The Riches, Ruins, and Revelations of Unexplored Greece

By Don George | July 25, 2024

Greece changed my life.

As I approached graduation from college four-plus decades ago, I didn’t know what to do with my life. In contrast to my friends, all of whom seemed to be enthusiastically preparing to go to graduate school, medical school, or law school, or to begin careers in business or banking, I knew only that I wanted to postpone committing myself to any career path.

That spring I was lucky enough to be awarded a three-month internship in Paris for the summer, and then a one-year fellowship to live and teach at Athens College in Greece from September to June. And so I graduated and set off into the European unknown.

One morning halfway through my stay in Paris, I had an epiphany: I stepped through my apartment building’s massive wooden doors onto the rue de Rivoli—and stopped. As I later wrote for National Geographic: “All around me people were speaking French, wearing French, acting French. Shrugging their shoulders and twirling their scarves and drinking their cafés crèmes, calling out “Bonjour, monsieur-dame” and paying for Le Monde or Le Nouvel Observateur with francs and stepping importantly around me and staring straight into my eyes and subtly smiling in a way that only the French do.”

Until that summer, I had spent most of my life in classrooms, and I was imagining that after my one-year European detour, I would probably follow my Princeton role models, become a tweedy professor, and spend the rest of my life in classrooms. Suddenly, in that moment on the rue de Rivoli, it struck me: “This was the classroom. Not the musty, ivy-draped halls in which I had spent the previous four years. This world of wide boulevards and centuries-old buildings and six-table sawdust restaurants and glasses of vin ordinaire and poetry readings in cramped second-floor bookshops and mysterious women smiling at you so that your heart leaped and you walked for hours restless under the plane trees by the Seine. This was the classroom.”

That seed of an idea bloomed gloriously in Greece. For my teaching fellowship I lived and taught at Athens College in the Athenian suburb of Psychico. When I wasn’t teaching, I immersed myself in Greek history and culture. I would rise early to get to the Acropolis before dawn, where I would sit at the Parthenon and read Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle as the sun illuminated the marble steps. I made a rocky pilgrimage to the Oracle at Delphi, exclaimed in wonder at Epidaurus and Mycenae, and ran through time on an ancient dirt track in Olympia.

As the months passed, I ventured farther afield. I spent a life-changing night on the sacred island of Delos, explored the craggy monasteries of Mount Athos and the time-bridging ruins of Knossos on Crete.

I came to understand just how much Greece had influenced Western civilization, in law, politics, philosophy, architecture, drama, and art. I fell in love with the quintessential characteristics that I found in the Greek people: their passion, hospitality, faith, generosity, and exuberance. And I fell under the spell of the qualities that seemed to define Greek life: the starkly beautiful landscape of rock, sea, and olive tree; the extraordinarily bright and demarcating light; the slow, sense-savoring, easy flow of time, and the soulful, wholehearted enjoyment of life.

As the end of my fellowship year approached, I faced a major decision: I had been accepted for graduate programs in comparative literature and creative writing. Which path did I want to pursue? After a sleepless night in my room at Athen College, as the sun rose over the Attic plain, I made my choice: I would follow my heart into the classroom of the world that had so gloriously surrounded me in Greece. I would try to become a writer.

And so Greece started me on the path to what has become a fantastically fulfilling life.

Ever since that life-changing year, I have dreamed about taking a small group of travelers to share with them the country, culture, and people I came to love so deeply and who so deeply changed the course of my life.

Now I’m incredibly thrilled that next year I will have the opportunity to do just this on GeoEx’s new trip, Unexplored Greece. I’ve just returned from Greece and I’m even more thrilled than I was before. I visited the magical Manna Hotel in the Peloponnese, where we will be spending three nights in isolated, pine-surrounded splendor. I dined at an unforgettable tiny terraced taverna in a hamlet of 47 people. I visited rocky mountain villages, where I met warmly welcoming locals, including a vivacious woman who produces honey, carpets, and other treasures by hand and who can’t wait to share her treasures with us. I walked on an enchanted path to an extraordinary monastery, savored simple country meals, and was embraced with exuberance everywhere.

I also ventured on to Crete, where I stayed in the intimate private mansion-turned-boutique hotel where we will be staying in the beautiful town of Chania, and where the enchanting proprietress told me the villa’s romantic tale. I reveled in the town’s picturesque alleys and in the transporting countryside surrounding it, and spent an unforgettable afternoon at a boutique olive oil-producing estate run by a delightful young couple with whom we will share an inspiring afternoon tour and celebratory meal.

I am super excited about Unexplored Greece, which will be offered next May and September, the best months to visit Greece. I hope from the bottom of my heart that you’ll join us for an unforgettable exploration of a Greece that you would never be able to see any other way, an off-the-beaten-path Greece of rich ruins and rustic country kindness and tradition, beautiful handicrafts, authentic cuisine, and a deep immersion in Greek history and culture past and present.

I can’t wait to share unexplored Greece with you. Please join us!

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Feeling eager to explore the uncharted with Don in Greece? GeoEx’s team of experts are ready to plan your trip and answer all your questions. Contact one of our travel specialists at 888-570-7108 or submit an inquiry here.