Yasas! I am April, a lifelong student from the barrier islands of North Carolina. Since growing up in such an insular place, it feels like each time I move to a new city or visit a new place my world expands. When I learn more about other people and other cultures, I feel more self-aware and responsible in my role as a United States citizen in a globalized world.
My love for travel started when my mom and I lived in a family friend’s townhouse in London for two weeks while I was deep in my Harry Potter and Monty Python phase. After my mom died, some of my aunts took me abroad to relieve my dad and redeem my spirit. Auntie Cynthia took my cousins and me to Mexico on a Disney cruise to practice my pidgin Spanish; then she, Auntie Net, and Auntie Gretchen took us to New York City to climb the Statue of Liberty and see the Twin Towers; finally, Auntie Net and Auntie Gretchen took us on an old-fashioned debutante tour of Paris, Switzerland, Venice, and Rome. Each place taught me how small and insignificant I was compared to these storied monuments to time and power… but I also felt part of the timeless, transcendent whole just by being there.
In my 20s I met and married a Greek-American whose Yia Yia still insists she lives in her Athens apartment, where she spends a few weeks per summer, and not her son’s house in Alexandria, where she lives for the rest of the year. Through coincidence and her insistence, we have visited Athens five times together now. From hostels and day trips with our college friends, to family visits to the village, to destination weddings and romantic getaways, we’ve done all sorts of travel through Greece (and a few other countries along the way). This site is my insider-outsider perspective on visiting Southern Europe.
καλό ταξίδι / happy travels 