There’s no better place in the world to be in the autumn – perhaps including the Adirondacks in upstate New York or northern Japan – than New England for crisp air and fall foliage, particularly Vermont and New Hampshire.
Greece has a ‘shoulder season’ in the spring and fall, for luckier tourists or those who can take the time off in May or late September and October when the crowds are fewer – now relatively so given the country’s crazy popularity.
It’s warm without the oven-like heat of the peak summer period when you’d be better off in the most desired areas like Santorini or Mykonos going to Times Square or Hong Kong because what you’ll see is someone’s elbow in your face.
Greece is not at its best in the summer, despite the obvious lure of its more charming and even majestic islands, the Peloponnesian coast, the Halkidiki peninsula, inland places like Ioannina and the Meteora, because it’s too hot, too expensive, and too crowded.
Even in September the most popular places are often unbearable because a push to keep people coming year round to bring in money has largely succeeded and in 2024 Greece could see more than 31-33 million people, three times the country’s population.
Successive governments have been blinded by greed and all they can see is money, especially from rich tourists and luxury resorts taking over public beaches in violation of the Constitution, and overtourism ruining the reason why people come.
Santorini and Mykonos are now Las Vegas and Disneyland-like versions of what Americans think they are, the enamor evaporated by the contempt of familiarity, and luxury resorts are for the wealthy idle and newly-rich influencers who can’t wait to post selfishies on TikTok, Instagram, and social media.
The languid Greece is long gone in most places – but not all – and the country is faced with the dilemma of wanting and needing tourists’ money but trying to find a balance so that there’s not so many that there’s no reason for more to keep coming.
If you know, or can find, the right spot, then Greece in September is so sweet that the flavor of it lingers like a rich, red wine, as the great American folk singer Chris Smither put it about the melancholy of life passing by too quickly in ‘Leave the Light On’.
As I write this, we’ve just finished a swim – the only ones on the beach – and then a lunch of horiatiki and cold Greek beer – Fix and Pils Hellas – on the second floor balcony of a modest, unassuming rental apartment 30 feet from the water – on the cheap.
It’s on the island of Evia in the little village of Agiocampos – year round population around 100 – but which has a ferry boat connection to the mainland, and while there’s plenty enough people in the summer, by mid-September they’re mostly gone.
So it was that on the first night we walked about 100 meters along a beach so quiet you could almost hear the fish swimming under the surface, to a decidedly not luxury restaurant almost in the water where we were the only customers, and sure glad of it.
It was a regular spot for us, and the owner, who didn’t bother to bring a menu, just coming out with the usual order of perfectly fried squid and horiatiki and cold Eza beer for a meal along the sea without being elbow to elbow in the tourist traps and resorts.
It was a full moon night, the beams bouncing off the placid water steps from the table, a couple for some reason using a metal detector walking along the beach hunting for lost coins in the sand, a couple of children playing outside the restaurant, but no one else.
It was a sublimely exquisite meal, the squid cooked to perfection, the peppers in the salad snapping like Granny Smith apples in October in Washington State, a slab of feta as big as a rectangular saucer and thick as half a ream of paper, soaked in olive oil and oregano.
To each his own, of course, and if you’ve got it, flaunt it as the saying goes, and you won’t find the uber rich or celebrities enjoying this spot because they’d rather go to places like The One and Only Aesthesis, another luxury resort that has taken over a beach in Athens.
You can have a reservation there at this time of the year for only 1,700 euros ($1,892) a night and rub shoulders with the fellow wealthy, but the sea there isn’t as cool or clear or clean as where we were, and could stay a month for the same price.
At night here, there’s no need for air conditioning and the cool air comes in off the sea directly into the bedroom, accompanied by the sound of the light waves lapping the shore that are better in real life than sea sounds on YouTube to help you sleep.
It’s a lot better than the murmurs of greedy little men and mobsters who’ve taken over Mykonos, and if the government wants tourists to go to places where they aren’t instead of where they are, it should start with spots like this and others around Greece that are still untouched and make you feel like you’re in what Greece was, not what it’s not anymore.
