Croatia and Greece

In the summer of 2019 I had the opportunity to visit Croatia and Greece with my family. The trip took the form of a 10 day cruise on the Ponant Cruise Line ship Le Lyrial. There were some absolutely amazing views on the trip. One of our first stops was in Dubrovnik, Croatia seen in the lower left picture below. This city, which served as the filming grounds for much of the Queens landing shots in the hit show Game of Thrones, was absolutely amazing to explore. You could spend hours navigating the twists and turns of the walled in old city filled with shops and restaurants.

To travel from Croatia to Greece our Captain took us through the Corinth Canal. The canal connects the Gulf of Corinth, Ionian sea, and Adriatic sea to the Aegean. The listed maximum ship beam width for entering the canal is listed at 17.6 meters. Our ship, at a beam width of 18 meters, seemed to come dangerously close to the giant cliffs created by the passage. At times it seemed like we could reach out and touch the walls. It was by far the most exciting part of the whole trip and provided some remarkable views as seen below.

Our final stop before our cruise ended in Athens was Paros. Paros, seen below in the bottom right was one of the few Greek Islands we visited. When many people think of the Greek Islands they always think of the white buildings, Paros is a great example of the architectural, cultural, and environmental variety that truly exists among the Greek isles. Paros had architecture more similar to Dubrovnik with the reddish roofs and beige or white buildings, it also was full of lots of greenery. In contrast Mykonos, another island we visited, had the more traditional white buildings with blue roofs, but was far more arid than I would have expected. Visiting gave me a lot more perspective on the different microcosms of the various islands and showed me I can't paint a whole country or area with the same brush.