Greece: Where the West
Began, and the Sea Never Ends

All Destinations › Europe › Greece

Six thousand islands, the birthplace of democracy, and a caldera left behind by one of the largest volcanic eruptions in recorded history.

Greece is where a great deal of what the West thinks about itself was first argued out loud. The Acropolis is the obvious statement of it, but the Ancient Agora below is the more affecting place — an ordinary marketplace where Socrates walked and citizens invented the practice of governing themselves in public.

Then there is the sea. Around six thousand islands and islets, of which a couple of hundred are inhabited, each with its own architecture, food and temperament. Santorini sits on the rim of a flooded volcanic crater and produces mineral white wine from vines woven into low baskets against the wind. Mykonos is cosmopolitan and deliberately labyrinthine. Delos, uninhabited and sacred, was so holy that nobody was permitted to be born or to die there.

At Finders & Keepers Safaris we combine the mainland’s archaeology with the islands at the right pace — museums before monuments, ferries booked well ahead, volcanic hot springs and private boats around the caldera, and a sommelier-led tasting of Assyrtiko that reframes what most visitors think Greek wine is.