WHEN ONE OF OUR CLOSE FRIENDS ANNOUNCED HER WEDDING WAS GOING TO BE IN GREECE, WE SAID “THANK YOU FOR THE EXCUSE TO VACATION” AND IMMEDIATELY STARTED PLANNING!
We flew in to Vouliagmeni (the location of our friends wedding, about a half hour south west from Athens airport) a few days before the wedding and stayed a couple of days afterwards. During our time there we were mostly at the beach adjusting to our jet lag in the best way possible. Greece, of course, has the best islands so we also went to visit Crete for about a week! We were lucky enough to be staying right on the beach in Chania where we had Ethan’s parents and sister join us. Truth be told, we were beach bums pretty much the whole time. We swam a lot, ate as much seafood as humanly possible, and it was perfect. Stef got sick part way through our time in Chania (conveniently on a day where we had planned to go on a hike) but Ethan and his family still hiked through the Agia Irini Gorge; It was about 7.5km long and the heat, lack of shade, and ruggedness of the terrain made it a challenging 3 hours, but the cold beer at the end made it all worth it! Another huge perk of the heat was that the trail was lined with thyme plants which were very fragrant from all the sunlight so much so the whole valley smelled like a turkey dinner!
FROM GREECE WE MADE OUR WAY TO ANDORRA VIA BARCELONA
We flew into Barcelona and proceeded to drive to Andorra. We don’t mind long drives as long as: 1. the road isn’t dead straight and 2. the scenery ain’t bad, and the 3hr drive from Barcelona to Andorra definitely checked those boxes. Seeing the rolling hill countryside of Spain transition into the Pyrenees mountains that make up most of Andorra was beautiful. Last time we were in Europe Ethan & I spent some time in Provence, which also has some large mountain ranges, but I don’t think they were comparable to Andorra. I’ve never felt so small before or have ever been so high up (case and point: on a rainy day we drove around we made it to the Andorra/Spain border which is 2300 meters above sea level!)
One of the reasons we went to Andorra is because Ethan wanted to go mountain biking at Vallnord, which is a stop on the Downhill Mountain Biking World Cup. Ethan here I’ll chime in for this bit since it’s biking related ;) Yes one of the big draws of Andorra was the biking so on our second day there I made my trip to Vallnord Bike Park. Stef was on the tail end of her illness from our time in Chania so she stayed at our Airbnb which wasn’t a bad place to be. I was anxious about my time in the bike park mainly because I wanted to ride the world cup course, but also knew this was one of the steepest tracks on the pro circuit. In total there were 3 lifts to get to the top which was at an elevation of 2351 meters above sea level and a total of 1100 meters elevation change from summit to base! The riding there was breathtaking and the views at the summit were 360 degrees of open mountains, and it was sometimes hard to focus on riding the trails because the views were so amazing. After warming up on a few less serious runs I went to the world cup track and I was HUMBLED as it was STEEPER than I could have ever guessed, despite studying lots of footage on the nights leading up to this ride! I did make it down in one piece but I had to walk down two sections because my mind really couldn’t comprehend taking a bike down haha
AND LASTLY, WE MADE OUR WAY TO (AND THEN FLEW HOME FROM) BARCELONA!
The best part of Barcelona (apart from the weather, architecture, history, etc etc etc) was the food! We strategically budgeted ourselves in the beginning parts of our trip so that we could splurge on food in Barcelona, and it did not disappoint! Whenever we are travelling abroad to oceanside places we make sure to take advantage of the seafood, and while arguably it was fresher in Greece, the meals in Barcelona were really something else. We both agreed that our last dinner, at La Mundada, was the best we have ever had… EVEN THE BREAD AND BUTTER WAS JAWDROPPING (caps for emphasis because we are so serious about how good it was!) Some of our other favourite food places were: Elche, Mabel the Granja, and L’Arroseeria Xàtiva. Apart from the food we spent most of our time- take a guess- at the beach. We did see La Sagrada Familia and Montserrat, and they were really truly breathtaking, but we both prefer laying down and relaxing as opposed running around touristing (also having not particularly planned to go into touristy places the lines were too long to make a last minute decision to see them).
