On one hand, modern Greece is a picturesque nation on the periphery of Europe, distinguished for its excellent food, lively music, poverty, corruption and economic troubles.

On the other hand, ancient Greece is the still-echoing explosion of genius that overshadows all Western civilization. After two thousand years of darkness and mediocrity, Michelangelo began copying ancient Greek sculpture and started the Renaissance.

How does an up-and-coming civilization compete with a small group of people that in a very short period invented democracy and nearly all the arts and sciences we still study? There’s no competition – best to just pay homage.  

Most folks just climb up the hill of red marble known as the Acropolis, gape at the Parthenon, maybe check out the museum and a few more ruins, gobble some gyros and head to the islands.

Warning: if you’re like me and study the ground for ancient pottery fragments as you climb up the Acropolis, you will bang your head on a large olive tree. Hard. And if you get lucky and find a piece, the guards will yell at you until you drop it – they are touchy about the scattered shards of their national heritage.

Thira (aka Santorini) is the poster child of Greek islands. Stunning and popular, expensive and well-stocked with excellent food and wine, Thira’s islands are the fragments of an ancient volcano rim. There is convincing evidence that when it exploded around 1600 BC, it destroyed the great Minoan civilization on Crete, and probably started the legend of Atlantis. 

Greece is all about fishing villages. And goats. It’s worth a visit to see lesser-known, more remote islands too, if possible. A different side of Greece. We chose quiet Folegandros based on convenience and the ferry schedules. There were about six tourists on the whole island in May. If you saw the movie “Mama Mia” you got a good view of a Greek island. 

Greece oozes charm. The people are friendly.  

Cobblestone lanes, flowers everywhere, dazzling white adobe-style homes with bright blue shutters and trim. The whole country looks like their flag – blue and white. The tourist ads for Greece don’t lie.  

They’re pretty cold and more or less fished out, but the waters of the eastern Mediterranean really are an amazing color.

Because of Greece’s membership in the Euro, everything costs about twice what it should, but that may be changing soon. When it does, I’d happily go back and explore some more.