DEPART THE USA

Arrive in Athens, a city of legend, civilization, and enduring culture. Athens is a majestic and magical urban sprawl. Extraordinary elegance and grace combine with grit and graft in Greece’s capital, where highways encase ruins from antiquity, and gleaming museums and galleries stand beside concrete sprayed with edgy street art. These contrasts enhance and elevate the wonders of this 2,500-year-old city, however, which can count notable contributions to philosophy, drama and democracy, among its global legacy. Piraeus’ giant port and naval base welcome you to the edge of the Athens’ urban area. From there, it’s a simple jaunt to the center. The majestic ancient citadel of the Acropolis dominates an elevated platform and is a constant presence as you explore the city. The wonderful remains of the columned temple of the Parthenon, which date back to the 5th century BC, stand here, representing the pinnacle of classical architecture. The nearby Acropolis Museum adds context to your visit and frames the broad views from its giant glass windows. Or climb up Mount Lycabettus to be rewarded with perhaps Athens’ best panorama of the Acropolis sitting high over the city on its grand stage. See the marble horseshoe of the Old Olympic Stadium, where the first modern Olympics were held in 1896, for more of the city’s enduring legacy. Elsewhere, golden beaches and temples stretch out along the coastline, should you wish to explore a little further afield. Coffee is an art form to the Greeks, and it’s an unwritten rule that coffee time must never be rushed. So prepare to settle down for a couple of hours and lose yourself in a good chat. Feeling hungry, try traditional souvlaki made with sauces handed from generation to generation.

Explore the towering columns and storied remains of Ephesus - one of the most spectacular cities left by the Ancient Greeks. Kusadasi welcomes you to the Turkish coastline and is your base for exploring these majestic remains, which sit just 10 miles inland from the port. The Ephesus UNESCO World Heritage Site is a true archaeological gold mine and an amazingly well-preserved site, once home to 150,000 people. The grand Temple of Artemis rose up majestically here and was recognised as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World before its untimely destruction. The grand city was a fitting location for such a wonder, and with a mere 20% estimated to have been uncovered, the scale and majesty of Ephesus are hard to fully comprehend as you walk its ancient streets. Visit the precious Library of Celsus, a gorgeous, double-layered façade of columns and artistry, and enjoy the city’s gently illuminated, atmospheric venues, which still host stirring evening concerts. Ephesus’s museum adds context to the 25,000 treasures that are exhibited within. After a long hot day exploring, recharge with a perfectly-charred and seasoned kebab or vegetable and rice stuffed grape leaves like dolma. In Kusadasi, you can discover a lively seaside city with a buzzing Aegean beach scene and a glut of restaurants and cafes to kick back in.

Set on the east of the Greek island Crete, Aghios Nikolaos is a place of legend and luxury. Pastel-colored houses jostle attractively around the pretty harbor and inky lake while busy restaurants and cafes spill out onto its lively waterfront. Life here orbits around Lake Voulismeni, and the legendary lake is said to be bottomless and to have been a bathing spot for Greek goddesses Athena and Artemis. Enjoy heavenly views of the water through frames of pretty violet flowers, or climb the stone steps for a sweeping panorama of the town, lake, and seas beyond. With abundant waterfront, hours meander past effortlessly in the town’s humming cafes as characters come and go and sunlight flicks off the sparkling waves. Aghios Nikolaos is surrounded by wide, scenic beaches, and you can choose between Voulisma, where crystal-clear water lolls against fine sand or Almyros, where a refreshing ribbon of cooling freshwater snakes out into warm turquoise seawater. Away from the beaches, look for the brightly-frescoed Panagias Keras Church, one of the region’s oldest Byzantine churches, which dates back to the 13th century. Explore local farms to taste fresh oil crushed from plump olives, ripened by the generous, Cretan sun.

With an endless sun-soaked season, earthy history, and vibrant culture, the island of Rhodes has it all. At the crossroads between continents and sandwiched between Crete and Turkiye’s coastline, Rhodes has swayed between many mighty civilizations throughout its tumultuous history. Part of the Dodecanese Islands, which are sprinkled across the blissfully blue Aegean Sea, dive into this island of dazzling beaches, historic medieval towns, and whitewashed villages, crusted with turrets and walls, alluding to its strategic significance over the years. Incredible history has been left behind, and the cobbled streets of the UNESCO World Heritage site listed Old Town are some of Europe’s best. Wander back through time, with occasional minarets from Ottoman-era mosques rising from the tangle of Medieval history and the smells of cinnamon, cumin, and pepper lingering above stone-paved streets. Discover inviting outdoor restaurants, which spill across flower-filled courtyards, and enjoy fresh Greek cuisine with an eastern influence. The preserved columns of Lindos’s spectacular Ancient Greek Acropolis watch out over electric blue water, while the Gothic Medieval stronghold of the 14th-century Palace of the Grand Masters of the Knights of Rhodes adds fascinating history to explore. Fragrant, pine tree-coated hills and gorgeous beaches of eye-watering blue water offer your choice of unbridled relaxation or thrilling action, and you can raise the pulse with water sports or shelter in coves with shocks of turquoise water and monolithic rock formations.

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There is a wonderful Italo Calvino story about a city so removed from its own history that it is as if the modern metropolis sits on the site of an unrelated ancient city that just happens to bear the same name. At times Alexandria, which Alexander the Great founded in the 4th century BC, feels like that. Yet the fallen Alexandria of the ancient Greeks, of Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Julius Caesar, and the Romans, and of pagan cults and the Great Library is underfoot, quite literally, as all of modern Alexandria has been built on the ruins of the old, a city that was capital of Egypt from the 3rd century BC until AD 642, when the Arabs first arrived. Overlay a map of the contemporary city with one from antiquity, and you see that many of the streets have remained the same: Shar’a al-Horreya runs along the route of the ancient Canopic Way, and Shar’a Nabi Daniel follows the route of the ancient Street of the Soma. Near their intersection once stood the Mouseion, a Greek philosophic and scientific center that had at its heart the collection of the Great Library. Yet only fleeting glimpses of this ancient city peak through the modern crust. By the early 20th century, Alexandria was a wealthy trading port. The merchants were fantastically rich (cosmopolitan without beingintellectual) and they enjoyed the sort of idle existence that is born of privilege, a privilege not of high birth but rather of colonial rule, which shielded foreigners from Egyptian law. They lived in villas with extravagant gardens, frequented luxurious shops, gossiped over tea in grand cafés, and lounged on the beach in private resorts along the coast. The population was a multicultural mix of Greeks and Arabs, Turks and Armenians, French and Levantines, Jews and Christians, and this spawned a unique atmosphere.

It was this city that belonged to Constantine Cavafy, now regarded as the greatest Greek poet of his era. It was this city to which the novelist E.M. Forster, author of A Passage to India, was posted during World War I; and it was this city that gave birth to Lawrence Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, which captivated a generation of American readers when the books were published in the late 1950s. Then, quite suddenly, everything changed. The intellectuals and merchants fled, driven out of Egypt by the nationalist revolution of the 1950s, the wars with Israel, and the nationalization of their businesses. It’s been five decades since most of the foreigners left but some Greeks and Armenians remained. But if you take the city as it is today and not as a faded version of what it once was, you will find that Alex (as it’s affectionately known) remains an utterly charming place to visit. The Mediterranean laps at the seawall along the Corniche, and gentle sea breezes cool and refresh even in the dead of summer. Graceful old cafés continue to draw lovers and friends (Egyptians now, rather than foreigners) while the streets remain as lively and intriguing as ever. Alexandria is still a great city, even now, shorn of its many pasts.

At less than 45 kilometres from Nazareth, Haifa is often neglected when it comes to travel experiences. And understandably so, as Nazareth is definitely the superstar of the region. The pilgrimage site is certainly a must for all believers of all denominations, and the chance of seeing where Jesus spent his childhood is too good an opportunity to pass up for some. If, however you go expecting to find a bucolic utopia then think again. Nazareth today is bustling modern hub of a mega metropolis, which has grown up around the crumbling walls of the Old City. Nazareth Old City is stunning, and the historic sites where Jesus is believed to have lived and preached prior to his death are certainly bucket list worthy. These include the Basilica of the Annunciation, where the Angel Gabriel visited Mary to inform her of her virgin birth, the Church of Joseph, the ancient site of Joseph’s carpentry shop and Cana (located on the shores of the Sea of Galilee), where Jesus performed his first miracle of turning water into wine. But that is not to say that Haifa itself is not worth a visit. The city, the third largest in Israel after Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, is a mosaic of cultures and faiths, with Jews, Christians, Muslims and Bahá’ís all living peacefully side by side. The Bahá’í Gardens, part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site, are without a doubt the city’s main attraction. Set on the flanks of Mont Carmel and sloping into the Mediterranean Sea, both the gardens and the city offer stunning view.

From Ashdod’s port, it’s just a short ride to Jerusalem’s land of incredible religious significance and cultural wonder. A city like no other, Jerusalem is a melting pot of traditions and a place of staggering complexity and immeasurably deep, impactful history. It’s almost impossible to fully digest Jerusalem’s importance in the scriptures of the world’s largest religions Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This collision of faiths helps to make it one of the world’s most fascinating locations.

The Old City is the focal point for much of the religious reverence, with aged buildings from the world’s major faiths jostling for space, and melodic calls to prayer echoing down tight stone streets. Stroll the walkways to travel between deeply contrasting quarters, where you can sample roughly ripped pita bread, dipped into fresh, flavourful hummus. A place of unbridled passion and importance, but also extraordinary beauty, it’s easy to get swept away in the raw emotion that Jerusalem generates. Visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which archaeologists believe stands on the site where Jesus was crucified. Inside, emotional worshipers kneel before the stone where his body was wrapped in cloth in preparation for burial. The Wailing Wall is another place where passions run high, as worshipers place their folded messages into the wall’s cracks. Temple Mount’s golden dome glints in the sun nearby, signifying another point of pilgrimage for Jews and for Muslims, who believe it is the place where Muhammad ascended to heaven.

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