Eternal return: Columns from a millennia-old house stand just above the landing dock in the archaeological park at Delos, Greece. Photo / Giovanna Dell'Orto
Eternal return: Columns from a millennia-old house stand just above the landing dock in the archaeological park at Delos, Greece. Photo / Giovanna Dell'Orto
For travelers heading to Europe, summer vacations just got a whole lot easier.
Italy and Greece relaxed some COVID-19 restrictions on Sunday before Europe's peak summer tourist season, in a sign that life was increasingly returning to normal.
Greece's civil aviation authority announced that it was lifting all COVID-19 rules for international and domestic flights except for the wearing of face masks during flights and at airports. Previously, air travelers were required to show proof of vaccination, a negative test or a recent recovery from the disease.
As of Sunday, visitors to Italy no longer have to fill out the EU passenger locator form, a complicated online ordeal required at airport check-in.
Italy also did away with the health pass that had been required to enter restaurants, cinemas, gyms and other venues. The green pass, which showed proof of vaccination, recovery from the virus or a recent negative test, is still required to access hospitals and nursing homes.
Some indoor mask mandates in Italy also ended, including inside supermarkets, workplaces and stores. Masks are still required on public transport, in cinemas and in all health care facilities and nursing homes.
"It was needed," said Claudio Civitelli, a Rome resident having his morning coffee at a bar near the Trevi Fountain. Until Sunday, patrons had to wear a mask to enter bars and restaurants, though they could remove them to eat and drink. "We have waited more than two years."
At a nearby table, Andrea Bichler, an Italian tourist from Trentino Alto-Adige, sat with friends, all without masks.
"It's much better," Bichler said. "Let's say it's a return to life, a free life."
In Greece, where tourism accounts for about 20% of its GNP, enforcing the rules had already fallen off prior to Sunday. On the tourist island of Mykonos, revellers flooded beaches, bars and restaurant the previous weekend for the Orthodox Easter holiday. Some owners said business was the best they had seen in years and expected that to continue for the long May Day weekend.
Donkeys at dusk from the port up to the caldera-rim village of Oia, Santorini. Photo / Giovanna Dell'Orto
Vaccination certificates in Greece were abolished, not permanently, but from May 1 to August 31 and it will be determined in August whether to bring them back. Also suspended were restrictions on the number of customers in indoor spaces. But masks are still required indoors and in vehicles in Greece, and experts recommend using them outdoors in crowded situations like concerts.
Business owners said many unvaccinated people were among those enjoying the end of COVID-19 restrictions.
"We saw again old customers whom we hadn't seen since November," when vaccination certificates first became mandatory, Michalis Epitropidis, general secretary of the association of restaurant, cafe and bar owners in Thessaloniki, told the Associated Press. "By punishing the unvaccinated, the state was punishing us."
Thessaloniki, Greece's second-largest city, was a hotbed of militant vaccine denialism and protests against COVID-19 restrictions.
Like Italy, Greece saw tourism revenues plunge in 2020 and only partially rebound in 2021. Greece is now hoping for a record tourism year in 2022 — and so does neighboring Albania, where restrictions were also lifted Sunday.
Public health officials say masks still remain highly recommended in Italy for all indoor activities, and private companies can still require them.
Given that the virus is still circulating, "we should keep up the vaccine campaign, including boosters, and keep up behavior inspired by prudence: wearing masks indoors or in crowded places or wherever there's a risk of contagion," said Dr. Giovanni Rezza, in charge of prevention at the health ministry.
In a small bay flanked by thyme-covered hills and a medieval castle-topped village, I floated in perfect solitude on the shimmering Aegean Sea.
Last summer was my fifth year traveling to different Greek islands like far-flung Astypalea. During the pandemic, the islands' crystalline waters, white-and-blue villages, sweeping vistas and locals' genuine welcome were just the escape I needed.
The absence last summer of the usual mass tourism at the most popular locations, like Santorini, where before coronavirus I had to elbow my way to take a sunset picture by the celebrated windmills even on a mid-January evening, also offered a chance to rethink such bucket-list travel.
As travel restrictions have eased since the peak of the pandemic, the Greek islands' wide-open blue beckons this spring and summer — with the opportunity to focus less on Instagrammable snapshots and more on chatting with a taverna owner over a cold glass of tsipouro, the potent Greek spirit, while waiting for take-out octopus.
Two archipelagos in the southern Aegean Sea, the Cyclades and the Dodecanese, alone have dozens of islands, each offering a unique experience. From least traveled to most jet-setting, these are my favorite four:
Fantastically carved dovecots dot the countryside among stonewalled terraces in Tinos island. Photo / Giovanna Dell'Orto
ASTYPALEA, pirates' treasure
As the ferry reached the middle point of this butterfly-shaped island, I felt a momentary pang -- had I really just traveled 10 hours from Athens, the country's monument-filled capital and air/ferry travel hub, for barren mountains and a solitary dolphin playing in the waves?
Doubt turned into enchantment at first sight of the chora, or main town — a blue church dome topping a medieval castle topping a white village lined by windmills and cascading down a rocky outcrop to the sea.
Over two long weekends, I never tired of looking at that 13th-century castle, whether floodlit at night when the warm air smelled of aromatic herbs, or standing guard in the brilliant sunshine as I swam in coves around it, in the most multi-hued waters I've seen outside of a South Pacific lagoon.
After walking within the castle's remains, where villagers once took shelter from pirates, I stopped to admire the white-crenellated Portaitissa church.
An elderly woman passing by gave me a handful of freshly plucked yellow plumeria blossoms she was carrying. How tropical flowers can grow in such a stark, wind-swept landscape is just another bit of its magic.
Bougainvillea flourishes among the caldera rim villages on the island of Santorini. Photo/ Giovanna Dell'Orto
DELOS, divine birthplace
The mystical pull of these ancient islands is strongest on Delos, an islet a short boat ride from party-central Mykonos. Ancient Greeks considered Delos holy as the birthplace of Apollo.
His sanctuary, and the temples and mansions built around it from the 9th to the 1st century BC, comprise today's archaeological park. I spent a full day wandering among the powerful colonnades, realistic sculptures, risqué fertility symbols, and intricate mosaics portraying frolicking dolphins and a tiger-riding deity.
Nearby Tinos basks in more recent sacredness. Its chora houses a revered sanctuary to the Virgin Mary, to which last summer masked pilgrims climbed on their knees for almost 1 km (3,200 feet) from the port. A profusion of smaller churches dots the countryside among stonewalled terraces and dovecotes built like fantastically carved towers.
From the tallest bell tower to the humblest home, Tinian villages are richly decorated in marble from local quarries. Pyrgos houses the marble craft museum, artists' workshops, and a marble-paved central square with tiny coffee tables around a soaring plane tree.
I loved best driving the mountain backroads at dusk, when the only traffic was a wayward goat, the only lights the blue silhouettes of church crosses.
The blue lights of infinity pools and jacuzzis in Oia, Santorini. Photo / Giovanna Dell'Orto
SANTORINI, vertiginous luxe
Blue lights also dapple Santorini's villages – but they are the infinity pools and Jacuzzis of luxurious hotels carved into the rim of the island volcano that exploded into the sea 3,600 years ago.
The 10K hike between the main town of Fira and Oia, the ritziest village perched on the caldera created in the explosion, crosses black-and-red fields of lava. On white pumice grow tightly coiled vines of Assyrtiko, the native grape that family wineries like Gavalas turn into unique, intense whites.
The eruption also buried the prehistoric town of Akrotiri, whose vividly coloured frescoes are on view at Fira's museum, and whose site vies for archaeological star power with Ancient Thira, perched on a tall hill above the best beaches.
My last afternoon in the islands, I tear myself away from those black sands and navy-blue waters at Perivolos beach to go watch the Oia sunset. Couples in matching evening whites and sunburned tourists rush along boutique-lined alleyways to the western rim, filling every inch of intersecting terraces.
Just to one side is the tiny cistern-shaped chapel with a white-and-blue bell tower featured in countless engagement shots and Instagram feeds. Village kids have reclaimed it as a goal area for a soccer match.
A loud argument erupts when the ball soars past the bell; for a moment, it is framed by the Aegean Sea, where the light is dissolving from orange into rose.
It could be the perfect cruise-ship brochure image — but now, it's simply, refreshingly Greek.
