Our trip to Greece was not typical. We have a need to experience as much as possible in as little amount of time as possible. Unfortunately, do to travel schedules, our time in Kefalonia was much too short. We immediately left for Zakynthos when we arrived, and didn’t return until late that night. Our stay was very memorable, despite the time constraints.

We arrived back onto the island with no transportation to our hotel, but we were luckily able to share a cab with some locals and eventually made it to Oskar’s Studios around 11pm. The restaurant was basically cleared out, but the owner’s wife and son were waiting for us. He immediately welcomed us with a full to-the-brim glass of Kefalonian wine, complimentary, of course. He sat and talked with us about our trip and gave us some advice on how to get around the island. Shortly after talking with them about our plans, we checked out our room (with an awesome ocean view) and I proceeded to put myself in a bad mood by thinking that I lost my glasses. (Sorry again, Kim).

We woke up in time for breakfast at the hotel restaurant which was a FANTASTIC omelet cooked and served by Oskar himself. He was extremely kind, and invited us to dancing night that evening, but we were heading off to Crete in the evening and had to pass. Our original plan was to take a bus from Lassi to Sami to see Melissani Cave. However, that option was not going to be doable in order to make it back for our flight. We decided to rent a car, which proved harder than expected. There are a lot of rental companies but many of them do not do one day rentals, or they require an international drivers license. We ended up going with a shady moped rental place, but were forced to pay for a three day rental for a total of 4 hours.

This was the only time that I really felt constrained by not having cell service. We had some very basic maps, but nothing extensive, and we got lost in Argostoli pretty soon after leaving. We eventually found the road toward Sami and chugged along. I loved driving the moped, but it was probably terrifying for Kim, who had absolutely no control, and only a helmet in the event of a crash. It was painfully slow going uphill, but downhill was quite the rush. Goats everywhere. It took us around 45 minutes to get there (about half the time coming back, not getting lost).

Melissani Cave is one of the places that you will see on travel blogs a lot. It’s a beautiful hole in the ground, with vibrant blue water that flows out to meet the sea. It’s such a picturesque place, that we couldn’t help but be excited. And that hype was not lived up to. Because it’s a highly photographed place and shared everywhere on the internet, it only exists to make money. We arrived at the same time as a tour bus, and had no idea what this was going to be like, but we were herded like cattle down a small tunnel to the bottom where the water is. From there, everyone is loaded up onto 3 or 4 small boats while a guy paddles you around the cave. It’s still beautiful, but it’s the least romantic setting ever. We tried to take pictures from above, like what you see frequently online, but they’ve fenced everything off. It wasn’t terribly expensive, but adding in the fact that we had to rent a moped just to get there made it extremely disappointing. Had this been in Norway, there would be no fences, no fees, and people would be jumping off the top into the cave.

We left the cave less than exited, but headed back to Lassi to relax in a more private setting. Just down from our hotel was a small beach that we stopped at. It wasn’t crowded, the water was clear and there were some sea creatures to keep us company. We saw a live sea star, plenty of anemones, and a tiny little flat fish. If we had more time, we probably would have checked out Myrtos, which is the most popular beach on the island, located just north of Sami. As the day wore on, we dropped off the moped and caught a cab from the hotel to the airport in anticipation of hiking the Samarian Gorge.