“So what do you want to do in Greece?” someone asks.
“Swim,” I respond.
Have you swum in the Greek sea? The one that glimmers like a sapphire jewel and embraces you gently, like your mom holding you after a long journey. I float on my back for hours. Was it always this easy to float, or is it somehow easier here? I don’t need to move a muscle. I swim out deep, and still see the bottom. I look down at my legs moving in circles, the green nail polish on my toenails sparkling in the clear water.
I dive down and pretend I am a mermaid, moving gracefully, my golden hair following me in slow motion. I think to myself that I was meant to swim in the Greek sea. That my life wouldn’t have been complete if I hadn’t. My arms push me forward, my limbs glide effortlessly, the water kissing my skin.
After, I lay in the sun for ten minutes and then find shade—under a rock, an olive tree, an umbrella. I have to be careful here; the Mediterranean shade burns me more than the Pacific West Coast sun. In minutes, the sun dries me, leaving white crystals of salt on my skin. I sigh, perfectly content in that in-between moment of being neither dry nor wet, hot nor cold. The air smells like sea and sand—soft, not all-consuming like the sea back home.
I get out my book and lie on my stomach. It’s Olga’s. A droplet of water lands on the page. I freeze. She’s made me a paper cover so I don’t ruin it, but try as I might, I can never keep my books as pristine as hers.
Corfu, Greece. Where my Greek journey began. My childhood best friend’s wedding.
What a thing to experience. What a thing to make you look up at the stars and wonder where the time went. Weren’t we just yesterday sprinting through forests, climbing trees, making Mamma Mia dance routines? Whispering late at night about who and when we would marry, what our jobs would be, what our grown-up selves would look like?
It’s funny how similar our starts were, and how different our lives are now. She is married to a wonderful guy, living in Vancouver, working as a full-time engineer, planning to have kids in the next few years. And I am… wondering the Mediterranean with a too-heavy backpack and bangs that need a trim, having no idea where I’ll be next week, let alone six months.
I’m not saying one of us has it more figured out (maybe a little). It just makes me smile, because it makes all the sense in the world what we’re both doing right now. But oh, how the tears fell down my face when I saw her looking with the truest love into the eyes of someone who loves her the same. Fitting, that my first friend’s wedding was the wedding of one of my first friends in this life.
After the wedding, I went to an island called Paxos with the best people in the world, Brynn and Fynn. The couple of the century. They’ve been together since they were 13 (I was even there for their first date, hehehe).
Paxos felt like a breath of peace, a place so beautiful I could hardly believe it existed. We took a ferry from Corfu, then finally found a taxi from one of the five numbers posted on telephone poles across the island. Eventually someone picked us up and drove us through the narrow streets to Loggos, a tiny seaside town.
The highlight was renting a little boat and circling the island. You know when you see something so beautiful, so unreal, that words and even thoughts completely evade you? All you can do is witness. That’s what we experienced when turned the corner and were met with towering limestone cliffs that arched and danced as if they were chiselled and carved by the most talented craftsman alive. They were cathedrals. So jawdropping I felt goosebumps all over my skin. And the water. THE WATER!! A powder-blue oasis, the clearest I’ve ever seen, the most insane to dive into.
After a few blissful hours, they dropped me at the port where I caught a boat to the mainland. Waving goodbye, I thought: my life is pretty dang cool. I get to run around the world meeting people I love. Goodbyes and hellos—each one teaching me what it means to be alive.
From there, Athens. Olga—my friend from studying in the Netherlands—picked me up at the bus terminal and drove me to her family’s summer home. I stayed with her for three weeks. She took my hand and led me through her Greece—its people, food, and rhythms.
Her mom, Mary, is a wonderful cook who spoiled us with vegetarian Greek dishes every day: gemista, fasolakia, revithada, Greek salad, and moussaka. Days of swimming and reading, nights of long walks and long talks. Olga and I have this way of reading each other’s minds. Honestly, it’s a little scary.
In Athens, we watched movies in open-air cinemas, visited bookstores, walked through crumbling ruins, gazed at the Acropolis, and peeked into the cave where Socrates spent his final hours. It’s the opposite of any Canadian city I know, and I loved it. I was reminded of how many human steps have walked these worn sidewalks since I kept slipping and almost dying every other step. At one point, my sunglasses were somehow thrown off my face, and as I went to retrieve them from the street, I slipped, and just then a taxi rounded the corner and had to slam on its brakes to not hit me. Oops!! Olga didn’t let go of my arm after that.
The last ten days hold a special gravity for me. The islands of the Aegean Sea.
On Sifnos, the sand sparkled. I rode on the back of a motorcycle I shouldn’t have been on, I hitchhiked for the first time, and made friends with locals at our campsite. I listened to the most beautiful traditional Greek music and watched the moon rise from the sea in a sky of pastel pinks and blues. There wasn’t a boring moment. And ten minutes before leaving, disaster struck: my wallet was gone. ID, cards, a couple of hundred euros—everything. AWESOME! My heart sank into my stomach, and Olga immediately read my face and knew. Our new friends called everywhere we’d been, but time was up. We had a boat to catch.
So, we waved goodbye to Sifnos—and my wallet (it was never found).
On the next island, Kimolos, Olga’s best friend, Vasiliki, welcomed us to a sweet little bed and breakfast. The island was quiet in September, a tourist town slipping into winter sleep. Old men sat at corners sipping coffee, women in long dresses peered from porches. I wandered narrow cobbled streets, whitewashed houses with blue and green doors. Olga told me how sad it feels when these islands grow ghostlike off-season, existing only for tourists.
Tourism came up a lot. It’s impossible to ignore the effects on streets, prices, and atmosphere. I asked a waitress once what she thought. She didn’t hesitate:
“It’s ruining Greece.”
I often feel like I live in constant conflict. How we choose to live—and the morals we follow—are constantly questioned, both by others and, hopefully, by ourselves. Morals, after all, are in many ways socially constructed. They’re shaped by our families, our cultures, our religions, our politics, and our experiences. That doesn’t make them meaningless—it makes them contextual. Which means questioning them isn’t just okay; it’s necessary. So when it comes to tourism, I don’t believe the real question is “Is it good or bad?” I think the better questions are: Why are you travelling? How are you travelling? Those questions matter far more. Because something feels increasingly off. There’s a growing disconnect between why people go to a place and what that place actually is. A place holds so much. It’s a living, breathing culture—people who speak a language shaped by centuries, who carry traditions layered deep within their worldview, who walk through streets lined with trees and flowers and sounds and flavours you’ve never known. But for many, none of that matters. The destination becomes little more than a temporary escape—a place to drink, to spend, to tick off a list of “authentic experiences” and post them online (guilty). And in some places, you can feel that disregard. You can feel the disrespect. These were once some of the most beautiful and unique places on Earth—and something essential is slipping away. Now, I know how this sounds. I’m aware that when I speak about tourism this way, I’m walking a very fine line. I don’t want to come across as if I have the only “right” way to travel, as if everyone else is doing it wrong. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying I’m conflicted—because I know I am part of the problem, too. It makes me question everything. Why do I live this life of coming and going? Am I living wrong? Am I gathering these new experiences and languages and cultures like tokens to my ‘experience’ box? But then I come back to this: making sweeping, black-and-white declarations like “travelling is bad” is like saying “life is bad.” Between birth and death, we have life. And life can be lived in countless ways, all of them ending in the same place. And yet, we don’t anchor meaning to death—we find it in how we live, day by day. So yes, I’m conflicted. Yes, there are contradictions. But maybe that’s part of being alive—trying to move through this world with awareness, even when there are no easy answers.
On our last night on Kimolos, Olga and I climbed a mountain. We shouted to hear an echo, but there was none. Silence hung heavy, as if the island had absorbed all the sound.
As I watched Greece recede from my view, I blew her a kiss filled with love and gratitude.
Greek people mirror their sea: deep, emotional, nostalgic, melancholic. Anchored by family and tradition. Greece is a neighbour handing us grapes, then sitting beside us, urging, “Perissotero! More, more!”. Greece is picking figs, biting into the jam-like sweetness still warm from the sun. Greece is Olga, dancing along to the music of her childhood. Greece is poetry and souvlaki and golden sunlight. The language is a tittering song. The air smells like jasmine and basil. The strings of the Bouzouki caress the still night air. Words I don’t need to understand to feel. The full moon listens alongside the rest. Red wine is refilled into my little glass. Trails of white towns washed in a landscape of Mediterranean brown and green. Olive trees line the mountains sporadically. Their gnarled trunks watch us with their ancient faces carved from the wind and salt. There’s a longing here. For something no one can ever quite grasp. A different time. A lost love. Secrets held close to hearts. Confessions stored in the hearts of the mountains.
And so my time in Greece comes to an end. One less wallet, many more freckles, and a feeling deep in my heart, that I will be back.