In the beginning of September, my friend, Holly, and I visited the country of Greece attending a yoga retreat. We had an amazing time exploring Athens, Corinth, and the island of Amorgos. This all was possible because my husband wanted to give me a wonderful yoga experience for Christmas, and fortunately, Holly was able to be my travel buddy.
We left the United States on September 4th, and made it to Athens on September 5th. We quickly began walking around town and exploring the fun area we were staying in Athens. Our hotel had a great view, and we ended up eating at a traditional greek restaurant, finding our first greek meal.
We had a breakfast buffet at our hotel, and ate on the balcony with an awesome view of the Acropolis in Athens.
Our first scheduled activity was a day trip to a neighboring city, Corinth. On our way to Corinth, we stopped at the Corinth Canal which is a man made canal to make trade routes easier in earlier times (thoughts of it began around 602 BC). Because it is so narrow, it is rarely used by larger vessels of today.
In earlier times, Corinth was bigger than Athens, and drew the Apostle Paul there on his missionary journey. Letters from Paul to the Corinthians are recorded in the Bible, and one of the more famous chapters, (1 Corinthians 13) was read at my wedding. While we were there, of course we had to strike a yoga pose!
We then set off to the island of Amorgos, Greece on an 8 our ferry ride. After checking in on the ferry and getting some coffee, we watched the sun rise from the top of the boat. We then found some of the other people on the ferry who would be spending the week with us at the yoga retreat. Jet lag finally found us, and we spent the rest of the ferry ride sleeping in our cabin.
Once we arrived at the island of Amorgos, it was a short van ride to our hotel where we were greeted with the local concoction, Raki.
The view from the welcome area of the hotel -
And - our fun room for the week with our view -
After hanging out at the pool for a while, we met everyone we'd be spending the week with during the yoga retreat at a rooftop sunset meditation. A great way to see the sun go down.
Each evening we ate dinner together in this fun space -
These are some of the fun staff that took care of us all week -
We were excited to see our yoga room for the week gave us a beautiful view of the water. It's very calming to watch the ocean waves while practicing yoga poses.
Our final yoga practice together was a two hour session beginning with a gentle warm up, a little play in the middle, and a 15 minute relaxation in the end. The play time allowed everyone to explore the different apparatus (aerial swings and wall straps), but since I was videoing our class, I stayed on my mat and had play time. So, if you have a couple of hours and would like to experience the class, you can see my body's variation of the poses - and my 10 minutes of play time.
We spent our first full day on the island exploring the town -
Everywhere in town it seemed there were fun little signs - hand drawn with positive images
We stopped for a snack at a cute little restaurant with a view of this unique windmill
One unique aspect of this island is there are over 150 churches scattered throughout the island. They are called family churches, and a member of the family is assigned the duty to keep the candle lit inside the church every day. This church (pictured above) happened to be in the middle of the town we explored our first day, but several of the churches require climbing over 1000 steps up the side of the mountain to keep the candle burning.
This is the view of our hotel from the beach area -
We went on a bus ride to see a monastery, the town of Chora, and a black rock beach - as we were on the bus, our tour guide made us aware there were over 15,000 goats on the island and that the goats were in charge 😂
The goats pictured were just hanging out on the side of the road.
Pictured below are views of the island monastery. My watch told me we climbed 34 flights up to the monastery -
The Monastery of Hozoviotissa in Amorgos is the second oldest in Greece, built in 1017 and renovated in 1088 by Alexius Comnenus I. As you can see, it literally hangs on the side of the cliff 300m above the Aegean sea. The monastery is an ode to the Virgin Mary who is the patron saint of the island.
After visiting the monastery, we visited another beach on the island named Agia Anna, which is a black rock beach. We walked down to the beach, but decided it didn't really look appealing, so we stayed at the top with some of our fellow yogis and 'played' yoga for a while 😂
We then visited another town named, Chora.
We had lunch and found this fun jewelry shop where I saw these awesome earrings that represent "Wings of Love" in Greece ❤️ - and fun photos with flower background with our new friend, Grace 🌸
During the week, we had a lot of fun with aerial yoga, paddle board yoga and new to me - Wall yoga! These are some of our fun pics 😍
Aerial yoga
Paddle board Yoga - the pic above may the the only pic of me without my sunglasses on (you can see me squinting). On my way out on the board that day, I wasn't focusing and a wave pushed me over (sitting on the board - not even striking a yoga pose). I was closer to the beach and even though I had a string on my sunglasses, they were swept away in the water. After we finished paddle boarding, several of our friends were on the lookout for the sunglasses, and one of the guys (we call him Eagle Eye Jeff), spotted them in the water and saved them for me. I was so thankful I could see without squinting!
Wall yoga
We had a lot of fun experiencing the various types of yoga with fun friends ❤️🧘🏼♀️
Another fun excursion on the island was to an herbalist, Vangelis Vassalos, and his company, Iama Herbals Amorgos. He has studied neuroscience, chinese medicine, accupuncture and more - and uses the materials on the island to create his own essential oils.
I was able to get some of the special products from him and plan to make roller balls, body oils, and scrubs from his special essential oils soon 😊 . There will be a Special Yoga For Memory Workshop with Holly and I, October 26th where we will share some of these special oils to help our memory!
Each evening during the retreat we would meet on a rooftop for a sunset meditation. One of our meditations was Sa-Ta-Na-Ma where you tap the fingers on the thumb while repeating the sounds aloud, then in a whisper, then silently for a period of time. The meditation has been researched to aid in stimulating the brain and helping various brain disruptive diseases such as Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and Multiple Sclerosis. After the meditation, my fingers were pulsing and I tapped Holly's shoulder to see if she could feel the vibrations, and then we tapped fingers to share the energy. At that same moment one of our friends from the retreat capturing the beautiful sunset behind us, also happened to capture our finger tap ❤️
On - what we thought would be - our last night on the island, we all dressed up in white and took pictures at the pool. There's a pic of our whole group attending the retreat, and then a few fun ones with others 😊
Holly, Stephanie, Lucy and I
Marianne, Carol, Holly and I
Grace, Holly, me and Jodi
As you can see in the background of our white outfit pics, there was a 'storm' and even though it didn't bring rain, it brought the wind - which docked all boats - including ferry's - so we spent an extra day on the island. For our 'bonus' day, we explored a beach that was right underneath our hotel room the whole week, found a fun restaurant in town to eat dinner with one of our new friends, and saw an amazing full moon!
The waves were larger that day than they had been the whole week.
While we were fortunate to arrive at the port by our hotel (Aegiali), our departing port was a ways down the island (Katapola) pic of island below. Leaving at 4am, we saw our ferry arrive at sunrise. So, we spent most of that 9 hour ferry ride back to Athens sleeping in our cabin.
Once we made it back to Athens, we quickly made our way to see the Acropolis. We had planned an excursion with a tour guide around Athens, but since we weren't able to depart the island when planned, we saw what we could before the sunset.
We had an amazing adventure in Greece, but I was happy to see my family! And, my family was happy to see me. They apparently existed on food from The Shed Market while I was gone
😂
I hope you enjoy sharing in my adventure with Holly in Greece. I am very grateful for this amazing experience and have been sharing some new flows with my yoga classes!
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