Living Naked And Free On The Beach In Greece

by Dave Seminara on

I spent seventeen years in Catholic schools and that’s probably why you’ll never see me lolling about naked on a beach. I have no moral opposition to naturists, but like many others, I’ve observed firsthand that nudists tend to be a bit older, with many old enough to qualify for senior citizens discounts, and some aren’t exactly easy on the eyes. There’s something about the aging process that makes some people want to revert to their natural state as they grow older.

Men hear the words “nude beach” or “clothing optional beach” and their heart rates accelerate a few notches. But are you going to bump into Gisele Bundchen or Brooklyn Decker sunning themselves in the buff on a beach? Probably not.

In the Greek Isles, you can’t help but bump into people who are naked or nearly naked, even without seeking out nude or clothing optional beaches. A couple weeks ago, I saw a few portly, hardy souls, certainly from Northern Europe, looking burned like lobsters and naked as jaybirds on Tigaki Beach in Kos.

Then you also see men who have suits on, but they’re so skimpy they’re almost more of an assault on the eyes than if they were actually naked. I saw a man at the Livadi Geranou beach in Patmos last week that was actually wearing a thong bathing suit reminiscent of the one Borat used in his movie, save the shoulder straps. He appeared to be about 85 years old.The next day, a portly, middle-aged man tried to board a public bus we were on in Patmos with a tiny speedo half pulled down, exposing both pubes and half his ass. A group of Greek schoolchildren on the bus began to point at him and laugh hysterically, and he turned around and got off. (Perhaps the driver told him to get dressed, I’m not sure.)

Then on Saturday, my wife and two young boys and I found ourselves in the company of a whole host of naked people at the Psili Ammos Beach in Patmos, much to our surprise. The beach can only be reached via a boat ride or rigorous 30-minute hike, so it’s apparently an ideal place for naturists to hide out on a very religious island that frowns upon public nudity.

We noticed that a few of the nudists were actually camping on the beach, which isn’t technically legal, and I was curious about the practicalities. But how does one go about interviewing naked people on a beach? Surely approaching them naked, on their terms, would have been best, but I wasn’t going to do that.

I asked my wife, Jen, to accompany me, thinking that I might seem less like a horny stalker if I had a woman with me.

“I don’t know,” she said, clearly dreading the chore. “I feel like you need to give naked people on a beach a really wide berth.”

But she eventually agreed to accompany me on my quest to speak to naked campers. We approached a variety of naked people, feeling very awkward since we had suits on, and none admitted to being campers, though this might be because they thought I was some sort of undercover police officer.

The naturists were all friendly, and obviously not Americans. One older gentleman who we approached, sort of half rolled over when we addressed him and I accidentally caught sight of his junk – clearly a low point in our trip. It’s odd but when you’re speaking to naked people on a beach, you focus so hard on making eye contact that it’s almost ridiculous.

After a few hours on the clothing-optional beach, I told my wife I’d had enough and wanted to leave. And then just as the words left my mouth, a large group of attractive young people came hiking down the hill and plopped down right next to us on the beach. Well, not so fast, I thought. But alas, they turned out to be a wholesome group of Norwegians on a Bible study tour, and they definitely weren’t there to get naked.

For those who are interested in getting naked and camping for free on Greek beaches, check out the Captain Barefoot site, which appears to be a comprehensive guide to Greece for naturists. In some way, I kind of envy people who feel free enough to live naked and free on a remote beach in Greece, but I’m still keeping my suit on.

Read Part 2 of this story, A Prude Bares it All On a Nude Beach in Crete here.

(Photos by Dave Seminara, the second one needed blurring)

Searching For Patmos’s Ancient Acropolis

by Dave Seminara on

I’ve spent the better part of the last two decades getting lost all around the world. I wish I could boast that my extensive travels have left me with an impeccable sense of direction that allows me to find even the most poorly marked sites, but that would be a lie. The truth is that I spend an awful lot of time wondering where the hell I am.

Yesterday, I set off to visit an archeological site in Patmos, a stunning Greek island in the eastern Aegean, and wound up with nasty little cuts all over my legs and the mistaken impression that a small pile of rocks was Patmos’s Ancient Acropolis.

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I had noticed a sign leading off the main road leading out of Patmos’s main port, Skala, which read “Castelli-Ancient Acropolis,” and had resolved to find it. My wife mentioned that it was billed as a good hike in the Lonely Planet Guide to the Greek Isles, so I set off early on a sunny day to try to find the site.

I walked up the gravel road in the direction the sign pointed for 20 minutes, occasionally looking back to savor the dramatic view of Skala’s harbor and the surrounding beauty. The path came to an end and I doubled back to ask a farmer where the site was. He spoke no English but got the point when I typed the word “archaeology” in a Greek dictionary app I have on my iPod.”Ah, Castelli!” he said, pointing vaguely towards the highest peak in the area.

I typed the word “path” into the app, and the farmer grimaced and said, “problem.”

I soon realized what he was talking about as I retraced my steps and couldn’t see a path to get to the top of the hill he was talking about. The land was divided by stone fences, and after some exploration I found gaps in the first few on my way toward what I thought was the site. But after a few minutes and several missteps onto prickly bushes, I had to hurdle a stone fence and then my hike slowly evolved into a rock climbing exercise as I made my way to the top of the hill.

As I neared the summit, I wondered how it could be possible that municipal authorities would post a sign leading to an archaeological site that required scaling fences and climbing rocks, but the farmer had pointed to this hill and it made sense that the site would be on the highest plateau in the area, so I continued on until I reached the top.

At the summit, I found nothing more than a small pile of neatly stacked rocks, but my efforts were rewarded with a remarkable 360-degree view of the island. I’ve been to my fair share of unimpressive archaeological sites, so I assumed I’d found my destination.

But after snapping a few photos and making a video, I noticed a small white chapel off in the distance and soon realized that my perilous rock-climbing escapade had been a mistake. The Castelli was down a ways. I went down into the little church, and since no one was around, decided to toll the bells outside it.

A short stroll brought me down to the real archaeological site, which dates to the 6th century B.C., and an actual path that led to the main road. Aha! The ruins are forgettable but the view of the rocky cliffs in every direction is one I will never forget. Goats stood on top of the ruins, staring at me as I looked out at the sea, hoping to somehow retain a piece of this glorious scene somewhere in the back of my brain.

After soaking in the scene, I made my way down to the legit path, eager to figure out how I’d failed to see it on the way up. It turns out that I followed a path at a point where I needed to go through an unmarked gate that is actually the entrance to someone’s property.

Why there is no sign here marking the path is a mystery, but the fact that this site is so hard to find also means that you’ll have the place and the magical view all to yourself.

If you go: From Skala, follow the harbor road away from Hora. After about 1 kilometer, you’ll see a sign on your left advertising Ancient Acropolis. Make that left and follow the road and bear right at the first crossroad. The road ends at a private residence, but just a stone’s throw before the end, you’ll see a gate on your right with a number 1 painted on it. That’s the path, follow it down to the little white church and then go down to the Acropolis from there.

(All photos and videos by Dave Seminara. Note: some of the photos were taken on my second hike to the Acropolis.)

10 Reasons To Visit The Greek Island Kos

by Dave Seminara on

There are more than 200 inhabited Greek islands and travelers can feel a bit overwhelmed trying to decide which ones they should visit. Most Americans stick to Santorini, Mykonos or Crete but there are scores of other viable alternatives that are just as alluring as these famous locales.

Over the next several weeks, I’ll be reporting on some Greek islands you might want to consider for your next holiday. Our first stop is Kos, a bucolic island of about 30,000 year-round inhabitants that was the home of Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine. Here are several reasons why Kos is well worth a visit.

Direct Flights. Unlike many Greek islands, you can fly directly into Kos on Ryanair from a dozen European cities including London, Rome and Brussels, and a number of other discount airlines, including German Wings, Air Berlin and Easy Jet. We flew from Bari, Italy, for about $100 each, one way. Kos is also a convenient ferry hub where you can continue on to Patmos, Kalymnos, Rhodes, Piraeus (Athens) and a number of other ports.Paradise for Cyclists. Kos is a flat island that is great for cycling. You can get from one end of the island to the other in an hour by car, so it’s just large enough for a nice long bike ride. You can rent a bike for about 4-5€ per day and there are well maintained bike trails all over the island. (But beware the mopeds and motorcycles!) Take a spin around the island and you’ll get amazing views of Bodrum, Turkey, Nissyros and other beautiful islands in the vicinity.

History. If you’d like to do a bit of sightseeing in between visits to the beach and excursions in the area, Kos town has a castle, some impressive ruins that date to the 3rd Century B.C. and a huge, impressively twisty old tree held up by scaffolding where Hippocrates supposedly schooled his students.

A Lively Port. For those in search of a lively base, Kos Town is a good choice, as it has a nice mix of bars, restaurants and shops. The streets are alive until late in the evening during the summer.

Boat Excursions. Kos is a great place to get out on the water without breaking the bank. For 35€ or less per person, you can visit Bodrum, which is just 20 minutes away, Nisyros, a lovely island with an active volcano, or a combination trip involving Kalymnos, home to Greece’s famous sponge divers, and Pserimos, a quiet little place with 15 families and a nice sandy beach. During the high season, there are even more day trip options, including Rhodes and Symi.

Beaches. Just outside of Kos Town there’s a very long pebbly beach with dozens of beach bars that’s great for families. My favorite beach bar is The Artemis Paradise, which is just in front of a nice hotel of the same name (see photo). They have terrific frozen coconut drinks and iced cappuccinos for less than $3 in an idyllic setting.

Outside of Kos Town, you can find nicer sandy beaches. My favorite is Paradise Beach, which can be reached by bus from Kos Town in 45 minutes for €4.40. Tigaki is also quite nice, especially for children, given the shallow waters. Down the way from the main beach, there’s a clothing optional beach for the naturists and exhibitionists.

Good for Kids. Your kids will love the beaches and in the evening take them to Friends Junior, a terrific play place for kids above the Friends Café in Kos Town. For €4, they’ll supervise your kids while you have a coffee or surf the net, and the price includes a big balloon and a drink of their choice. We had to literally drag my 2-year-old kicking and screaming from this place, he liked it so much.

Nightlife. During the high season, and to a lesser degree in the shoulder season, the bars in Kos Town get quite busy. If you want to meet a good-looking Scandinavian, this is a good place to do it. But note that some of the bars trend toward the cheesy side – they play Top 40 music and employ gals dressed in booty shorts to lure in passersby.

Cheap Laundry and Other Good Stuff. If you’re coming to Greece for a short trip, getting your laundry done won’t be an issue but Kos is big enough to support a couple laundromats that don’t have tourist pricing. Easy Laundromat is my favorite. They did a mountain of laundry for us for just €6. The beauty of coming to a mid-size island like Kos is that you can find businesses like this one that cater to locals and have good prices.

Good Food & Cheap Accommodation. I stayed at the Kosta Palace Hotel right on the harbor in a one-bedroom apartment in late May for just €50 per night. I also spent my first two nights at the Hotel Sonia, which is significantly more expensive and the rooms are smaller, but they have better Internet access, a much better breakfast and renovated rooms. There are scores of similar places and the prices go up only a bit during the high season. Our favorite finds on the dining front were Broadway, an inexpensive Greek restaurant that is only a 10-minute walk from the port in Kos Town and Ararat, a really tasty and inexpensive Armenian restaurant, just off the harbor in Kos Town.

Caveats. Kos and especially Kos Town won’t appeal to everyone. Kos is a major destination for Europeans in July and August and from May-September, you’ll be hit with offers for restaurants, bars and excursions left, right and center as you walk around Kos Town’s harbor area. But if you want a quieter, low-key place simply go further out from Kos Town.

[All photos by Dave Seminara]

The Greeks Are Not Lazy

by Dave Seminara on

The reason why Greece is in such serious trouble is because the Greeks are a lazy people who while away the days drinking ouzo on the beach, playing backgammon in cafés, smashing plates and dancing the Sirtaki – Zorba’s Dance. Now their culture of irresponsibility is finally catching up to them and they’re in danger of bringing the entire global economy down with them.

Not everyone has been this blunt in assessing the Greek crisis, but the country and its people have been taking a beating in the court of world opinion over the last year. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist, implied that Greeks needed to be more like Germans in how they saved, how many hours they worked and how frequently they vacationed. This, despite the fact that according to the OECD the Greeks work longer hours than anyone else in Europe – a full 40 percent more than Germans, for example.

Next, “60 Minutes” got in on the “Greeks Are Lazy” innuendo with a story that stated, “In the past, when the Greeks found their accounts overdrawn, the country simply printed more money, or devalued its currency, to accommodate the relaxed Greek lifestyle.” The clip to accompany the narration showed a pair of young Greeks laughing and embracing.And Fox News analyst Bob Beckel said that Greeks were “a bunch of lazy people who don’t work.” And scores of other politicians and pundits have been less blunt while delivering a similar point.

I think the main reason why there seems to be so little sympathy for the plight of the Greeks is this persistent stereotype that the Greeks have been partying a bit too hard and need to put their noses to the grindstone and get to work.

I’ve been traveling to Greece for more than 15 years and have had the pleasure of getting to know lots of Greeks in the U.S. No two are exactly alike but the common thread I’ve noticed across this culture is their love for and pride in their country, and their strong work ethic. They travel the world in search of work but retain their culture and always strive to return home to Greece. Let me introduce you to a few of the Greeks I’ve met while traveling in Greece the last few weeks.

Sofia Tsatsa works at the City Market along the harbor in Kos, an island in the eastern Aegean that was home to Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine (see first photo). I was in Kos for ten days and shopped at this market every night, and Sofia and her co-workers, Barbara and Sotiria, were always hard at work. One night, I asked them if they were looking forward to the weekend or their next day off.

“Day off?” Barbara said, looking at me as though she was unfamiliar with the concept. “We don’t have days off.”

At the moment, there is no real minimum wage in Greece, no mandated vacation time and many employers are using the crisis as an excuse to slash workers’ wages. Sofia and her colleagues work seven days a week, ten hours per day, usually until 2 a.m. and they make only 800€ per month for their efforts.

Think they’re an aberration? Walk out of the City Market, take your second left on Themistokleous Street, and meet Bogdana Petrova, a Greek of Bulgarian origin who runs the Easy Laundromat. Bogdana works from 9 a.m. until 9 p.m. every single day with no days off. I brought a mountain of laundry to her shop one day and was almost embarrassed when she asked for just 6€ to wash, dry and fold the whole travel wardrobe of our family of four.

Duck out of the Easy Laundromat and head to the Kosta Palace Hotel along the harbor. Amble up to the front desk and you’ll find either Kotsifakos Manos (see photo below) or his wife, Elena on duty. Each day, one works the early shift and the other works the late shift, so they don’t see each other until 11 p.m. each night. Their next day off? Not until November 1, the start of the slow season in Kos.

These are the people you’ll meet when you travel to Greece. Take the time to talk to them, learn their stories and you’ll see the Greek work ethic in person. Trying to dissect exactly how Greece got itself into this mess is tricky, but if you want to try to apportion blame, start with Greece’s politicians, who have allowed the country’s oligarchs to evade taxes on a grand scale, while allowing Greece’s public sector to mushroom, all the while trying to pretend as though their government’s profligate spending was somehow sustainable.

Ask Dimitris Kalaitzes, the owner of Jimmy’s Balcony, a restaurant that overlooks Patmos’s glorious harbor, how Greece is viewed in the world and he’ll tell you about what an NYPD officer asked him after pulling him over on the Verazzano Bridge earlier this year.

“He said, ‘Greece is this small little country, how is it possible that it could bring down the entire world economy?'”

Greece is going to the polls again on June 17, and according to many I’ve spoken to, Syriza, a leftist coalition that wants to renegotiate Greece’s austerity deal with the E.U. and the I.M.F., may very well win.

“They are suffocating us,” said Anna Avgouli, the editor of Stathmos, a weekly newspaper in Kos, referring to the EU/IMF austerity deal. “The Greek people are ready for change and that makes Europe afraid. Greeks are ready to stand on their own feet.”

If you travel to Greece this summer, and you should, have no doubt that you’ll receive an even warmer welcome than usual. Greeks are angry and embarrassed by how their country has been portrayed in the international media and they are eager to show the world what their country and their culture are all about.

And if you want to put the current crisis in perspective, visit the Holy Monastery of St. John the Theologian, built in 1088 near the site where St. John the Divine wrote the Book of Revelation. I asked the Monastery’s Abbott about the Greek crisis and his response summarized for me the capacity of the Greek people to endure just about anything.

“Crisis?” he said, looking a bit confused by my question. “We’ve been here for 10 Centuries and we will continue on.”

(Photos by Dave Seminara)

Touts Feasting On Tourists Like Hyenas Scavenging For Fresh Meat

by Dave Seminara on

Walking through the harbor area in Kos, a Greek island that is part of the Dodecanese group in the eastern Aegean, it’s easy to imagine what a Playboy Playmate might feel like were she to take a stroll through a penitentiary buck naked carrying a sign reading, “Kiss Me!” A bit of exaggeration there, perhaps, but not much. Touts, who aggressively peddle meals, drinks, excursions and God knows what else, have long been a fact of life in the Greek isles and in numerous other touristy locales around the globe, but do they actually help increase business or do they scare away potential customers?

In many ways, May and June are the best months to visit the Greek Islands, because the weather is generally good, the prices are low and the crowds are manageable. But the one downside is that all the touts are in place but the crowds haven’t arrived yet, so early birds like myself are outnumbered by peddlers.

Our apartment is about a ten minute walk along the harbor into the center of town but during that 10 minute walk, we generally encounter about 20-30 peddlers accosting us with menus, brochures, excursion offers and “Where are you from” come-on’s. One gentleman’s mantra is simply “very good, very nice!” But the way he says “verrrrry nicccce,” he reminds us of Borat without the smelly gray suit.Even if I did have the patience to stop and entertain all the “Where you from” queries, I have no easy answer to the question. I was born in Buffalo, but left at 17 and have lived in six states and four foreign countries over the last twenty plus years. At the moment, all my belongings are in a storage locker in Virginia. I have no idea where I’m from and does it really matter anyways?

Everyone’s hungry for business and given the crisis here, it’s hard to fault entrepreneurs for trying to make a buck. But it’s also pretty taxing to have to fend off so many offers. After you walk through the gauntlet of hawkers you feel a bit like a piece of meat that’s been picked clean by a pack of hyenas.

I have no problem ignoring some of the salespeople but my wife is too nice, and feels like she has to stop and engage with them, making it nearly impossible to walk down some streets. On one occasion, I forgot something in our apartment and had to go back to get it. I dreaded the walk back because I had to deal with all the touts twice.

I’m biased against restaurants that employ touts to try to hook passersby. I have no proof, but my theory is that if a place needs to resort to these tactics, it’s probably not very good. So for me, the touts’ tactics backfire, because if they weren’t there, I might actually take a look at their menus.

Bars in Kos adopt the same tactics, but most of them employ comely young ladies from Scandinavia to lure people in. At the bar West, I asked one of them, a lovely young lady from Sweden who wears booty shorts that barely cover her backside emblazoned with the Swedish flag, if her streetside beckoning actually works.

“Yes, of course it works,” she said, more matter of fact than boastful. “The tourists get to know us and we become their friends, so they want to drink with us.”

It makes sense, I suppose, for bars but I’m still skeptical on the restaurant front. Every night we walk past a restaurant called El Paso and I feel a little bad for a pretty young woman who stands in front of the place each night, wearing a poncho and oversized sombrero. (see photo) I feel bad for her, but not bad enough to actually eat at the restaurant. Maybe I’m wrong and tourists really are like lemmings that want to be hooked on a spear and lured into bars, restaurants and excursion boats – but I doubt it.

(Photos by Dave Seminara)