This Christmas, while northern Europe was snowed under and other poor travelers were sleeping on their luggage in London and Paris airports, the Peloponnesus welcomed my family of six with warmth, color, and oranges.

Being not only December but also a major holiday, we thought we were traveling off-season, and curtailed our expectations. All we wanted was a change of scenery and some family time, and we planned many lazy days in our apartments.

But Greece was anything but closed for the winter. Here, bougainvillea spilled over balconies, we discarded layer after layer until our shoulders felt the sunshine, we drove through orange groves burgeoning with ripeness.

I associate juicy oranges only with summer, and I couldn't wait to eat one. On the way from the airport to Nafplio, our Untours escort Alex (who saved us not only from driving while jetlagged, but also from a transit strike that could have stranded us in Athens) stopped at a roadside stand. We handed €5 out the window, for which the farmer filled a bag to bursting with oranges, rearranging the orbs to fit in one more, then another and another. We groaned with the burden of having to finish them within a week, but three days later we were at the farmers' market for more.

Being farmers' market shoppers at home, we despaired missing Nafplio's weekly market because of the holiday, but Christmas eve found us in the middle of a glorious half-mile spread of produce, chestnuts, golden-yolked eggs, sausages, figs, Nemean wine, olive oil so virgin it was green - and only €4 per liter from the man who harvested and pressed the olives! Greece may have its austerity measures, but the market was a cornucopia, making for the most sumptuous Christmas meals ever mustered.

Even on Christmas day, shop and restaurant doors were thrown open, mostly for the sake of Athenians likewise making their holiday in Nafplio. Shunning the shopping for the sea, we spent the afternoon ambling the walk beside the Aegean, where people braver than we stripped to their skivvies for a swim.

These scenes are why, true to expectation, we spent a lot of time in town. Day trips through spectacular mountains to Epidaurus and Monemvasia plunged us into ancient and living history, but those two trips satisfied our wanderlust and my curiosity about foreign driving (which was never old hat, but never stressful). It was always good to get home to Nafplio.

The only true hint that we were traveling "off-season" was the

lack of crowds. While we didn't have the Athenian Acropolis to ourselves like Epidaurus (where the entrance turnstiles, out of use for the season, were overgrown with vines), we were never jostled, confused, or overwhelmed by throngs of people. We never waited in line to read a sign or see a view. And we never worried about the kids wandering on their own.

Back in the Philadelphia winter, we're still thriving on the Greek sunshine, and we feel like the luckiest people in the world.

To see some truly beautiful photos of Kate's trip, visit her photo album on the Untours Cafe.