Do you enjoy visiting places with rich, distinctive history and more sights than you can handle? Check. How about going hiking on cool lush mountain slopes and a couple of hours later skinny dipping in the refreshing Aegean waters on a sumptuous sandy beach? Check. Or maybe you are simply bored of all the ueber-crowded, kind-of-dull touristic places and you would like to explore traditional villages without sacrificing the comfort of a great touristic infrastructure? Check again? Then Central Greece might just be what you are looking for!
Conveniently sandwiched between the Peloponnese and Northern Greece, Greece’s central region has two important cards up its sleeve: accessibility and a mind-boggling variety. Athens, the capital, is a major transportation hub and home of the country's biggest airport so chances are you will be landing here. If the words “Parthenon”, “Olympus” or “Delphi” ring a bell, you’ve come to the right place for central Greece’s sights are, in one word, overwhelming! The stunning, honey-colored Parthenon temple stands tall on Athens' Acropolis and is only one of the many archaeological sites dotting Greece's capital. Take some time to explore the restless, animated patchwork of magnificent ancient ruins, Byzantine churches, neoclassical mansions, flat-roofed nondescript concrete buildings that Athens is, preferably by taking a grand tour of the numerous museums, cafes, souvlaki joints, bars and restaurants that are always buzzing lively. Around the corner you will also find the ancient site of Delphi, once believed to be the navel of the world and which today prevails as perhaps the most bewitching place in Greece. And if you head a bit further to the north, your encounters will be thrilling to say the least: the imposing mount Olympos with its peak lost in the clouds, where mighty Zeus and the other ancient gods were plotting humanity’s fate, the vertiginous cliffs and promontories of the wondrously frescoed Meteora monasteries, the unique combination of stone-built villages lost in the woods and drop dead gorgeous beaches of mount Pelion or bucolic Karpenisi, one of the most picturesque mountain villages are some of the region's must-see sites. And the best part is that the nature surrounding all these wonderful places is equally impressive and varied. Central Greece is the country’s most mountainous region and the landscape smoothly alternates between hills with pines, oaks, poplars and thickly wooded green slopes and fast-moving streams separated by flat lands, lakes and plateaus, and fantastic beaches. Oh and the history of the region? Epic! It is here that most of the ancient great battles that affected the course of history were fought - at the sites of Thermopylae, Marathon, Plataies and Chaironia, where few stood against many.
To sum it all up: contemporary Central Greece offers abundant natural beauty, an almost inexhaustible number of historic reference points and highly evolved touristic facilities. Both in winter and summertime you will have a fantastic time here. No doubt despite the fierce competition contemporary Central Greece manages to stand out of the crowd.
