Stef + Ethan's European Vacation Vol. 2
Ethan says Greece has the best sunsets, swimming, and seafood… and I dare anyone to say otherwise!
When Hannah announced that her wedding was going to be in Greece our first reaction was thank you for the excuse to vacation! We would not have taken time off if it wasn’t for her wedding; maybe a cottage trip every here and there but certainly not a 2.5 week vacation in the middle of wedding season, we’re not that crazy! Travelling within Europe is super easy so even though we were coming in for Hannah’s wedding we decided to bounce around from Vouliagmeni to Chania to Andorra, and Barcelona too.
There are no words for how incredible Hannah’s wedding was- so much so that we’ll just let her tell you about it in a separate post ;). But from a guest’s POV it was beautiful, fun, filled with such delicious food, a lot of welcoming friends and family. Hannah & Yiannis were stunning, glowing, beautiful, ethereal, and so many more adjectives that I won’t bore you with!
We flew in to Vouliagmeni a few days before their 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 and are #sorrynotsorry about it. We swam a lot, ate as much seafood as humanly possible, and it was perfect. Stef did get 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!
Peep a few photos from Greece down below (click the photos to enlarge and browse through)
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 (like driving up the 400) and 2. the scenery ain’t bad, and the 3 hour 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. I don’t think I’ve said wow so much in my life! You guys… mountains. are. CRAZY! Spending our time at home going from city to city, little town to little town, and occasionally up to cottage country, we don’t actually get our share of mountains here in Ontario but spending a few days surrounded by the largest mountains I’ve ever seen, and been completely immersed in it, was such an experience! Last time we were in Europe Ethan & I spent some time in Provence, which also has some large mountain ranges, but tbh 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 (aka the main reason) 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 but both Stef and I enjoy beautiful scenery as opposed to the city on our vacations, and Andorra certainly came through on this! 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 (the second photo below is the view from our AirBnB living room!) 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, how crazy! The riding there was breathtaking and the views at the summit were 360 degrees of open mountains! 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. All in all it was a great day with no crashing and a whole lot of fun!
See more photos from Andorra down below (click the photos to enlarge and browse through)
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).
See more photos from Barcelona down below (click the photos to enlarge and browse through)
Photos are a mix of iPhone 8+, Nikon D800, and a small Olympus 35mm with Portra 400 (developed at Toronto Image Works and scanned on an Epson V800)
What a vacation this was! We were so incredibly busy on the days (hours maybe?) leading up to our departure and when we got back we hit the ground running at full speed, so taking a little mid-season vacation is exactly what we needed to rest and come back refreshed and more ready than ever!
From a photo POV we decided to bring our big professional camera with us but to be honest we spent more time taking photos on our phones and dinky film camera. We spend so much time shooting at home that it feels difficult sometimes to pick up a camera on our off days, on top of our cameras being actual physical nuances. We had a feeling this would happen and really debated on whether or not we should even bring it, and in the end went with “better to have and not need, than not have and need” and truthfully technology nowa days has advanced so much that shooting on our phones is often more than enough! We generally don’t make big prints- just 5x7”s to stick on our fridge or in an album- so it’s all we need!
Have you guys been to any of these places? What do you think of a camera-less vacation? Share with us down below!