Steam, a warm waterfall, and a lot of toast
Greece, for us, was always going to be about the hot baths. A few days after the gorge and the red-water springs under Mount Olympus, we were more than ready for some properly hot water. Only four days earlier I’d jumped into a freezing rock pool on Thasos (that story’s here). This time we wanted the exact opposite.
28 January: pulling in through the steam
We woke up near Nea Anchialos, drove south past Lamia, and pulled in at Thermopylae around half past ten. Yes, that Thermopylae — the 300 and all. But what we’d really come for was the water.
You see it before you’ve even parked. Steam rising off the ground, drifting across the road, hanging in the trees. In the cool January air the whole place looks like it’s quietly on fire.
The hot springs come out of the hillside and run down a little stream into a chain of natural pools — milky blue-green, with steam coming straight off the top.
Swimsuits on. Nobody needed convincing.
The best spot is the warm waterfall. Hot water pours over a ledge of rock into a pool below, and you just sit under it and let it hammer your shoulders. Mom and our daughter claimed it first, obviously.
The baby had a nap in the camper and woke up all smiles.
And the camper was parked right there, a few steps from the water. Soak, warm up, back to the van, snack, soak again. That was pretty much the whole afternoon. Chilly air, super-hot water, and nobody in any hurry. Like a slice of Greek paradise tucked away in the hills, as we said in our Maps review.
We slept right beside the springs, with the steam still drifting past the windows in the dark.
29 January: a bike loop, a float, and a picnic on the rocks
Morning was cool and bright. Before breakfast had properly settled we took the e-bikes out for a loop of about ten kilometres, rolling past the pools with steam rising beside the path.
Back at the camper it was my turn in the water. The pool by our spot was crystal clear and warm all the way through, and I just floated there and looked at the sky for a while.
Lunch was a picnic on the warm rocks: toast, cucumber, cherry tomatoes and a big bowl to share. Simple. Perfect.
Late afternoon we did a quick supply run into Lamia and then came straight back for a second night. It’s hard to leave a place where the bath is always running.
Two days of hot water, one bike ride, and a lot of toast. Next we took the mountain road toward Delphi, pottered along the coast, and found a second, very different set of hot springs on Evia — that’s all in our Athens and Peloponnese post.
