much later, when you are back in the rush and the noise of your own life, you will open a jar of honey or press a drop of resin into your skin, and remember
If I had known that my time in Greece would be cut short, perhaps I would have done things differently.
The three-hour bus ride from Athens International Airport to Delphi felt like I had been catapulted back in time to a place before my own birth. The highway soon gave way to narrow, two-lane blacktop that bit into the dry belly of the countryside. Out the window, the world slowed down to the pace of an older century. Long, bleached stretches of scrub oak and limestone thistle rolled past under the late-August sun.
Every ten miles or so, an old Datsun or a rusted-out Fiat, held together by wire and grease, would rattle past in the opposite direction, driven by a man with a face like a dried walnut, his elbow propped on the window frame, staring straight ahead into the heat.
The bus itself smelled of hot vinyl, diesel exhaust, and the faint, sweet trace of tobacco smoke that had settled into the curtains over decades. We pulled off the road for a pit stop at an 80s-style service station cafe with the stillness of roadside stops where time has lost its meaning—floors of dull, yellowed terrazzo, a humming Coca-Cola cooler from another era, a counterman whose heavy eyelids suggested he had been standing there since the beginning.
Without a word, a snail-shaped spinach spanakopita, heavy and glistening with olive oil through its brown wax paper, was pressed into my hand, and a cold tin of Coke into the other. I was asked for six euros and then ushered back onto the bus. The pastry dough, flaky and bitter with wild greens, the soda sharp enough to burn the dust out of my throat.
By the time the bus began its low-gear groan up the switchbacks of Mount Parnassus, reaching for Delphi, the air changed. It thinned, stripping away the heavy humidity of the lowlands. Cool and sharp with the scent of wild thyme and pine needles—a dry, resinous smell that gets into the back of your teeth.
The Pleistos Valley stretched out below like a green river of olive trees, a million silver leaves turning in the wind all at once, shifting from deep forest green to bright mercury as the mountain breeze catches them. Standing on the flank of Mount Parnassus, where the limestone cliffs rise up grey and scarred like the flanks of old elephants, you understand why the ancients thought this was the centre of the world. It feels like a hinge where the earth meets something else. The earth here doesn’t care about our small, modern lives, our schedules, or our brief, frantic journeys. It hums with a quiet, terrifying permanence. It makes you feel small, like a speck of dust blown against the rock, but it also makes you feel clean.
After five days in Delphi, I returned to Athens.
If Delphi belongs to the gods and the wind, Athens in the last week of August belongs to the ghosts and the blinding, white heat. The city had been abandoned. Every year, when the summer becomes an absolute hammer, the locals simply close their doors, turn their backs on the concrete, and flee to the islands or the hills. It is their holiday, but it feels more like an evacuation.
I stayed in a small studio apartment in Exarcheia, the fiercely independent, self-made neighbourhood that clings to the steep, rocky skirts of Lofos Strefi. On a normal day, this patch of the city breathes fire. It is a labyrinth of concrete apartment blocks covered in layers of angry, beautiful political graffiti, buzzing with students, anarchists, and old men arguing over thick coffee. It is a place that smells of stale beer, wild jasmine, and rebellion.
But this time small hand-written signs were taped to the glass of bakeries, dry cleaners, and independent bookshops: Closed until September. Good Summer. The streets were empty of cars, the asphalt radiating a fierce, shimmering heat wave that made the apartment blocks look like they were melting into the white sky. A lone ginger cat slept under the shade of a parked scooter on Kallidromiou Street, too hot to blink. There is a strange, melancholy beauty to a great city when its human blood has been drained out of it. You see the bones of the place.
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Beyond the paywalled fold, you’ll find:
DELPHI
~ my favourite taverna in Delphi & the best coffee
~ the two weekly farmers’ markets to stock up on supplies
~ the hike to the Oracle of Delphi & the Temple of Apollo on Mt Parnassos
~ the best empty beaches (even in the height of summer)
ATHENS
~ the best area to stay in
~ my favourite cafes and restaurants (locals approved)
~ places to wander & get lost to avoid the standard tourist experience
~ the Greece-only must-have pharmacy finds
DELPHI
Delphi is a tourist town that most come to for a day, two at most, hit the sights and leave without really taking its essence, which is a shame. It feels like those who live and breathe the daily life here exist apart in another world to those who come and go.
The transient crowds leave their footprints on the main drag, but they don’t leave a mark on the town’s bone-deep reality. If you step six inches off the beaten path, you find the people who belong to the mountain.
FOOD
Melopoleio
The best coffee is only at one place, the one all the old men sit outside of. They sit in the shade, turning strings of beads in their calloused fingers, gossiping about their neighbours, these slow summer days, and the frantic tourists who just came and went.
Do not look for a menu here. Just sit down among the creaking wooden chairs and order a Greek coffee. It comes in a small, heavy cup, dark and sweet, with the muddy residue left at the bottom like river silt. You drink it slow, matching the rhythm of the old men, watching the white mountain light crawl across the stone pavement.
Taverna Vakhos
Real solid mountain food and dreamy prices. The first time I came by accident, escaping the late-afternoon glare. I ordered a quarter-litre of local rosé for €3 and a cold mountain lemonade to quench the dusty August thirst that had collected in my parched mouth.
Before the food arrived, the waiter delivered a basket of bread. A quick warning: bread in Delphi is unrecommendable everywhere—dry, chalky stuff with the life baked out of it, so don’t eat it. Save your appetite for everything else. Then he brought a slab of hard, fresh grilled salty cheese spiked with wild herbs ‘on the house’. It arrived sizzling, caramelised on the edges from the fire. I carved it with a knife and fork, the centre yielding, soft and hot. It was insanely delectable—honest cooking that tastes directly of grease, salt, and the high pasture lands. I went there most days.
MARKETS
Wednesday mornings: Delphi
Right in the wrinkles of the town, the small local market sets up early on Wednesday. It is a quiet affair, mostly for the old women who look like they’ve been carved out of grey limestone. This is where you get your immediate hands on the mountain: wrinkly, bitter black olives that taste of oil and smoke, and tiny, intense bunches of wild mountain oregano dried right on the stalk. The tables hold a scattering of seasonal fruits and crisp vegetables pulled from the steep terraced plots on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, alongside heavy blocks of formaela cheese brought down from the high pastures of nearby Arachova. Go early before the sun hits the stone pavement, and make sure you carry a pocketful of small euro coins. These mountain vendors have no use for plastic cards or digital transactions; they want the hard, blunt weight of metal currency pressed into their palms.
Friday mornings: Laiki Agora, Galaxidi
Every Friday from six in the morning, the real harvest happens just down the mountain in the nearby coastal town of Galaxidi. You have to get up before the sun has finished burning the fog out of the Pleistos Valley. This is the region’s massive produce engine. The tables are piled high with heavy, deep-purple eggplants, mountain figs splitting open with sugar, almonds, stone fruit and colossal Amfissa olives, plump and glossy from the UNESCO-protected groves below. Go early, when the air is still cold, the farmers are shouting over the crates, and the crates are still damp with morning dew. It is cheap, abundant, and unbothered by tourists.
THE ORACLE OF DELPHI
Corycian Cave
The tour buses dump their passengers at the lower ruins where the marble has been polished flat by millions of leather shoes, but the real spirit of the mountain lives higher up, where the road turns to dirt and the earth gets wild.
To find it, you have to leave the village behind and drive out for thirty minutes, pushing your car up the steep, winding mountain roads, through small mountain villages with narrow, cobblestone alleys that pinch the sides of your vehicle. The paved road eventually gives out, giving way to a rough, gravel track. You park the car where the red clay meets the scrubby pines, kill the engine, and let the silence of the high altitude drop over you like a heavy blanket.
From there, you walk. It is a forty-five-minute trek straight up the spine of the mountain. The trail is a narrow, single-track ribbon of loose limestone and sharp gravel that slips out from under your boots if you aren’t paying attention. You walk through dense, ancient forests of Greek fir, the air smelling intensely of dry resin, hot stone, and wild mountain tea. Your breath gets short, and your calves burn as the incline sharpens, the sun beating down on your neck until your shirt is soaked through. Just when you think you’ve lost the trail, the trees break, and you see it: a massive, dark gash hidden in the grey limestone face of the hill.
The Corycian Cave—the Korykeion Antron—is the first true sanctuary of Delphi, a place where people were bowing their heads to the earth long before the first stone of Apollo’s temple was ever quarried.
When you step across the threshold into the main chamber, the temperature drops instantly, a cold, damp breath rising from the belly of the rock. The cave opens up into a vast, terrifyingly large hall, its ceiling soaring fifty meters above you like the roof of a cathedral built by giants. Massive stalactites, formed over thousands of years by the slow, rhythmic dripping of mineral water, hang down like frozen stone drapes. In the centre sits the “Table”—a broad, flat stalagmite where pilgrims leave their offerings to Pan and the mountain nymphs, and where modern travellers still leave silent tokens.
The mysticism here is something that physical space inflicts on you. The cave has a strange, multi-directional acoustic quality. Every footstep on the slick rock, every drop of water hitting the floor, and the low moan of the wind outside bounce off the walls, sounding like a chorus of distant flutes or whispers just behind your shoulder.
Sitting alone in that dark chamber you feel an ancient, shivering awe, a sense that the boundary between the human world and something wilder, older, and deeply holy has grown thin enough to touch.
BEACHES
Itea
Just twenty minutes down the winding asphalt from Delphi, the road drops sharply into the olive groves and hits the coast near Itea. Most people stay on the main harbour beach, but if you push just a few minutes past the town along the coastal fringe, the pavement gives way to a narrow strip of white gravel pressed right against the olive trees. There was not a single soul there. The water was dead calm, completely shielded from the mountain winds, and so transparent it looked like a thick sheet of pale green glass. You could see every single pebble on the bottom, five meters deep, as if it were right under your hand. Entering that water here was like washing away latent layers from your soul. The only sound was the rhythmic, dry click of the cicadas in the trees and the tiny gravel shifting with the lazy roll of the tide.
Arapis
If you keep driving west for about forty-five minutes from Delphi, past the historic town of Galaxidi along the northern rim of the gulf, the coastline grows rugged and wild. The road tracks a stretch of limestone cliffs and ancient olive groves heading toward Erateini and Nafpaktos. Once you pass the main settlement of Agioi Pantes, you hit a terrain where the road forgets itself. We turned down an unmarked dirt track that dissolved into scrubby pines and grey boulders near the hidden coves of Agios Vasileios. At the end of that track, right by the tiny, unpeopled crescent known to locals as Arapis Beach, lay a completely secluded cove hidden entirely from the road. The beach was a mix of coarse grey sand and sun-bleached stones, completely wild. There were no plastic umbrellas, no tavernas, no voices. Just the raw edge of the continent meeting a deep, bruisingly blue sea. The water here was colder, sharper, and held a heavy salinity that made you float effortlessly. We lay under the thin, salt-bitten shade of a solitary tamarisk tree, entirely alone with the stones and the deep blue water, watching a lone fishing boat track the distant horizon while the salt dried white and tight on our skin in the fierce afternoon sun.
ATHENS
Most evenings, I climbed the concrete stairs to the flat concrete rooftop of my apartment building. From up there, the heat of the day was still rising from the tar, but a small, dry breeze would usually drift down from the mountains. I sat with my notebook on my knees, journaling while the sun dipped behind the jagged spine of the city. As the light failed, the sky turned the colour of a bruised plum, and the distant silhouette of the Acropolis would light up, glowing like an old bone against the dark. When the ink dried, I would head down into the dim streets to find my favourite taverna.
Exarcheia
If you want the smooth, sanitised version of Athens, you stay in Plaka or Monastiraki with the postcard vendors. If you want the city’s raw, beating heart, you pitch yourself in Exarcheia.
It is a neighbourhood that clings stubbornly to the steep, rocky skirts of Strefi Hill, positioned just a short, twenty-minute walk north of the central tourist hubs, yet a million miles away in spirit. It is bordered by the grand neoclassical weight of the National Archaeological Museum on one side and the wealthy slopes of Lycabettus Hill on the other, but Exarcheia remains fiercely itself.
It is the bohemian, radical quarter. A labyrinth of concrete apartment blocks covered in layers of angry, beautiful political graffiti, independent bookstores, and old anarchist cafes. On a normal winter day, this patch of the city breathes fire, buzzing with students, poets, and old men arguing over thick coffee. In the dead of August, even with the shutters down, the neighbourhood keeps its grit. It smells of wild jasmine, dry concrete, and a deep, historical refusal to be broken by anyone. It is safe, and it is real.
FOOD
Ama Lachei
I stumbled upon this place entirely by chance, just a few minutes’ walk from where I laid my head, and it is an absolute icon of the neighbourhood. Ama Lachei is set behind a thick, unassuming stone wall that once housed an old schoolyard. Step through the gate, and the roar of the Athens concrete disappears. You are welcomed into a lush, shaded garden so deeply quiet and green you would swear you had been dropped right into the middle of the Greek countryside. Sitting there among the iron chairs, white cloths, and overhanging flowers, you forget the city outside exists. The food here is some of the finest quality I have ever pressed a fork into—a daily, shifting menu that changes entirely based on what the earth yields that morning.
The Black Salami Microbakery
Tucked into the sharp concrete geometry of Exarcheia, The Black Salami is a small, mighty engine of grain and fire. They do not carry a massive inventory; they bake around a hundred loaves a day using honest Italian flour and wild fermentation, and when the bread is gone, the doors close. Do not hesitate: walk in and order the pastrami sandwich. It is served on their signature sourdough, heavy and blistered from the heat, loaded with rich, salt-cured meat that melts like tallow.
Selas
When the August sun turns into a flat iron and the pavement starts to shimmer, you look for Selas. Hidden down a narrow pedestrian alleyway, half-swallowed by overflowing vines and surrounded by old houses from the turn of the century, this little outdoor café is a neighbourhood oasis. It is painted in bright, defiant colours and tucked right into the local street art scene. Go there in the heavy heat of the afternoon for cold drinks, cheap beer, and small plates of snacks. The service is loose, friendly, and entirely unhurried—a place to sit for hours and let your blood cool down.
Bar Ideal
When the sky finally turns dark and the city begins to breathe, head to Bar Ideal on Kiafas Street. It’s a design-forward, retro listening bar that looks like a 1970s cinematic set refreshed for the modern era. They spin strictly vinyl records over a crisp, analogue hi-fi system, and the tables spill out onto the cool pedestrian pavement. It is the perfect spot to get a clean, heavy cocktail, watch the local night owls gather, and lose yourself in the music and the conversation without a single tourist in sight.
Ouzeri Lesvos
If you want seafood that hasn’t been dressed up for a magazine cover, you go where the old men and the neighbourhood families go. Ouzeri Lesvos is an unadorned, brightly lit temple to the sea. The prices are incredibly low, and the quality is fierce. Order a small bottle of ouzo and a plate of grilled octopus or crisp, fried smelts that taste aggressively of salt and the deep Mediterranean.
Makedonikon
This is a tiny, old-world joint run by a crew of famously grumpy old men who have no time for small talk or pleasantries. They deal out traditional spanakopitas and baked dishes from massive metal trays behind a glass counter. The spinach pie here is legendary—the phyllo dough is rolled by hand, thick and crackling like autumn leaves, stuffed with bitter wild greens and sharp, sour feta. Take it to go, bear the old men’s brief glares, and eat it on the curb.
Karamandlika
Located slightly more central but completely worth the short walk out of the quarter, Karamanlidika is part charcuterie, part grocery, and part taverna. The ceiling is hung thick with cured beef legs (pastourma) and loops of spicy sausage. Sit at one of the small marble tables and order the handmade meat dumplings or the pan-fried sausage with eggs. It is heavy, historic Greek food rooted in the old Byzantine traditions—intense, spiced, and deeply satisfying.
EXPLORE
The tourists spend their days in long, sweaty lines waiting to see things that have already been photographed a million times. They move in packs, guided by little flags and digital maps, and they leave the city without ever having touched its true surface. I will not give you a list of monuments or ancient ruins here; if you want the history books, you can find them yourself. Instead, I recommend a different kind of travel. One where you choose a coordinate point on the map, put your phone in your pocket, and let yourself get lost until the city starts to speak to you.
Lofos Strefi
Right above Exarcheia sits Strefi Hill. It is not a manicured park with gravel paths and ice cream vendors; it is a wild, rugged outcrop of rock and pine trees that feels slightly forgotten by the municipality. Find any set of concrete stairs leading upward from Kallidromiou Street and just start climbing. The steps are uneven, cracked by tree roots, and covered in graffiti.
As you go higher, the noise of the city begins to muffle, replaced by the dry, frantic scraping of cicadas. There are hidden stone benches, dirt paths that lead to nowhere, and sudden, dizzying views of the white apartment blocks packed tightly below like rows of teeth. Wander up here in the late afternoon when the shadows stretch out long and blue.
Anafiotika
While everyone else is fighting for space on the main pedestrian loop around the Acropolis, climb higher up the northern slope until the souvenir shops disappear. If you keep moving upward through the narrow alleys, you will stumble into Anafiotika.
It is a tiny, white-washed village clinging directly to the sheer rock face of the citadel, built in the 19th century by workers who came from the island of Anafi. The streets are not streets at all—they are narrow stone ledges barely wide enough for two people to pass, winding between tiny, square houses with blue shutters and pots of blooming geraniums. There are no signs, no shops, and no cars. You will dead-end into someone’s tiny courtyard, or find a set of stone steps that drop into a completely different neighbourhood. Let yourself wander this labyrinth. It smells of laundry soap, woodsmoke, and dry stone, and for an hour, you will forget that a massive, modern metropolis is roaring just a few hundred feet below your boots.
Kypseli
If you want to see how the modern Athenians live, take a long walk north into Kypseli, one of the oldest and most densely populated neighbourhoods in the city. It is a vast grid of Bauhaus and mid-century apartment buildings with grand entrance halls and iron balconies.
Do not look for landmarks. Just drift down Fokionos Negri, a long, wide pedestrian promenade lined with shady trees, old fountains, and rows of small cafes where the neighbourhood people sit for hours over single glasses of iced coffee. Turn off the main strip into the smaller residential side streets. Look up at the canvas awnings flapping in the breeze, listen to the clatter of dishes from open kitchen windows, and watch the older women pulling market carts over the cracked pavement. It is a heavy, human place that doesn’t care about tourism, where the true daily rhythm of Athens unfolds in the heat.
TREASURES
In Greece, the modern pharmacy remains an apothecary of the land. There is something deeply magical about being able to apply and use things that have held a people steadily for thousands of years, as if the ancient landscape and its cures were somehow twisted into our DNA from long ago. When you step off the blinding, sun-baked pavement and into the cool air beneath a flashing green neon cross, skip the global consumer brands. These are the true local secrets you carry home in your suitcase.
Wild Greek Oregano Oil: A fierce, concentrated extraction of the land itself. The locals treat it as a holy grail for the immune system. It is a potent, natural antibacterial and antiviral engine, excellent for knocking out a sudden throat tickle, clearing out sluggish digestion, or wiping out a stubborn bug when travel knocks your defences down. A single drop burns like a drop of liquid mountain sun, but it does the job.
Apivita Toothpaste: The Apivita Oral Care Line is rooted in the hives and the soil. Their formulations rely heavily on propolis—the natural resin bees use to sterilise their nests—blended with wild mastic, fennel, or myrrh, leaving your mouth tasting faintly of pure Chios mastic and lemon oil.
Tretin Gel: In the United States, getting a tube of topical retinoid or high-grade skin texturizer can mean handing over $80 to $300 at the counter. In a Greek pharmacy, you can ask for a 30g tube of TRETIN 0.05% Gel produced by Target Pharma, and they will hand it over for roughly four euros. Travellers prize it for targeting clogged pores, accelerating cell turnover, and erasing the rugged wear and tear of sun and travel. (Note: In Greece, this specific budget-friendly gel is formulated with isotretinoin rather than standard tretinoin, meaning it acts as a powerful topical retinoid with a lighter, fast-absorbing alcohol base).
Chios Mastiha Capsules: For thousands of years, the people of the island of Chios have harvested the crystal tears of the mastic tree resin. These capsules are a foundational Greek remedy for the stomach. If your gut is churning from heavy travel, rich oils, or the simple stress of the road, mastic acts as a soothing, anti-inflammatory balm for the entire digestive tract, settling the stomach with a quiet, ancient efficiency.
Korres Pure Greek Olive 3-in-1 Nourishing Oil: The brand Korres is a staple of Greek pharmacy culture, and their olive oil collection utilises cold-pressed oil from the silver-leafed crests of Crete. This specific 3-in-1 oil is a heavy, golden elixir that restores skin, body, and hair after a brutal day in the Mediterranean glare. It doesn’t leave a greasy film; it absorbs deeply, smelling of real wood and earth.
Korres Skincare & Makeup: Truly, do not leave without looking over their entire colour and care shelf. Their prices are significantly lower in local neighbourhood pharmacies than anywhere else in the world. What I use daily is their dark lip balm in a rich, berry-stained hydration that looks completely effortless, and their creamy concealer that covers the dark circles of sleepless travel nights without caking or cracking under the dry Athenian sun.
You cannot leave a place like Greece without carrying a piece of its dust in your throat and its salt dried hard into your skin. The tourist buys a plastic trinket made in a factory across the world, packs it into a shiny suitcase, and boards a plane unchanged. But if you have walked the high, loose gravel of Parnassus, sat among the old men in the shade of Exarcheia, and let your body sink into a sea that looks like green glass, you leave something of yourself behind on the stone, and you take something older back with you.
The tubes of cream and the bottles of mountain oil sitting in your bag are small anchors. Much later, when you are back in the rush and the noise of your own life, you will open a jar of honey or press a drop of resin into your skin. For a second, the air will turn cool and sharp with the scent of pine needles, the white Athenian sun will hammer down on a flat rooftop, and you will remember what you felt like then.