Athena

I didn’t know what to expect from Athens because I heard many different reviews. Some people thought the city a great visit while others thought it a waste of time, but my theory is how can you travel somewhere so old and not visit?



Our trip started off with an adventure as our cab driver barely spoke English so we communicated with various hand gestures and whatever common words we could muster. So it was a ton of fun. He whistled, grunted and managed to drive a good 50 kms faster than he should have been…which for the most part was a bit exciting in the ‘I could die at the next turn’ kind of way, but really only freaked us out as he barrelled toward the toll for the toll road. He meant to drive around the speed bumps but was driving a bit too fast, but he pulled us out of a head on collision with a barrier at the very last second. Needless to say, we were happy when we got to hotel amalia conveniently located a few blocks from the Plaka. So instead of writing a minute by minute replay of Athens, I’ll just give you the highlights and if you want me to expand on them, just let me know.

Gina and I had some room ‘issues’ as the front desk assigned us to a smoking room at hotel amalia. So, gina ran down to see if we could get our room changed and she hiked all the way back up to the 4th floor and said we had a room on the third floor to move to. We got to that room, opened the door….and saw that people were already staying in that room. So back down went gina to get our third room…an upgrade to the 5th floor and it was empty (yay)! Poor gina though…she had a work out before we even got started.

Our first night for dinner was in Plaka at the Ydopia restaurant. It was an amazing first meal with our table in the middle of a gorgeous garden, and one that many restaurants failed to live up to for the remainder of the trip. Luckily we could go back there for one last meal as well. Dinner started the tradition of ordering some great cold mezes and sharing some hot plates….so we had greek salad (natch) and some of the best tomatoes I have ever tasted, along with gemista (stuffed tomatoes), slouvaki, saganaki (terrible, I’m afraid), and a motherload of wine and beer. i need to learn to make those gemista…so yummy (stuffed with rice, feta, mint, onions and pine nuts). We thought to try a restaurant at the foot of the acropolis but sacrificed great food at the risk of a great view. however, we were able to save the night at a bar where we ate some amazing crepes (chocolate and banana, and chocolate with biscuit). I need to get a great greek cookbook!

We were impressed with the bevies on this trip, namely the excellent greek beer (mythos and alpha) as well as their wines. Who knew they upped their game when it came to creating wines. They were fantastic. Not to mention the Frappes. Mmmmmm.

We visited many historical sites including the acropolis (where I fell and scraped my knee), the agora(where I got my first of many nasty bites), hadrian’s library, the Olympic stadium, and we even caved and took the hop on/hop off bus so we could check out where we should go next. We saw universities, libraries, fish meat and veggie markets and in the 35+ heat, got a killer tan on top of the bus.

The shopping was pretty incredible and I got to visit a sephora (yay). I miss sephora. The boys did well with new clothes and gina decided to buy a new ring in a beautiful greek design. Our favourite part of the ring purchase included some interesting mathematics done on behalf of the jewelry seller. She saw the price tag (650 euro) grabbed her calculator and pressed 6-5-0-+-+-=-%-clear-5-3-0 and then said to gina ‘I can discount that to €530’. Amazing math skills no? I did well in purchasing a small cast of Nike aka the Winged Victory of Samothrace. This is one of my most favourite statues in the Louvre (Denon wing) and was more than thrilled to get one for my new flat in London.

The wild dogs (and those there on vacay) were crazy! Viciously barking at each other and ready to go at it at any moment’s notice. Martin wanted to pet them and all I could think of was RABIES/CUJO! And the cicadas were so loud! Although we decided to call them shakiras because she’s much more beautiful than cicadas and we didn’t want to picture what they looked like. Blah! So ugly!!! I am not a bug fan.

We left Athens early to catch the Hellenic Seaways High Speed 5 to Mykonos. The taxi ride to the port was interesting. Apparently they don’t think that 4 people and 4 luggage don’t take much space so there was some creative bungie cording to make sure we got there all in once piece (luggage included). But we made it, and with a base tan from 3 days of 30+ degree weather, we were ready to do absolutely nothing for 6 days.