Olive groves surround the seaside city of Kalamata, situated on the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece. Photo © Pilotf18 | Dreamstime.com

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The Greek island of Corfu has hidden beaches, hiking trails and a historic Old Town, now a UNESCO Heritage Site. Photo by Greg Montani/Pixabay

Less than an hour after my wife, Mary, and I arrived in Athens, we hit the road again, jet lag aside. We hopped aboard a bus for a twisty, three-hour ride to Kalamata.

For my wife, seeing the renowned olive-growing region in the southern Peloponnese, between the Gulf of Messenia and the foothills of the Taygetos Mountains, had been on her bucket list for years.

Her late mother, misty-eyed and bursting with energy, would mesmerize us with tales about her hometown of Kalamata — how, as a young woman, she would walk an hour each way to school. This journey resonated with me, too. Both of us wanted to see the village where the nervous wartime bride set sail to a new world.

We arrived in October, hoping to time our 150-mile excursion to the upcoming olive harvest. Greece, with as many as 170 million olive trees, ranks third in global olive production (after Spain and Italy).

For years, I’d heard about the unique olive harvest in Kalamata and the surrounding region. These characteristic plump, purple, almond-shaped beauties hold power over me whenever I spot them at Whole Foods. For the most part, Kalamata farmers still harvest them in the ancient way, by beating branches with sticks until the olives freefall onto a tarpaulin on rocky soil.

The harvest season typically runs from late November until late December, even into January, depending on the weather. While I had aimed for our trip to coincide with reaping, it turned out we had shown up about two to three weeks too early.

A young hotel manager broke the news to us. “The harvest times vary. You never know,” he said, standing ramrod straight like a Spartan warrior.

The olive industry, he went on, “has always been a part of my life here in Kalamata. My family has 43 trees. We have never bought olive oil from a store.”

For the most part, he told us, olive growers are small, family-run enterprises. It’s not uncommon, though, for a farmer with thousands of trees to merge with another large grower.

After all, the act of getting olives off the tree “is one of the hardest things you can do,” he said. “You spend eight hours under the sun, inside the trees.”

Greece’s Fourth of July

Although missing the harvest was a disappointment, we realized that we were just in time for a grand celebration: Oxi Day.

Growing up in Maryland, I had heard snatches of conversation from Greek immigrants about the significance of October 28. Based on the carnival atmosphere in the city, I had a moment of clarity: This holiday is tantamount to the Fourth of July.

On October 28, 1940, during World War II, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini ordered Greece to relinquish control of portions of its land. Failure to do so would result in an attack by the Axis powers.

Tiny and neutral as Greece was, however, it adamantly refused. That action set the stage for what would become a national holiday known as Oxi — “no” in Greek — Day.

To celebrate, schools, offices, and many small businesses across the country shut down. There’s free admission to museums and archeological sites, including the Acropolis.

On this crisp fall morning, my wife and I decided walk the three miles downtown to watch the parade, to be swept up in the glow.

Flapping from every direction were blue-and-white Greek flags, including those on weatherbeaten fishing boats chugging through the calm, turquoise water toward the harbor. Of course, restaurants and cafés, hoping to convert a slice of unfettered patriotism into euros, were open.

On the way, we came across a neighborhood eatery. How could we resist an early lunch?

“Excuse me,” I said to our server, trying to salvage the Greek I learned as a child. “Can you please bring butter?”

The server, a woman in her 70s, cast a pitying look in my direction. “No butter,” came her terse reply. “Here, we only use olive oil on bread.”

Embarrassed, I remembered that this was Kalamata. No wonder she reacted the way she did.

In the far corner of the unadorned dining room, a worker sat snapping green beans for a signature stew called fasolakia. Every few minutes, the wait staff, balancing trays of moussaka, pastitsio and avgolemono soup, would bump against each other in the narrow aisles.

Flavoring the scene were the unfiltered sounds floating from the kitchen. Though they sounded like arguments, these squabbles had the lifespan of a dinner plate smashed at a Greek wedding: over and out. My mind jumped back to a T-shirt my sister bought me decades ago that read, “I’m Not Yelling. I’m Greek. This is How We Talk.”

While awaiting our food, we chatted with another customer, who, it turned out, had lived in Kalamata his whole life.

“I tell everyone if they really want to take a vacation, we have the best beaches, and we have the best Mediterranean food,” he said. “It’s like a small city. Not a lot of cars. Not a lot of people.  Almost no crime.”

On to Corfu

While most discussions about visiting Greece inevitably pivot to the seductive Aegean islands, the Peloponnese offers more than olive groves.

Buoyed by the loveliness of Kalamata, we decided to remain on the western side of the country to see Corfu.

Unlike the parched Aegean landscape, Corfu is lush and green, reminiscent of Italy. Its dominant architectural influence comes from its years as a Venetian stronghold. Other conquerors included the Byzantines, French and British. Given the islanders’ emphasis on building fortifications, the Turks never touched Corfu, unlike most of Greece.

When we arrived on a rainy morning, we immediately set out for Corfu’s Old Town, named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. Its cobblestone alleys were dotted with a variety of tavernas, or cafés. Bakeries displayed kumquat and sykomaida, a beloved fig cake and favorite among islanders. Several Greek Orthodox churches stood practically within the shadows of one another.

As raindrops slid down the canopy outside a shop that sold coffee and kumquats, the owner spoke to us. “When people think of Greek islands,” he said, “they think of Mykonos, Santorini, Crete.” Forming a clockwise sweep with his thick arm, he added, “But they are too busy. We need tourists’ money. But we also like the peace.”

Back to Athens

With our time in Greece’s west at an end, we headed back up to Athens. We stayed in a sweet gem of a hotel in the historic center where the staff learned our names. The front desk served trays overflowing with confections called loukoumi.

With the Parthenon beckoning from on high, we had to see it up close. Since it was Monday morning, we assumed the crowd would be thin. We thought wrong.

Humanity crossing every conceivable demographic joined us in scaling level upon level of slippery rocks. Some trekkers wondered aloud where the elevator was located. Negatives aside, reaching the summit was well worth the pain involved.

Later, our son, Andrew, joined us in Athens, and we all walked to the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. Inside, we marveled at its many pieces of ancient Greek art. Its most famous work is a Roman copy of a statue of Athena that used to stand in the Acropolis.

One of our favorite displays wasn’t art at all: A device known as the Antikythera mechanism is an ancient analog computer used to calculate time and solar eclipses. While I gawked at this tool that didn’t run on bandwidth, my son checked out the statues, like the Jockey of Artemision, a stunning bronze statue of a galloping horse and child rider.

Greek values

Most of the people we met in Greece shared an outspokenness that we loved. For instance, one cab driver admitted that he wasn’t a big fan of the Parthenon: “I understand seeing it once, but twice or three times? It’s just a pile of rocks.”

Later, we chatted with a local woman about ways Greece could bolster its economy beyond tourism, noting that many visitors come away with glowing reports about the country’s easier, less complicated lifestyle.

I asked her what the government’s plans were to make life better in the birthplace of western civilization.

“There is no plan,’’ she asserted. “Here, people throw up their hands and say, ‘Opa! Let’s go out for lunch!’”

Sounds like the right plan to me.