Our visit to Greece always prompted the old saying "it's all Greek to me" in our minds and for the
right reasons. Archana was already in Greece for almost a week for business and I joined her over
the weekend. When I checked in to get my boarding pass, my first impression was that Greek
people are very rude, the Olympic airlines ticket counter personnel in particular. Went through
security check and was ready to fly three hours before the departure time, the plight of flying in
modern times. I saw the keynote lecture by Steve releasing iPad2 and talked to Archana with hope
of meeting soon. Finally, I boarded the aircraft and strangely most of the people, esp. guys, looked
Indian to me. And it was not surprising that air-hostess started talking to me in Greek, I wanted to tell
her ‘it is Greek to me’ but I resisted. I tried to twist and turn to sleep without luck but at least had a
seat with extra leg space. Landed in Greece at 4 am local time and I found that the Greek
immigration officers are most efficient in the world. For people with EU passports, it was a matter of
two seconds to verify the passports and for me, being an Indian citizen it took 10 seconds as he had
to look for my Schengen visa page. So far balanced opinions about Greeks. Went out and realized the
next public transportation bus was after an hour and decided to take a taxi - 35 euro flat in daytime
and 50 euro flat in night time. I wasn’t left with many options. I was aware that local people talk
Greek, but Archana warned me that they talk ‘only’ Greek. When I took the cab, the only thing that
the driver understood was ‘Intercontinental’. I tried to talk with expressions but he said ‘me no
English’ so decided to shut up. Most of the cabs are ‘Skoda’ and ‘Merc’. Reached the hotel in about
half an hour with fantastic infrastructure. Finally got united with Archana after five days. It had been
a year that we got married but this was the first time we separated for more than few hours. Not
trying to be cheesy but it did made me feel how much I loved her. We hung out for sometime and
then went to sleep as I didn't sleep enough and Archana had to go to work.
Next day morning after Archana left for work, I woke up at 9: 30 and got ready to explore Athens. Picked up few maps, had a chat with our concierge regarding vegetarian restaurant and walked out. You can imagine how the conversation must have gone. Started walking in one direction assuming it is going towards city centre. Tried to ask few people to confirm my direction but as soon as I uttered first English word, they were ready to walk away. It was almost like my appearance was giving them false hope of being able to speak in Greek and then can't stand the disappointment. When I hit another hotel I realized I was going in opposite direction and I changed gears.
Saw a lot of things on the way that reminded me of India - small shops, stray dogs, posters with very
Indian looking people, lots of scooters and bikes. One thing I did find striking was most of the
population I came across was old. Now that could be because it was Friday morning and all the
youngsters might be at work. Finally reached Plaka, one of the touristy areas in city centre and checked a few shops. One thing I have realized that lot of souvenir items don't change from countries to countries just the print and symbols on them, magnets, key chains, T-shirts etc. Almost like they are made in the same factory in China for souvenir shops all over the world. Bumped into a cafe (Plaka gate cafe) to eat spinach pie. It was very tasty and surprisingly delicious even though it was not fresh, not bad for 3.5 €
Went across the street to check out the temple of Olympian Zeus which is of course in ruins. One of
the pillars of the temple had fallen down and it distinctly showed that each pillar was made of 8 -10
pieces and not from a single piece - engineering feat.
Headed back towards hotel from a parallel street to check some new stuff. I was waiting for Archana to return from office but unfortunately she got stuck in traffic and took double the time to reach hotel. We checked out around 5ish, tried a dessert from Intercontinental (not so good by the way) and headed to not so glamorous but economical hotel Aristotle’s. Took the Intercontinental hotel shuttle to city center and then a cab to the hotel. We made a mistake and didn't decide on fare in the cab to the hotel and ended up paying about four times the metered pay. Aristotle’s was a good value for what you pay for, decent sized room with a view of a wall but very helpful receptionist. We headed out towards city centre which was at few minutes walking distance. It was good that we didn't know our way and therefore ended up exploring more than what we planned. We came across a shop with very interesting snacks but surprisingly lot of them had meat in it. We also came across a deluge of people doing peaceful protest which had been going on for some time due to the state of Greece economy. They were shouting slogans and had posters but of course they were all Greek to us. We were headed towards the neighborhood of Plaka - famous for shopping and food. Explored the flea market and resisted the temptation to buy anything. While walking on the street it was common to find ancient ruins everywhere, at the bottom of a building, between the streets, below the metro trains and Archana saw ruins through the glass floor of a
restaurant (Moma).
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| Ruins under a restaurant on the way to toilet, found during the construction of restaurant |
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| Ruins Displayed in a metro station found during excavation for Metro |
We also encountered a funny T-shirt which looks something like below
We finally ended up on the touristy foodie street with restaurants and cafe lined up. We ended up
selecting a restaurant called Efharis which accordingly to Archana made me biased due to their
menu-display on Apple iPad. But the food and service was good too. They had a live garden growing
inside the restaurant and it was packed.
We being picky vegetarians ordered a veggie sandwich, some chips and some salad. Salad was good
but was drenched with olive oil, very Mediterranean thing to do. We regretfully didn't finish the
food but were still satisfied. Waiter brought us one complementary chocolate& strawberry dessert
which despite of full stomachs we ate with two spoons :) That was the end of Friday and we took the
taxi home which thankfully was metered honestly and was only 3 €. We had a sound sleep knowing
we had a long day the next morning.
We woke up, got ready and headed towards world famous archaeological site of Acropolis. We went
walking and enjoyed the Greek shops and street in the daytime. We climbed the slope towards
acropolis and rewarded with a grand structure standing tall in the middle of the city commanding
fantastic views of the city. We took a ton of pictures, saw the old theatre, temples, churches,
artefacts and headed down to grab something to eat.
To our surprise we passed through the famous dinning street that we dined the night before. We again searched for where to eat and decided on a Cafe at the end of street called Cafe 82 or adrianou, excellent decor, helpful people and good food. We ordered a sandwich, and Archu ordered a croissant. At last we decided to indulge in their desert menu and I ordered ‘Kaimaki’ - local ice cream made of mastic (gum from trees), milk and sugar. Speciality of mastic is it gives the texture of chewing gum and taste of spice (not hot but strong spice). It was sweet and spicy never had anything like this before, highly recommended! After lunch we headed to find Klafthmonos square where we were supposed to board a bus to Cape Sounion 30 - 40 kms southeast of Athens at the southernmost point of mainland Greece. We found the bus stop and started waiting for apparently orange coloured regional transportation bus. We
imagined a ‘sarkari’ bus. The guy in the store nearby mentioned that it should be coming soon (half
past every hour). There was this luxurious looking bus in front of us and don’t know what made us
tell ourselves that this can’t be the regional transportation bus. And we almost missed the bus as it
was too good for a public transportation bus but the guy from the store ran out and told us to board
the bus. We got on this super luxurious and well maintained bus and started our 1.5 hrs journey to
the Cape and temple of Poseidon. Bus took the coastal route going through the beaches on our right
and beautifully carved coastal route twisting and turning around cliffs and beautiful islands floating
in the sea. The ticket conductor lady was completely decked up for her job, alighted somewhere
midway and started collecting the 6€ to tickets to Cape (ain't quite cheap?). She had the most
organized coin collector and dispenser machine we ever witnessed. Different denomination of coins
had a slot in the device and she could effortlessly insert and remove coins as desired. There were
Many coastal towns nearby and some people got down at some of those villages an most were
visiting the cape. We reached there little after 4 and were feeling cold as it was at an altitude and
open from all sides. We headed towards the top at the temple of Poseidon, got tickets for 4€ and
saw one more magnificent structure half broken like all other attractions in Athens. Located at a very
picturesque place, Archu started wondering what did the king feel like when they are standing at
their magnificent architectures back in the days. We took some pictures, admired the view and ventured through the ends of cliffs to take some beautiful pictures. I feel travelling and taking pictures have become more interesting after Archu came into my life.
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| Temple of Sunion |
We wanted to sit at the cliff but it was too cold and windy much colder than Athens city. We came to the cafe at the base of the small hill where the temple is located and took a seat inside with heaters. One thing I liked about Athens is that the cold weather doesn't stop restaurant owners from offering outdoor seating with very strong outdoor heating pillars. We ordered warm drink and sandwich and started waiting for the sunset which is one of the main attractions on the backdrop of the ancient temple. There were a lot of clouds and therefore we decided to see the sunset from the base partially hidden behind the clouds. Overall a good experience in winter. We waited for the last bus at 7 pm and relived what we saw that evening by discussing with each other. Walking all day outside in cold had made both of us tired and we decided to walk to the hotel from the omnibus square where the bus dropped us. We didn't realize that when we will get hungry late in the evening we will have to resort to delivered pizza for dinner of which Archu ate none. Anyway, we both agreed that we had productively seen main attractions of our interest in Athens in a day.
Contrast about the last day, Sunday, was that Archu had to catch an earlier flight in the afternoon
and mine was in the evening, thanks to Archu's corporate rules about flights and my desire to make
good use of the vacation time. We decided to go the local planetarium not in any tourist's must see list. We got the 10:30 tickets to the "world's largest digital dome theatre" to see a great adventure,
show about human space exploration. The cab driver who dropped us to the planetarium told us he
generally brings his kids there. And he was right, while we were waiting we saw a gush of school kids
and their parents come in for the Sunday field trip to the planetarium. I was feeling lucky to have
interests aligned with Archu’s. She’s is not too keen on museums and equally excited about dome
planetarium show. We thoroughly enjoyed the vividly depicted shows projected all over our heads in
a 360 degree panorama. In this sense Archu was like kids, you have to make science more interesting
by feeding all the senses to make it more interesting. Though it was time to separate for half day
before being united again in London, we were happy that our time was spent very well in Athens.
We had already asked the cab driver to come back to take Archu to the airport and drop me on the
way to the nearby Edem beach. I strolled around the beach in the winter low season. Weather was
much better than the previous day. I saw couple of old folks gathered for socializing some board
games on the beach. One of the stark observations in my time in Athens has been averse age of the
population. Most people I see are in their higher thirties, forties or even fifties and hardly see
teenagers and people in twenties. This might explain one of the reasons for recession in the country
where on the other end countries like India has got a huge population under 25. So, coming back to
the walk on the beach, I touched the water and it was not too cold but I did not want to venture
further than that. Most beach restaurants were closed which must be keeping tourist busy in the high
summer seasons. I took the tram from the Edem beach station and headed towards city centre,
Syntagma. Very interesting way of seeing the city streets through tram's windows which runs in the
middle of the main street going from south to north. I alighted at Syntagma and headed towards
Ermou street, prime shopping area which eventually leads to Monstriki, the place where locals and
tourist gather to have some fun, a lot is vendors selling everything from jewelleries to clothes and
antiques and statues depicting ancient Greek art. I walked around the streets and settled down at
Moma where Archu recommended to have dinner but specifically to check out the way to the
restroom. After eating the suction balls and bread with dip, I headed towards the bathroom to see
what all the fuss was about. I was pleasantly surprised by the glass floored approach to the restroom
showing ancient ruins underneath, I was glad Archu emphasized on me checking out this place. I
took couple of pictures and went back to my table fascinated. Greeks have figured out a way to
balance the heritage of ancient ruins and modern needs of the society of excavation and
constructions. Even the metro underground project unearthed a lot of ancient ruins which are
preserved and displayed at many metro stations. I thoroughly enjoyed eating suction (zucchini) balls
even though it was served with sour cream which according to me made for very unusual dipping
sauce for a fried bhajiya-like dish for an Indian like me. The weather was getting better and better
and many people were enjoying outdoor dining without the need of any space heaters. I went back
to the square and sat alongside many others who were relaxing and enjoying people watching and
local group of musicians playing happy tunes. First I bought some raw chestnuts and stress munching
on it, interesting experience as this was firs time eating raw chestnut. I then, for a change, got ‘halva’
flavored ice-cream which was also very interesting. Apparently halva is a famous dessert in the
Mediterranean, similar to in India with same name.
The day at the square was as busy as it could be with people enjoying good weather after few days
of cold and cloudy weather. I finally decided to be little safe and head toward the airport through
the metro line very close to the square. I took the 8€ special ticket for the airport and headed
towards very modern metro lines. Had to change once and experienced few delays but nothing
more than what I have experienced in London over the weekends. Reached the airport and had an
opposite experience to my arrival for immigration clearing. But this time the reason could be the
complicated cases being dealt with for people in front of me as when my turn at the counter came it look
only a minute. Went through security check, found an electric socket to charge the iPhone for the
journey and efficiently used the free one hour wifi to download Steve job's ipad2 keynote and
economist's latest edition to keep myself productive and entertained in the four hour flight. As with
the previous flight, the experience with olympic airlines crew has been pleasant and humorous as
they keep thinking I am Greek. It was an easy flight with good food and entertaining iPhone. Landed
and had an inverse phenomenon going on at the London immigration counters. There were much
more EU citizens than non-EU that had arrived and proved boon to me. I managed to get through
the queue in less than two minutes. In the past, we have waited for up to 2 hours in the line and
irony is that even Americans are not spared. Was back in the familiar London underground train and
got reunited with my lovely wife after almost 11 hours. Overall it wasn't all Greek to me :)
See ya until we hit the jungles of South Africa in April, desperately looking forward to it!!
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