Our flight from Zurich to Athens, took 2 hours and 50 minutes. We arrived as the sun was setting and decided to have a cheat meal for dinner.

We head out to a Taverna for a delicious Gyro and fries, Greek beer and souvlaki (kebabs.)

It was our last cheat meal for a while, as we were feeling pretty terrible after Switzerland – bloated, my migraines were coming back, lethargic. Not fun. Luckily it’s really easy to follow the LCHF lifestyle in Greece – you just have to skip the bread, the gyros and chips! We went back to eating the way we are used to. Within 4 days, I felt so much better. We weren’t not going to try out some of the traditional items, like Bougatsa (A custard pastry) or cheese pies etc, we just wanted to space them out and not have that every day because it affects me so badly.

The next day we took the train to Piraeus Port…We took a little ferry, the Selinia Express, to the island Selinia for the day. Selinia is the closest island from Athens and is a 25 minute ferry trip. It also happens to be a really special place for Sox. His late grandmother had a holiday home on the island and some of his earliest memories of Greece are on this island, before Sox moved to South Africa at 5 years old.

We arrived at the small island and the first thing we did was walk along along the road lined with ice cream shops and peeling painted shutters. It was so hot, we stopped our walk and looked for a place where we could jump into the water for our very first swim of the holiday.

After a swim, we went to Sox’s late grandmothers home, but no one has lived there for years and it’s overgrown with weeds and needs some serious maintenance. I daydreamed of fixing it up as a holiday home and eating sweet peaches and drinking Greek coffee on the long balcony.

All that daydreaming made us hungry, we walked back to a taverna on the beach.

We ordered a fresh Greek salad at every meal, drizzled with olive oil. The tomatoes are out of this world. I can’t explain it, but Greece (and Croatia) have “ruined” tomatoes for me. They’re definitely not as delicious back here in SA.

Squeeze fresh lemon and drizzle a little vinegar over the fried Gavros (anchovies or whitebait.) You can eat the whole fish – the tiny bones are very soft and they’re incredibly tasty.

We shared the fire grilled Octopus – crunchy on the outside and tender on the inside. Fresh lemon and vinegar is amazing on it too.

We moved from the lunch table, a few meters to the beach deck chairs desperate to start working on our tans and ordered a Frappé – a Greek ice coffee. 

It was our first afternoon of just lying down and relaxing since we had started the trip. It was glorious, and I kept applying sunscreen over and over, because I didn’t want my 1st day of tanning to end up with me looking like a lobster. We also kept watching the time to ensure we didn’t miss the last ferry for the day. While we waited for it, we admired the beautiful church right at the port.

We spent another night in Athens, at Sofi, Sox’s sister/my sister in law’s home and set our alarm clocks to ensure we got to the port in time, to catch the ferry to the island, Poros. This was going to be our official romantic honeymoon, as it was the first time in the trip that we were going to be alone. Join me tomorrow?