The plan was innocent enough: a road trip through the Peloponnese and beyond on our way to Athens. A few mountain villages, some coastlines, a little cheese. Nothing too complicated. But Greece doesn’t know how to not do “not complicated.” It adds drama, history, food, and, just when you least expect it, emotional ambushes.
Since we moved to Kalamata it would be the first real road trip and a chance to show my New York wife some of my cherished places. We started of course in Kalamata, “our town”, a place where the olives are plump, the beaches endless, and every grandmother swears her dimples (local rolled up fried dough delicacy dipped in honey and walnuts) are the only one worth eating. The air is heavy with salt and olive oil, and if you stay too long you risk becoming marinated yourself. Or as a friend calls it “dirty little Kalamata”.
From there we wound our way into the mountains, stopping in Stemnitsa. And that’s when time decided to play tricks. Out of nowhere, we stumbled into the Peloponnese rally for old cars. Imagine a parking lot where the 1960s and 70s had exploded: Porsches gleaming like disco balls, boxy Fiats proudly idling, Alfa Romeos strutting like they had just come from Milan Fashion Week. Their owners were equally impressive, mostly older gentlemen with silver hair, pressed trousers, and the kind of confidence you only get when you know your car requires more maintenance than a small yacht.
From Stemnitsa, we rolled into Dimitsana, the kind of village where the stones themselves seem to whisper history. In Dimitsana, history isn’t just something you read about on plaques. It’s built into the stones, the streets, and the very air you breathe. This mountain village was more than a pretty stop on our road trip, it was once a powder keg, literally. During the Greek War of Independence in 1821, Dimitsana became the beating heart of the revolution.
The monasteries around the village, especially Philosophou and Prodromou, turned into gunpowder factories. While the rest of Europe debated politics in salons, Dimitsana was grinding charcoal, and sulfur, producing the “black gold” that armed the fighters of 1821. They say the gunpowder from Dimitsana fueled battles from Tripolitsa to Missolonghi, without it, the revolution might have fizzled out before it even began.
It’s a strange thought when you walk past a quiet stone house or the sound of a mountain stream: here, two centuries ago, people were mixing powder and packing cartridges in secret. The village was small, but its contribution was explosive—literally and figuratively. Today, there’s even a Gunpowder Museum, where you can see the tools, barrels, and recipes that kept the fight alive.
So when we bought our souvenirs, handwoven scarves and a new komboloi (worry beads), we had this odd feeling. On the surface, Dimitsana is cozy and picturesque. But underneath, it’s a reminder that revolutions aren’t always born in palaces or battlefields. Sometimes, they begin in quiet mountain workshops, where monks stir powder and history catches fire.
In Vitina, we moved from trinkets to provisions. Honey, herbs, local cheeses. Road trips in Greece follow a strict ratio: 30% sightseeing, 70% filling your car trunk with jars and packages. By this point, the backseat looked less like luggage and more like a moving delicatessen.
And then we arrived at Kalavryta. Ah, Kalavryta! A place where beauty and horror live side by side. Nestled in the mountains, it looks like a postcard village, until you remember December 1943. The day when the Nazis rounded up all the men, executed them, and burned the town. At the memorial with the graves, the air is unbearably still. In the school turned museum, you see the chalkboards, the desks, and the chilling story of how children watched their fathers taken away. The Nazi set the school on fire to burn the women and children but luckily, the women and children found a way to escape the school.
Standing there, I felt time collapse. It wasn’t “history.” It was presence. A wound still open. I thought of my own childhood, of the privilege of growing up with laughter, skiing trips, small dramas about homework. Here, those very same years had been stolen. Kalavryta is beautiful, but it’s not a beauty you can enjoy without a lump in your throat.
After that, we needed light again, so we drove on to Nafpaktos. Its Venetian port is shaped like a crescent moon, filled with fishing boats and chatter. We lingered for a couple of nights, sitting at cafés that smelled of grilled octopus, watching locals argue passionately about football and politics—sometimes in the same sentence.
From Nafpaktos we escaped to Trizonia, the only inhabited islands in the Corinthian Gulf. No cars, no traffic, just boats, cats, and a pace so slow it makes you wonder if time itself decided to take a holiday.
We followed the coast to Galaxidi and Itea, seafaring towns with salt in their blood. You can almost see the ghosts of 19th-century captains pacing the harbors, with sideburns long enough to double as curtains.
Then the road began to climb. The slopes of Mount Parnassos rose above us, the air sharpening as if someone had opened a freezer door. Pines pressed close, their scent crisp and resinous, and suddenly we were driving into memory.
We reached Fterolaka, my childhood ski playground and the highest peak of the mountain. Back then, this place was infinite—mountains that loomed like giants, slopes that seemed vertical, and a chairlift that creaked like it was held together by prayer. Now, as an adult, the mountains looked smaller, the slopes gentler. But memory, that trickster, made them vast again.
The smell of pine was intoxicating. My wife pinched herself a few times and laughed: “Did we cross the border into Switzerland without noticing?” It was a fair question—except here, instead of raclette, you have tavernas serving bean soup.
I could almost hear the scrape of skis carving the ice, the whoosh of skiers racing past, my uncle’s booming laughter carrying over the mountain wind. And there I was again, 17 years old, fingers frozen solid, fumbling with woolen gloves that absorbed more snow than they repelled. Falling, tumbling, sliding into drifts, then standing up again, because on Parnassos, resilience wasn’t a word, it was a ritual, learned one bruise at a time.
That’s the sneaky thing about nostalgia. It takes a snowy hill and turns it into a cathedral of memory, where every pine needle is an organ note and every gust of wind carries the echo of a childhood that refuses to melt away.
On the way back to Athens, we couldn’t resist a stop in Arahova, the alpine village that thinks it’s half Swiss, half Greek. Its specialty, formaela, is a cheese that demands respect. Grilled until golden, chewy yet tender, it tastes like mountain air compressed into dairy form. If feta is the humble peasant, formaela is the aristocrat that secretly drinks raki.
By the time we reached Athens, the road trip had become something much bigger than kilometers driven. It was a journey through layers, playful, nostalgic, and devastating. Old cars sparkling in Stemnitsa. The frozen silence of Kalavryta. Childhood reborn in Fterolaka. Cheese in Arahova that made us forget the weight of history, if only for a bite.
That’s Greece for me. You set out to see the sights. Instead, you end up carrying history, laughter, and food in equal measure. And somehow, against all odds, it all holds together.
