Athens

Athens

3 January 2013

My flight arrived in Athens right on time, just a few minutes after 8:00 AM.  I was toying with the idea of taking the easy route and hiring a taxi to the hotel, but I decided to give the metro a try, partly because I had to kill some time before getting to the hotel given the early time of day.  I did manage to find my way using public transit, though I got off at the wrong station and a very helpful young hostess at one of the restaurants in Monostiraki actually went to far as to write down the directions for me to finish the journey.  Fortunately for me, I am not one of those men who is too proud to ask for directions!

I arrived at the hotel slightly after 10:00 AM, and to my pleasant surprise they gave me my room.  I dropped off the luggage and headed out the door!

The hotel was in a great location, right next to the Gates of the Olympian god Zeus. I could easily see the Acropolis, but I actually decided to postpone that visit until Friday (4 January) since I was very tired and wanted to see it fresh.  Instead, I walked around some of the shops in the area between the hotel and the Acropolis, and I found it to be very quaint, clean, pleasant, in many ways reminiscent of Trastevere in Rome.  After awhile, I stumbled across one of the Hop-on-Hop-off buses, so I decided to give it a try and get an overview of the town.  I wound up in one of the downtown squares, and was able to get a SIM card for my smartphone—10 Euros for 300 minutes and 500 megs of data, thanks to a very helpful worker in the “Public” store, more or less an electronics superstore.  In the square across the way, there was a very large Christmas celebration going on, with beautiful Christmas music blaring around.

I should point out the above was on a Thursday about 1:00 PM in the afternoon, well over a week after Christmas, but all throughout Athens they are still celebrating Christmas, with decorated trees and Christmas songs as well as festivities all over.  Bless these people, they’re still celebrating it!

A general comment on Athens is that it is very clean, in good repair, and everything such as public transit is working quite well.  Given the economic "crisis" here, I was afraid there would be strikes and that garbage would be piling up in the streets, but quite the contrary this is a fun, vibrant city!  If this is bankruptcy, we should all give it a try; this place makes Seattle look poor.  There are a few distraught areas, but they are limited, and the only general lament I have is that graffiti is rampant.  The graffiti is odd given how clean the city is otherwise, and I cannot tell what it is all about.  This is really a shock for me, but the city is in no way destitute or impoverished.

The neighborhoods are small and can be walked easily, and they change very dramatically, abruptly.  Some parts are like Trastevere in Rome, some are like the shopping district in Milan.  Stores of all types are grouped together:  Supermarkets (yes, I found one as I always like to do!), butchers, pet stores, hardware stores, clothing stores, and so on; whatever you like, there is going to be an appropriate store not far away.

I snacked on some of the local foods (such as a sausage wrapped in a pita—delicious!), and I had the absolute best pork chop dinner of my life in one of the downtown restaurants.  The food here is incredible, with nothing I have yet found to be unpalatable; what a change from the falafels!!

I went to bed about 8:00 PM as I was exhausted from the 2:00 AM wakeup call and over eight hours of walking the town.