in the factory-size yacht bobbing among the lights. It was called “The Other Woman.”
Our clean little pension, the Villa Maria, had in-room bathrooms and was kept running by a sad-eyed immigrant from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. (A former literature professor, she fled Georgia after her husband died and her son was killed in the civil war there.) The good cop in a two-person team, she mothered us graciously. Doubles at the Villa Maria were only about $30.
A good day-trip from Santorini’s port takes tourists out to the main crater on a separate island. Completely covered with pumice and volcanic ash, a few sulphurous-smelling steam vents hiss out of the moonscape, created when a huge eruption rocked Santorini in 1925. After time for a walk around, the boat moved on to a shallow anchorage where day-trippers swim out to hot underwater springs. If the midday temperatures had been where they were supposed to be, perhaps at 80, the cruise would have been sublime.
The last stop was Thirassa Island, where a family running a cafe on the water served their last meals before heading back to Athens for the winter. Two hours of chatting and writing postcards over a meal of squid, Greek salad, potatoes and soft drinks cost about $6 each.
Before leaving Santorini, we discovered motorbikes had proved the best way to see the islands, with their unhurried pace suiting the tiny towns on the back roads. For a daily rental price of about $7, we happily breezed along the fine red and black volcanic beaches at Kamaris and Akrotiri, even pausing for a swim. For those who think the winding mountain roads are too intimidating for motorbikes, rental cars are available (especially in the off-season) for a bit more cash.
Ready to continue island-hopping, we jumped another ferry with $9 tickets and rested on the three-hour trip to our third island, Naxos. Topside during the trip, other Cyclades islands were almost always in sight. When the ferry docked, as at all the islands, hotel and pension-owners scrambled up with photos depicting their digs. We finally settled on the Hotel Anixis, with its $20 doubles. The view surveyed the old town, and there was even a tidy outdoor deck.
Naxos’ symbol, a 150-foot arch from an Apollonian temple, guards the port. Picking my way out to it the first night, amid tumbled columns, it seemed the perfect spot for Lord Byron, who loved the island, to write his Romantic poetry. A fisherman, Poseidon-like (save the spear-gun) scuttled past in the dusk with a deep-purple squid.
The largest of the Cyclades, Naxos is also the place Dionysius learned to drink wine. Its interior is specked with a few churches and villages, and on the bikes, you can nudge past sheep and their herders riding along the road on burros. With a bit of luck with the weather, how could we fail here? The clouds had even receded slightly.
We headed out of town the next day to a half-carved statue of Apollo in an ancient marble quarry. Briefly, I sought refuge from a storm in a castle built by Venetians in the Middle Ages. It is now an elegant storage shed on a hardscrabble farm.
The sun came out as I approached three men making raki, a liqueur tasting something like brandy. A Greek Orthodox priest waved me over. With the woodsmoke of their still and the pine-scented air, it smelled like northern Minnesota. After a couple of sips from a courtly hand-worked brass cup, I filled a small water bottle and handed over $2 in unasked-for drachma.
During lunch at a tiny cafe with my friends, we tasted the local wine (a little like sherry) and ate fresh flaky bread. There was more Greek salad as young bird hunters came and went with shotguns slung over their backs. The total tab for three was about $7. In a good-bye exchange, I got a friendly shoulder-squeeze from the proprietress.
There was an eight-hour layover in Athens on the way home, and as a newcomer to Greece I had to see the Acropolis. But it was doubly-closed. This was Monday, a closed day, and the strike of museum workers was still on anyhow.
So, surveying the Acropolis from afar under a sun that could finally be called hot, I wished I could stay until it opened.
“Come back again! Come back next October,” said Velonis. “But the weather, you cannot have a guarantee.”
GETTING AROUND IN THE SHOULDER SEASON
Getting there: There are no nonstop flights from Chicago to Greece, but connecting flights are available on many airlines. Fares vary, but Stacy Diacou of Chicago’s Travel 333 (312-263-0333), which specializes in Greek tourism, says tickets for about $990 roundtrip can be booked for mid-September through October. More restrictive tickets are frequently available from consolidators for about $850.
Getting around: If you’re flying between points in Greece, it’s best to make reservations; call Olympic Airways at 800-223-1226. Although we didn’t make advance reservations, flights can sell out in the off-season. Fares generally hover around $100 year-round.
If you’re traveling between islands by ship, it usually isn’t necessary to pre-book ferries in the September-October shoulder season, tourism officials say. Deck-fare tickets between islands usually run between $20 and $25; double that if you want a private cabin with a bed. One of the longest ferry rides, from Athens to Crete, takes 12 hours, so cabins aren’t usually needed unless you’re traveling at night.
Hydrofoils are more expensive and aren’t available on all routes, but they do cut trip times in half.
Once on the islands, you can readily rent motorbikes for about $10 to $15 a day during the shoulder season; however, motorbikes can be scarce during the high summer season on busy islands like Mykonos, Santorini and Rhodes.
When to go: Nicos Velonis of the Greek National Tourist Office in New York says pre-Memorial Day and post-Labor Day travel are his favorite times for the Cyclades because the crowds, heat and prices ease then. Good swimming, he said, can be managed during May and through September.
Language: It’s a good idea to learn the Greek alphabet before a trip to Greece, even if you can’t speak the language. That way, you’ll be better able to make out road and store signs.
Information: Write or call the Greek National Tourist Office at 168 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60601 (312-782-1084). Additional offices are located in New York and Los Angeles.
