I’m sitting here feeling just a little bit exhausted. Susan is taking a nap. I will join her shortly. It’s 4:30 pm Athens time but 8:30 am Minneapolis time. We’re experiencing major jet lag. Our flight left from MSP at 1 pm yesterday, we had a layover for three hours in Montreal and then flew out of Montreal at 7 pm for an overnight transit of 10 hours. We finally touched down in Athens at 11:30 am Saturday morning. Athens is a beautiful city in a beautiful setting. It is framed on three sides by mountains and by the sea on the fourth.
It is a bustling metropolitan area with a population of over 3.5 million people. Our AirBnb is an apartment in the middle of town. We have a view of the Acropolis from our rooftop.
We are literally walking distance from most of the famous historical sites. The streets are narrow and crowded. Today is Saturday so there are a lot of tourists in the streets. The streets are busy and crowded with all manor of vehicles. The sidewalks are very narrow and in general disrepair. We have to pay attention at all times. Cars and motorcycles don’t necessarily stop for pedestrians at crossings. It’s a free-for-all in the streets. Motorcycles sometimes drive on the sidewalk where they can park just about anywhere they want.
There is a flea market in the area today. We walked up the street that leads to the Acropolis and past the flea market. There are lots of vendors on the street selling their wares, lots of jewelry, garments, crafts, buskers and surprisingly, lots and lots of collectible dealers selling all sorts of junk. Lots of open air restaurants. We walked by the ancient Agora market. We walked by Hadrian’s library. There are ruins of Ancient Greece everywhere. We walked along the outer rim at the base of the Acropolis and then worked our way back to the square. Since we hadn’t had much to eat today except yogurt and a croissant on the plane, we grabbed a bite at a restaurant right in Monastiraki Square, in the heart of the action.
The name of the restaurant is Bairaktari. It was recommended by our hosts as a great place to get gyros. The place was packed and insanely busy. We were waited on by the surliest waitress in Europe. She must have been the owner's wife/daughter/niece because she would have been fired for her attitude if she didn’t have connections. She spoke no English so the lack of communication just made her even more disgusted with us. Susan wanted a beer and designated her choice by pointing to the large picture of the beer on the last page of the menu. I managed to order myself a lemonade. When we weren’t ready to order food, she turned in a huff and disappeared. When she returned, she had two beers. After convincing her that we didn’t need both beers, we ordered food. She started drinking the beer and was shocked to discover that it tasted like lemonade. Unbeknownst to her, she had received a shandy, a lemon flavored beer. The food was tasty, we got skewers of pork with tomatoes, red onions and tzatziki sauce on fresh pita. We also got a plate of fired cheese. Both were quite tasty. There was a duo playing traditional Greek music that were amazing. A group of their buddies came in during their gig and sat right in front, clapping and taking pictures. I wondered if it would be long before we were all doing the Greek dance thing and downing shots of ouzo.
We wended our way back to the apartment. We took short, much-needed naps. It’s 7:30 now and very dark. The Acropolis is lit up and looks magical and dominant sitting high up on the hill. For dinner, we decided to eat local and walked the streets of our neighborhood looking for the right place. There was no shortage of places. There must be 30 restaurants within a five block walk of our apartment. They all looked charming, most with outdoor seating. We settled on Cuba Libre. How’s that for authentic? My guess is that they serve a lot of the cocktail with the same name. We sat outside right on the narrow street and the steady stream of people walking by. It was the perfect night, not too hot nor too cold. Susan had a glass of wine and I had a very tasty (and strong) margarita. I had fabulous roasted bass with veggies and Susan had prawns.
We were ready having a delightful, relaxing evening until we were interrupted by a bum who was suddenly at our table leaning over me and shoving a menu in my face. I brushed him aside, glad to have him gone and we went on with our dinner. The waiter brought a free dessert. We paid our bill. When it was time to leave, I stood up and realized that my phone was gone! The bum had made off with my brand new iPhone 14, less than two weeks old. Right before the incident, Susan was mentioning “a weird guy” walking back and forth past our table a few times. Clearly he had spotted my phone. Losing your phone is a drag and will forever color my feelings about Greece, but I was determined not to let it ruin my vacation. It was just our first day of vacation in Greece and no amount of anguish or worrying was going to bring my phone back. The problem was now, what to do next? So for the next two hours we did everything we could to kill the phone service and try to wipe out the data on my phone. That involved getting Katie involved and she spent that time on the phone with AT&T doing what she could. Ultimately we were able to erase my data remotely so now all that’s left is to order a new phone. Sigh.
Having just eaten, we decided to take a walk and headed up the main drag to see what we could see. A huge group of people had congregated in one of the local squares that sat just a few blocks and in full view of the Acropolis. There was drumming and dancing, vendors and lucky for me, a fabulous bakery featuring several versions of my favorite food in the world, baklava. I loaded up and we snapped a couple of pictures of the Acropolis and headed home.
The hooting and hollering from all of the bars and restaurants continued deep into the night and morning. I woke up at 2:15 am and, without checking the time, figured that it was time to get up. So I got out of bed, shaved, put on my clothes and thought about making a pot of coffee. I went out on our terrace that overlooks the street and it was still dark. I had been up for about 15 minutes before I checked my watch and noticed that it was 2:15 am! I could hear large groups of people up our street cheering and yelling from nearby bars. Time to go back to bed.
One other observation on the Greeks: the days are lovely and in the mid to upper 70’s. The nights are cool with the lows in the upper 50’s. It is also quite cool first thing in the morning before the sun comes up. It’s not unusual to see the locals walking about in parkas and thick jackets sometimes well into the daylight hours when Susan and I were down to short sleeves and shorts. Wimps.
Greek words I have learned and actually used:
Yamas = it’s a toast right before you drink like “cheers”
Yassas = hello and goodbye
Karnatera = Good morning