Athens – Meet Me At The Forum

“A great city is not to be confounded with a populous one.”

-Aristotle

Go-Date – Day 5

Lesson Learned: In Athens, graffiti and tagging is a common youth pastime. They seem to deface every building not watched 24 hours a day, no matter what except 1) antiquities 2) marble surfaces (most of the time) 3) government buildings, so lots of buildings are adorned with street art. We found that you should not consider it a slum or bad neighborhood if buildings have been “tagged”, but only if they are not repainted within a reasonable time (you define reasonable, not me). You can find pristine villas with spray paint all over the front and sides of the street level elevation. I’m sure it drives the owners crazy. When looking on Google Street graffiti doesn’t mean its a bad neighborhood.

Lesson Learned 2: Love the souvlaki and gyro. Pita with chicken, lamb, or beef plus yogurt or tzatziki, maybe French fries, lettuce, tomatoes, and sometimes onions. Good, filling, cheap food that’s available almost everywhere. If you are on a dining budget (as we are) they always bail you out when you’ve over-indulged. Typically, costs are around $2.75 to $3.00 (2.50 Euros) so you can eat cheap in the neighborhood.

 Lesson Learned 3: Get a Mi-Fi from a local carrier like Vodaphone. Why? U.S. international plans are terribly expensive. With you own personal Internet you can wi-fi call home, use your GPS easily, receive email, text and calls on your own American smart phone, make local calls (through the wi-fi to the international dialing plan) – which might have a fee (25 cents a minute through T-Mobile). So, I got 5 gig for $12.00, the device costs $55.00, you can add on more data for $12.00, and when you go to a new country get a Sim chip from the local Vodaphone carrier in the same Mi-Fi and you are good to go in your new location. We thought about just getting a sim chip for one of our phones, but we thought trying this option might work out better. Trial in progress.

Being that we’ll be in Greece for 2 months, Egypt for 1 month, and the same for Israel and Jordan its going to save us a lot of time and money from using U. S. international plans. Besides, it fits into your shirt pocket and you can use a VPN (not included) which makes your messages very secure. The big deal to me, is I can use the hardware in other countries over, and over, and over. Well, at least that’s the plan. [if you smart asses have a better idea please let me know, because after extensive research I never found a better scheme.] Thanks

Lesson Learned (special): Don’t flush the toilet paper. No matter what. The Greeks just drop their dirty business in a plastic-lined trash can next to the toilet. You’ll find signs instructing you about this in every toilet. I can assure you, this is a difficult process to follow. You don’t realize how ingrained the wipe and flush habit is in an average American. Its even a little repulsive to some. I assure you, I don’t want to be the one to have to call the BNB host to report that I’ve clogged her toilet with bath tissue. So, when in Rome err, or Greece……

Regrets – Greek historical sites are not free to re-enter, even if you have a multi-day pass. This is a lesson that cost us $23 bucks at the Acropolis. Once you go through a gate (even if it was only 20 minutes before), stay behind the gate for as long as you need. Even if part of an exhibit lies outside the entrance (like the front gate to the Odeum of Herods amphitheater) “Thou shall not pass!” Well, at least not without paying a brand new entrance fee. Did I say that all Greeks have been so very friendly? Well, not this dick, Nick. But, we claimed to be 65, so we cheated them out of 10 Euros apiece on the do-over. I guess this should be a lesson learned, but I’m cheap and I hate spending $23 for nothing. From now on, I just aged a year for all exhibits (its half price).

Athens, the city

Have no doubts, Athens is a great city. After recovering from our long, long trip we began exploring the city. Mostly in an area called the Plaka, but also Syntagma (site of the protest mentioned in the previous post, and home of the Greek Parliament, foreign country consulates, and government buildings), and the Monastriaki neighborhoods. I guess I’d compare these areas to Old Town Alexandria, Capitol Hill and Georgetown. Not exactly the same, but you get some of the flavor with historic sites scattered about.

Syntagma is definitely more the business district. Once our first Monday got into full swing (this town does not wake up early) the streets were clogged, sidewalks were New York City crowded, there were high-rise office buildings, and people had places to go and things to do, unlike us. We just enjoyed observing the pulse of the city and the shops, café’s and businesses scattered about areas that most tourists don’t seek out. Throughout these areas the streets were narrow, construction everywhere, vehicle parking was haphazard, motor cycles and vespas buzzing around pedestrians, and the ever-present archeological sites mixed in between modern offices and apartment buildings. Oh, and large stores (including grocery stores) are closed on Sundays due to some crazy Blue Law, so do your shopping on Saturday. Small mini-markets, tourist shops, and other mom & pop businesses are open 7 days a week if they choose.

We also spent about two hours here setting up local wi-fi access with Vodaphone that we could take with us from country to country. For less than $75 we’ll have data and a mi-fi which we can change out the Sim chip in each country we visit so that we can have our GPS available, reach the Internet and do Wi-Fi calls. We have T-Mobile, so text messages are free in most countries, but if they aren’t the Vodaphone mi-fi has us covered. Calling locally still incurs international dialing charges since we are using our American phones. Sorry, that was a bit technical, but believe me, when you are here you realize just how much we’ve come to depend on these stupid smart phones and data access.

Nobody carries maps. Just finding one outside of a Tourist Information Center can be difficult. Plus, standing on a corner looking confused just invites touts to approach you to direct you to their business associates dying to earn your money for something you can do on your own if you can get your bearings straight. I will mention again, everyone here is great, tolerant, and helpful. Never have we felt threatened, even when the touts are somewhat aggressive trying to sell you something or get you inside a shop or café. Usually, if a Greek approaches you and starts a conversation they want to sell you something.

We love this city.

Acropolis

After crashing hard the first night and sleeping until after 10 AM local time we had a fabulous breakfast at the Airotel Parthenon. Its not a fancy place, but clean, and right in the center of the Plaka where you want to stay. Its one block from the Metro, one block from the Acropolis Museum, two blocks from the Air BNB  we’d rented, three blocks from the Acropolis, and 50 meters from the amazing center of this delightful city. Have I mentioned how walkable this town is and how easy it is to find your way back to your hotel? You can see that damn rock with the Parthenon on it from everywhere. Once you know where your quarters are oriented to the Acropolis you just wander around until you recognize a familiar landmark. If not, your handy GPS will direct you back to your safe zone. See, I told you data access was important. Just wait until you are searching for something and your phone tells you that you just went offline.

It doesn’t rain much in Greece, so of course when we needed to trek from the hotel to our condo it was more like Houston in April than Athens. After walking 3 blocks dragging a roller bag and duffel (each weighing over 25 pounds) and getting soaked, despite wearing hard shell jackets we had no idea where we were or where we were going thanks to the rain and flaky Internet service making our Google Map useless. We were about to call an Uber when Ellen asked a Fedex delivery guy where the address of our condo was and we found out we’d walked right past it a block back. So much for instinctive sense of directions and intrepid exploration skills. Wet and confused we found the right doorway and our host was there to greet us and show us around. Mission accomplished.

The Acropolis……everything you’ve ever heard is true and more. It really is amazing. I won’t describe our experience other than posting a few pictures. I will say that our condo’s balcony looked out to the Acropolis, and its breath taking when all lit up at night. Be sure your accommodations have a view. I pity those we saw with balconies facing the wrong direction with a view of the apartment building across the street instead of one of the most recognizable monuments known in the world. The following pictures barely even scratch the surface of how amazing this historic site is. We were so happy we were here during the low season. There were lots of people here in late January (the weather was like April in Alexandria, VA) I can imagine the throngs of tourist jammed on that rock in July or August.

Surrounding sites included Hadrian’s Arch, Hadrian’s Library, Temple of Olympian Zeus, Ancient Agora, Roman Agora, Kerameikos, Aristotle’s School, etc. There are too many to list, and definitely too many to see in a single trip to Athens unless you plan to spend months. Which I’ve heard worse ideas. We were 5 days in when I started this post, and we have 3 days more until we leave. This is our first bite of the Athens apple. More to follow in our next episode.