Our planning for the Greek Isles trip started after we finished the Thailand trip in October 2019. We didn’t blog on that trip because Zhaoyang was studying for her CPA license. We went to Bangkok for a week so she could study during the day and then enjoy the food and sights of Bangkok at night. Anyway, after Thailand we wanted to take a trip to China to visit Zhaoyang’s family and we began to think about traveling after her “tax busy season” ended April 15th.
Well, as you all know, the Covid outbreak started in China in January and by March the whole world was shutting down. So traveling anywhere was pretty much off the table. In August 2020 after Zhaoyang had been working from home for six months we thought perhaps she could work-from-home from Asia and started planning for a trip in April of 2021. Unfortunately, as the Covid crisis continued, there were almost no countries that we could visit! I wrote more details about the planning in this post.
Anyway, after vaccines became available and entry restrictions were being relaxed, we settled on Greece as a destination since no testing was required to enter or exit. Also, there were excellent non-stop flights to Denmark, so we decided to stop in Copenhagen for a few days before going to Greece.
I had never been to any of the Greek Islands and so after some research we settled on Mykonos, Santorini and Paros with a stop in Athens. So after Copenhagen, we flew to Athens and then immediately caught a flight to Mykonos. Confirming our research, we found Mykonos to be the party island, Santorini was for couples, and Paros was a traditional Greek location with few tourists.
After Mykonos, we took a ferry to Santorini where we had an awesome AirBnB for five nights overlooking all the white buildings and the famous blue domed churches. We spent four nights in Paros at a nice Airbnb right next to the beach and then flew to Athens, where we spent five nights at a hotel with fabulous views of the Acropolis.
| Place Visited | Dates | Slept There? | |
| 1 | Copenhagen | Oct 18-21, Nov 9-11 | Yes |
| 2 | Mykonos | Oct 21-26 | Yes |
| 3 | Santorini | Oct 26-31 | Yes |
| 4 | Paros | Oct 31 – Nov 4 | Yes |
| 5 | Athens | Nov 4-9 | Yes |
We visited 5 cities on this trip bringing my city “debt” from 19 to 14 cities!