Greece

Without the masses of tourists and just a short (1,5 hour) ferry ride away from Santorini, Anafi is a great small island to kick back and relax for a few days. The hilltop town of Hora feels like it hasn’t changed all that much in the last 20 years and the local people still live there, work there and sit in front of their houses and on the squares.
By vehicle you can get to the other end of the island in less than a half hour and on foot it takes a couple. There is a small monastery and a hiking trail to the top of the enormous rock where you find beautiful views and another small monastery.
The beaches on Anafi are not exceptional but nice with beautiful calm waters. Although it's not officially allowed, many people camp out on some of the beaches.
All in all, it's a great island to escape the tourism madness of Santorini for a couple of days!

With the same name as the island, Lefkada is a beautiful quaint Greek town. It is not as touristy as some other parts of Lefkada island and has a nice and relaxed feel to it. Old ladies sit in front of their houses in the narrow alleys and old men wander about. What makes Lefkada town very unique is the way the people have built their houses in order to protect them from earthquakes. The houses are either entirely, or sometimes only the top floors, covered in metal plates, which they then have painted in nice colours as is typical for Southern European towns.
The town also has a nice waterfront with bars and restaurants and a large marina with sail boats.

The Peloponnese peninsula and, more specifically, the center called Arcadia is a beautiful hiking area. The area is dotted with small stone villages where nowadays only a few old people still live. It is a typical Greek landscape with plenty of olive trees. There are several day hikes you can do. One day hike starts at the renovated 17th century Filosofou monastery, which you can visit at the start of this hike. You have to have legs and arms covered to enter but these clothes are locally provided (and make a good picture). The hike then takes you through the Lousios gorge, following and criss-crossing the Lousios river. The end of the hike is near the archaeologic site of Roman Gortys.

If you want to cool down on a hot Peloponnese summer day you can head to the sea, ... or maybe better head for the Neda Gorge.
The landscape is spectacular and the great thing to do here is river trekking. You can do it organized where you wear wetsuits and you hike, clamber the rocks and swim in the pools for several hours. Alternatively, you can just hike through the last part of the river trek where near the end you can hike and swim through a bat-filled cave and up to some small waterfalls. A short trail at the end of the gorge leads up to another but even more idyllic waterfall for some more swimming and relaxing in and by the cool water.

Not to be confused with Mt. Olympus, Olympia is the birth place of the Olympic games.
Much is left to the imagination, as it is with many archeological sites but this one is definitely worth it if you like the Olympic games and you would like to see and "feel" where it all started. Several of the temples are in ruins but there is a great museum that exhibits beautifully restored statues (especially the one of Hermes) and enormous pediments from the temple of Zeus.
Maybe the best part of the visit to Olympia is to go to the "stadium" of which the entrance is still there - and race your friends on the 120 m long sprint track!

Once, Santorini must have been a beautiful little island where the locals painted their houses white and their doors, windows and the domes of their churches blue. Greece used this pretty image to advertise the country and this has attracted an enormous amount of tourists to this island. You will not find many locals here anymore but, still, it is definitely worth a visit. Especially coming off season, you can get some pretty decent deals to stay in beautiful "cave houses" and we must admit that the town of Oia is still very picturesque. Although sometimes you will need some patience to get through the "traffic jammed" pedestrian alleys and deal with the hundreds of tourists trying to find the best location to watch the sunset (and applaud when the sun has set), you can discover some more relaxing places and good areas to swim. Especially the small harbour of Ammoudi is a great place to swim and has wonderful waterside restaurants with great seafood.
So get your Euros out to enjoy this pretty island but preferably go off season to avoid some of the crowds.

The architect Iktinos who designed the Parthenon did more than just that. On the Peloponnese peninsula, stands the by-him-designed temple of Apollo Epicurius, also called the temple of Bassae (Vasses). It is one of the best kept temples of its time and has some quite unique features. You can only walk around the temple but unfortunately not enter the central area. Inside used to be some nice friezes, which as so many ancient Greek art has been taken to London in the early 19th century.
For decades, this temple has been undergoing restoration works and in order to protect it from the elements it has been covered by a large tent, which prohibits a full-sized view. It looks like it will still be covered for quite a while. Many of the columns need to be entirely removed in order fix the fundaments of the temple.
The remote location of this temple still makes this World Heritage listed site also a great place to visit.

For the water sports fan, this is one of the places to be in Greece. Vassiliki is especially known for its windsurfing. During most of the day there isn’t much more than a gentle breeze, but in the afternoons the wind picks up for about 3 hours. This is because of the layout of the mountains where the hot wind is sucked down, which creates a nice steady and strong wind at one side of the bay of Vassiliki.
There are plenty of other water sports to do such as sailing, sea kayaking to beautiful sandy beaches (where you can stay overnight) and there are nice dive sites around. Also mountain biking is a good option if you can stand the heat on land or come in spring or fall.