"Located at the southernmost tip of mainland Greece (and of the European continent east of Spain), I found the Mani Peninsula to feel like the end of the road, where the rustic charm of Greece is most apparent: a timeless region of rustic villages and untrampled beaches, with empty, ghostly hill towns clinging, barnacle-like, onto distant ridges still fortified against centuries-old threats. A day's drive around this desolate, rural peninsula delivers dramatic mountain scenery and bloody history wrapped in a hardscrabble, evocative package, making hedonism on the Mani coast feel all the more hedonistic." - RICKSTEVES