Athens
I was offered the opportunity to partner with a retreat management company to host a wellness retreat in Greece in May of 2025. I have led several retreats in the past, but on much a smaller scale – mostly three-day weekends in the Colorado mountains or New Mexico. I had never partnered with anyone on those retreats, and I have to admit it was a lot of work to coordinate and facilitate on my own. Which is why this was a deal I couldn’t pass up – the retreat management company handles all the logistics of planning and coordinating the retreat, and all I have to do is get 10 people signed up and teach one yoga class a day during the retreat.
It wasn’t easy since I had been mostly out of the yoga community for the past five years, but I ended up rounding up a group of 11 participants. Many who had attended past retreats of mine and brought their spouse or a friend, and a few new connections I had made since stepping away from teaching. The retreat took place in Crete for four nights and Santorini for three. I chose to arrive in Greece five days early to check out Athens and recover from the travel and jet lag. I spent three nights in Athens, and the other two at the resort in Crete where the first four days of the retreat took place.
The Athens airport is about an hour drive from the city center, so I booked a room in a hotel near the airport for my first night because I knew I was going to be tired the night I arrived. The next day I took a taxi to my Airbnb, which was a 10-minute walk from the Acropolis. I was still pretty tired from the travel, so I had a slow day walking around and enjoying a couple of delicious Greek meals. The food in Europe is so much more fresh and pure than the food in the United States. The colors are brighter, the flavors are richer, and it just tastes cleaner. The cheeses and pastries in Greece were especially decadent and flavorful.
The weather on my first full day in Athens was pleasant – sunny and in the high 60s. But the second day was cooler and windier. It was my last full day in Athens, so I had to make the most of it. I went to the Acropolis Museum first and spent over an hour inside. It was an impressive museum with archeological ruins underneath. After I left the museum, I bought a ticket to see the Acropolis and Parthenon. The tickets were sold for a specific hour of entry, so I bought a ticket for a couple hours later so I could eat lunch in between. I will say that I wish I had a guide for the Acropolis and Parthenon visit; there was a lot there which I didn’t know what I was looking at. The wind got quite intense once we reached the top of the ruins, which made it difficult to enjoy the sites for long. There were some incredible views overlooking the city from up there though, and seeing these mystical ruins up close made it well worth it.
There is so much more history and culture in Athens that I didn’t get to experience. I didn’t have the energy to do much for those first couple days, so in hindsight I would have spent the entire five additional nights there. Travel across time zones is still difficult for me to bounce back from physically, and as I am getting older those first couple days of rest are becoming more crucial. But the silver lining is that I have a reason to return to Athens one day in the future.
