That means hello in Greek. It took us forever to memorize some simple Greek phrases, and then of course by the time we did it was time to leave.

After returning from Ireland, we spent a few more days in London getting ourselves together for what seems like a vacation within a vacation. A good friend of ours Christine was going to be in Greece around the same time as us, so we had been planning a Greek island beach trip with her for a while. We eventually settled on Crete, a popular destination among Greek vacationers. We decided to fly into Athens and meet up with her there for a day of touristing before taking off to Crete.

As we took off from Heathrow to Athens, we realized this might be our last big flight for a while given our plans to travel by bike – detailed in our next post – for the rest of our European adventures.

We made it to Athens pretty late and went right to sleep. We had booked an overnight ferry leaving the next night for Crete so we only had one day to tour Athens. We started the next morning with our first attempt to order coffee and pastries. This was our first big trip to a place where we truly didn’t know the language or culture. Although a lot of people know English, or at least broken English, still others don’t know a lick of it. We got around fine, though, and visited the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian’s Gate in the morning, which sparked our usual discussions about ancient peoples. This of course staying with the emerging theme of our travels – prehistory, ancient history and culture, emergence of civilization, etc.

We walked around some shops and visited the Acropolis museum before meeting up with Christine in the afternoon and going to the actual Acropolis ruins, which was an incredible site and view of the city. After our visit there and some walking around the city and catching up with our buddy, we all made our way to the port and readied ourselves for a nine hour ferry ride. Christine had booked an “air chair” (fancy pants) but Javi and I were on “deck chairs” which just means you can sleep anywhere on the floor inside or out on the deck. We chose the deck. The ferry ride was a totally interesting and unexpected experience. People were everywhere, jockeying for floor space to sleep. A total zoo with little to no oversight by anyone in a position of authority. It’s so exciting and weird, experiencing a different cultural thing for the first time.

We of course barely got any sleep but made it to Crete, “waking” up in time for the sunrise as we came into port. None of us knew what to expect in Chania (pronounced Ha-nya), the town where we booked a place, because we honestly had done very little research. But we were stoked to find a beautiful spot with yummy food, lots of interesting history, and lovely beaches. We spent the week just marveling at how everything really went beyond any expectations we might have had. Christine’s brother joined us later in the week (they were both in Greece for a family wedding), and we had a great time just chilling on the beaches and visiting museums. The Archeological Museum in Chania was amazing and showcased items from the area dating back 5000 or more years. The history of Crete and the Minoan’s is fascinating (“the first link in the chain of Europe”) and we felt like we were truly in an ancient and special place.

We mostly stuck around Chania during the week, but the last day we rented a car and went to the western coast of Crete to visit the beaches of Elafonisi and Balos. Both were incredible but Balos especially blew all of our minds. We have determined it is the coolest beach we have ever visited (sorry Kalaulau). That last day really made the whole trip. Driving around and seeing different parts of the island and visiting the kinds of beaches you see in travel magazines, we felt like we really accomplished a solid adventure.

After saying goodbye to our pals, we had one last chill day in Chania before taking another overnight ferry back to Athens. This time we booked the air chairs.

We spent the next 36 hours in Athens running around like crazy people trying to get everything together for the next huge phase of our trip – bike tour. More on this insanity in the next post.

Just FYI, an Anglophile is a person who is fond of or greatly admires England or Britain and a Hibernophile is a person who is fond of Irish culture, Irish language and Ireland in general. We know you were wondering.

After almost two long months in Spain (and most of our Schengen visa time allotment yikes), we headed out of the Schengen area to the U.K. with plans for travel through England, Scotland, and Ireland. Our good friend Nate has a flat in London where he works, and he kindly allowed us to stay there a while after the Camino while he was back in San Francisco. His place is pretty sweet so it was the best possible situation for us to rest after our long walk. We flew straight to London from Santiago and immediately settled in pretty nicely, watching a whole day of movies on our first day in the flat. Thanks Nate!!

We got to London on July 12, and stayed for a little over a week walking around the city, meeting up with friends, enjoying the crazy good food and just plain CRAZY nightlife. We did our duty as good tourists and hit up museums, parks, etc. Given our fascination with all things mysterious and dare we say occultish, a definite highlight was a tour of the Freemason museum, including a private hang in the absolutely surreal Grand Lodge. However, the freemasons here, including the young lad that gave our tour, would likely strongly oppose our use of the term occult to describe the ultimately benign (at least on paper) group.

After some serious chill time at the flat, we peeled ourselves away for an amazingly fun adventure in Scotland and Ireland!

First, a train to Edinburgh in Scotland. Wow, that city is so neat. It looks like a medieval Harry Potter land (and indeed is where J.K. Rowling wrote the story). Dark towers, narrow winding alleys, and of course the imposing castle all make for a very cool backdrop to the pub hopping we did. We managed to get in a good urban hike up to the top of Arthur’s Seat for amazing views of this coastal city.

After a few days, it was time for some more serious hiking. Apparently, we didn’t get enough walking in Spain so we decided to do three days along the West Highland Way. We had heard about this walk back in 2013 on our Camino trip, and Laura had always wanted to make it happen. The whole thing takes about 7-8 days but given our time limitations (and the cost – this ain’t Spain anymore), we just did three.

This hike was INCREDIBLE. It went well beyond our expectations in beauty, toughness, weather, and just the general awe-factor. We got two great weather days, a real treat, and one super rainy day. We felt very lucky. We did long days, one day was a good 20 miles (!), but felt in pretty good hiking shape still (and had much lighter bags) so it wasn’t too bad. We ended in Fort William, and had an extra day in this nice highland town.

You literally could hear bagpipes on the wind and see castles everywhere we went in Scotland. A really magical and beautiful land that was tough to leave. But after a week, it was time to move on to Ireland.

We flew into Dublin from Glasgow on Friday and spent a weekend touristing and catching up with an old friend of Javi’s from his original 2006 Camino. It is always nice to get a local to show us around the city, and Steve was a very generous host. On Sunday we picked up a car and commenced our Irish road trip across the country. We went to Glendalough south of Dublin and then moved on through Kilkenny to the south west coast. Again, like Scotland, Ireland just surpassed any expectations we had and was just the most amazing place. The hits just kept on coming.

Ireland has a ton of ancient stone circles so we did a little tour of a few of those magical spaces on Beara Peninsula before settling in a nearby hostel. Beara was a really beautiful part of the area, split between Cork and Kerry, that was not nearly as touristy as the rest of that part of the coast. We then did the obligatory Ring of Kerry drive and the Cliffs of Moher, which had a lot of tourists but for good reason. Both places had a major wow factor and were just gorgeous. We got super lucky with the weather and rarely got rained on. The Irish west coast is just plain nuts, it is so lovely it’s hard to comprehend it.

After a pub hopping night in Galway, we made our way back towards Dublin, but not before stopping in for a night’s rest at a rural farm and a visit to the Ireland Scarecrow Festival in Durrow.

Good times all around, it was certainly sad to end such an amazing trip but we have our sights set on GREECE! Before that, though, it’s a few more days in London.