Corfu is a beautiful green island in the Mediterranean, as you already know if you are avid readers of my blog. The island itself is pretty big, almost 600 Km², which make Corfu the 7th biggest island of the whole Greece. The total coast surface is 217 km, so you can imagine there is plenty of great beaches all around the island to choose from: Corfu comprises over 120 beaches!
I didn’t have time to explore them all, although I wish I had. But, as per my custom, I asked the locals which beaches were unmissable: here you can find my very own list of the 3 nudist beaches not to miss if you happen to visit Corfu.
Nudist Beaches of Corfu – Issos Beach
Issos is an idyllic beach on the southwest coast of Corfu; that part of the island is dominated by golden sandy beaches and shallow turquoise waters. And of course Issos has these features plus something more: it is by far one of the best nudist beaches of the entire island!
By Sergio Scardia – Full Story at the Scruffy Italian Traveler
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Periodically we’ll feature one of our properties here to let our readers know about some great gay friendly places to stay:
Travel at the speed of you. Leave the tour buses behind. With The Blue Walk discover new places, have authentic experiences, and reconnect with a simpler way of moving through life. Enjoy leisurely, small-group, walking vacations along beautiful coastlines, village squares, and open spaces of Europe.
Less about history or architecture, our passion is sharing the sights and surroundings of select destinations. Live large on the French Riviera, tour Northern Italy via rail, island hop through Greece.
Discover the meditative quality of walking by large, lovely bodies of water, the expansiveness of taking in the canopy of blue sky. Take time on your own to explore an out of the way gem or sit quietly over a coastal outcrop. It’s your vacation. We create opportunities for unique experiences that touch the heart and mind to be remembered long after returning home.
No hiking boots or backpacks required, just lovely walking trails, coastal meandering, and urban strolling. Based in 4 and 5-star hotels, travel with a friendly group of like-minded people who soon become friends. Our vacations, perfect for couples, multi-generational, friends, and solo-travelers alike, are designed with lots of options to serve a variety of activity levels.
Gay Athens life is lively and interesting. And the Boys, oh the Boys… If you are looking for a place full of Scruffy, Hunky, Beefy types… oh well don’t look any further! Athens is the TOP destination for your next holidays (Or at least long weekend if you happen to live in Europe!).
Most of the life in Gay Athens happen in Gazi area. Gazi takes its name from an old gas depot that stands in the area: no worry, the gas depot is not in use anymore since 1984. Since then, the area has become more and more gentrified, and nowadays it is a trendy area, plenty of restaurants, bars and clubs targeting the young crowds, and the gay crowd obviously.
To get to Gazi is easy: if you are staying in the centre of Athens, you can definitely walk to Gazi Square from anywhere, as its position is pretty central. Another option is to get there through underground: Kerameikos station has its exit right in the middle of the square! And it is around this square that most of the life of Gay Athens happen! Be aware: as in the Southern European tradition, the nightlife in Gay Athens starts very late! So, don’t rush! Have a siesta, a late dinner, and get ready to enjoy Athens until very late!
Usually Athens is the starting point of many trips around the Aegean sea and its beautiful islands: not many visitors decide to give a go to a tour around the city. Wrong choice: the Greek capital is definitely worthy to go around and enjoy!
A visit to Athens should start with a visit to the Acropolis: the heart of the millennial history of the city! It is also the best point to enjoy an amazing view over the metropolis! Only from the Acropolis and its Parthenon you can realize the majesty of the Greek Capital, a really huge city surrounded by both the sea and the mountains!
Despite being such a big city, the center of Athens is definitely walk-able! Soon after visiting the Acropolis my suggestion is to get the underground and start a walking tour of the center of the Greek Capital from Omonia Square. Walking along Panepistimiou road, you will find a few of the main sights of the city: the Huge Adrian’ s National Library of Athens, the beautiful Academy of Athens, the National History Museum.
Susan Wright for The New York Times[/caption]
On the island of Lesbos, the slow and rustic rhythms of Greek life rule. Sheep block traffic as they amble across mountain roads, bells clanking. At a seaside tavern, diners nibble on freshly caught calamari under the generous boughs of an old mulberry tree.
This is a routine Sunday afternoon at Myrivilis’ Mulberry tavern in Skala Sikaminias, a fishing village of about 100 residents on the northern tip of Lesbos, Greece’s third-largest island. It’s a sharp contrast from last autumn, when the restaurant’s calamari fisherman was busy hauling sea-soaked asylum seekers to dry land, and waiters turned tables into makeshift hospital beds for shipwrecked survivors treated for hypothermia.
Since last year, more than a million Middle Eastern migrants (mostly Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis) fleeing war and uncertain futures have risked their lives crossing the Aegean Sea from Turkey on flimsy boats to reach Greece. More than 1,100 people drowned on the way. Nearly 60 percent of migrants landed on Lesbos, thrusting a quiet vacation island into newspaper headlines.
When trying to define the ultimate gay summer holiday, one place often springs to mind: the world-known destination of Mykonos! Even though civil partnerships for same-sex couples has only recently become legal in Greece, this small Mediterranean country and friendly, vibrant and fabulous Cycladic gem is proud to be one of the global landmarks of gay travel.
But why is Mykonos so popular with gay travelers? Over the past decades, Mykonos has developed a distinctive gay-friendly attitude, that cannot be compared with any other destination.
The island manages to preserve many of its traditional elements, however the culture of local people has grown to become naturally friendly to any kind of diversity — and of course, to gay and lesbian travelers from all over the world, who choose Mykonos for their summer holidays.
I visit Mykonos every year in June or July for the guaranteed sun, the clear cool water and for the smell of fresh chargrilled fish that seems to hover in the warm air all over the island in the summer. Hot bright days linger into balmy evenings and the party atmosphere is evident on every beach. There is enough going on all over the island from April through to October to satisfy even the hardest party person – and that’s without even venturing into the town to find the restaurants, clubs and bars in the maze of labyrinthine alleys and streets.
Over the years I’ve watched some of the beaches go through various stages of trend and style. All of them have had their high and low times when it comes to being on-trend, something very important on a hedonistic Greek island.
When I first discovered the restaurant and bar on a crest at Super Paradise Beach it was the place to be seen, buzzing with energy and colour and fun. The following year it was so out of fashion it was empty of a single person. It all depended on the different owners and various name changes and management styles.
Harmodios and Aristogeiton with last fall’s Oscar Wilde Tours group[/caption]
As I am leading a tour of gay history in Greece this spring (
Harmodios and Aristogeiton, statue base, Agora Museum, Athens[/caption]
So…who was Harmodios? Well, he was the Athenian George Washington, or half of George Washington. He was the younger half of a typical Greek male-male lover-beloved couple, and he and his lover together assassinated the tyrant of Athens’ brother in 514 BC. So the Athenians (accurately or not) regarded them as the founders of the democracy. And they were hugely important in Athenian mythology. They were worshiped with blood sacrifice at their tomb. Their descendants had the right to eat free with the city council in perpetuity. And they were constantly praised in literature and art. In particular, they were the first mortal men honored with a public monument in the city of Athens. Indeed, so important was their monument that when it was carried off by the invading Persians in 490 BC, the Athenians put up a second one.
And this is a piece of its base. The monument is long gone, like most Greek bronzes—probably melted down in the middle Ages to make weapons. But we know what it looked like, because copies of it were popular in ancient Rome. There is a fairly complete marble copy in Italy, in the Naples archaeological museum, which I have used as the main photo for this post, with last year’s Oscar Wilde Tours Gay Italy group posed in front of it. So there they are, two of Greece’s favorite gay heroes. It’s pretty amazing that a piece of the original monument has survived to tell us about gay history in Greece!
Zeus and Ganymede, roof ornament from Olympia[/caption]
Discovery of Antinous at Delphi[/caption]
This one must, however, have been particularly important, because, as you can see in the antique photo, he was rediscovered in 1894, still upright under the debris the temple. Since his broken arms among other things suggest that the statue was knocked down by Christians or Slavic invaders at the end of Antiquity, this suggests that somebody cared so much about Antinous that they put the statue back up *after* the temple’s destruction. That is worship!
And what a good statue to worship! As always, Antinous has his fashion model looks: pouty lips, a distant stare, and his tousled but perfect hair. But somehow this is the most handsome of all the many statues of him, and a fitting monument to gay history in Greece—a culture in which the military heroes and gods were often what we would call gay!
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Antinous at Delphi[/caption]
Want to find out more? Join us for our Gay History in Greece trip, May 20-29! 
Gay holidays in Greece can mean a lot of things. Long nights in the amazing gay bars of Athens, sunbathing at Elia Beach in Mykonos (one of the most famous gay beaches in the world), romantic honeymoons on alternative islands, gastronomic experiences and adventurous walks in some of the most beautiful and breathtaking landscapes of the Mediterranean. But Greece has something even more important to offer to gay travelers: a distinctive and unique gay scene and mentality, which is different to every other country around the world.
In this guide, we will help you discover some classic information about gay travel in Greece while also revealing a few hidden secrets that will upgrade your trip into a fascinating vacation.