I knew I was going to like Greece, because I was going to Greece. Everyone loves Greece. For years, I wondered why I had been to so many places and yet still hadn’t explored a country absolutely heaving with culture, history and food. Now that I’ve been, it seems even more bizarre that I’d never visited. Greece is an absolute gem of a holiday destination.
My first impressions of Athens as we head to the suburb of Glyfada, is that it bears resemblance to the Middle East. Along the route, plenty of buildings have rebar sticking out of first floors, giving the buildings an air of being trapped in time. Almost complete, but something got in the way. There was more than a whiff of abandonment, which is exactly what a 25% reduction in a country’s economy would do to anywhere. The spectre of the global crash may be apparent on the roads into Athens but as we arrive in Glyfada, we enter a smart, well-heeled neighbourhood where buildings are complete and trees overhang anything they can. The air is fragranced heavily from bushes and flowers.
We head to Yi, a raw vegan restaurant for dinner, and it felt like an immense treat to be in a restaurant in late October with all the windows wide open and many customers eating on the terrace. I wasn’t terribly excited by the concept of actual raw food, but it turns out that you can pop food in the oven up to 118c and still be considered raw. A big starter of salad was bursting with flavours and my main was a Caponata with pasta. What intrigued me on the menu was not the yummy dishes but a long list of notes for the customer such as “the customer is not obliged to pay if not given legal proof” which is longhand for a receipt. They also had a paragraph telling us the lament of the frozen items and the joys of the fresh produce. There was even an advertisement for the complaints book, but there were no complaints for us and the book remained unsigned.
For an after dinner cocktail, we waddled over to Holy Spirit, in a part of town buzzing with activity even on a Sunday night. There, a DJ played the same song on a loop for what felt like many days and one of our party spent ages talking to him about how great his music was. I maintain that the DJ was just playing the same song, despite evidence to the contrary. Later, at the apartment, we get ready to sleep after watching an excellent video for Athens cats and dogs home, replete with sound effects of animals having a lovely time. Unfortunately, none of us really manage to sleep. Mine is the sort of slumber where I’m unsure if I ever lose consciousness and hear every sound made, even the sounds of air molecules bouncing languidly off one another.
The next morning, we buy a 5 day metro pass which will let us travel to everywhere we want to go in the city for €9, the same as one cocktail from Holy Spirit costs. At moments like this, I sense how much money I’ve wasted in the my life and weep. Our first culture his is the gorgeous Acropolis museum, which is a bargain €10 to enter and despite it being late October, it is still busy, which makes you wonder what it’s like in the middle of summer. The building is a huge upgrade on the concrete lean-to that came before and it exists so that there is one large space to show off all the Elgin Marbles. Now this museum exists, Britain’s argument for keeping the marbles seems threadbare. With the Brexit negotiations looming (or not, you just never know), it looks like the marbles will soon have a new home. And why not? We don’t have nearly as nice a location to store our loot; here, the marbles will be in viewing distance from the Parthenon and in their rightful place.
Once museum fatigue has set in, which happens no later than two hours from entry, we explored Plaka and head to Brettos bar for what is misleadingly called a sharpener. Brettos is Athens’ oldest bar, and it has been distilling and serving drinks since 1909. I had something red and plummy. It wasn’t cheap but it was delicious. However, the star of the show is undoubtedly the stunning interior of Brettos. Hundreds of brightly coloured bottles are stacked to the ceiling behind the bar, backlit for maximum effect. Barrels of liqueurs and ouzo are to the side of the room. It has the atmosphere of a place you’d rather not leave and was as beguiling inside as the weather was outside. But leave we must and Plaka, though very charming, is a busy place to be. There are photos on the internet of Plaka with empty streets; perhaps these were taken at a ridiculously early hour or they time travelled from the coronavirus era, but Plaka in late October was hectic.
Our next stop was in Anafiotika, a smaller neighbourhood of Plaka, where a far quieter landscape enchanted us. Though small, this neighbourhood feels like the Greece you see advertised – tiny whitewashed houses, twisting lanes, an abundance of nature and far-reaching views. It’s like Santorini with air pollution. It looks the way it is because in the 1800s King Otto I wanted to turn Athens into a modern city and cast his net for builders from across the country; many of them came from Anafi Island and so naturally built dwellings that looked like their own. The cubed whitewashed buildings with blue accents bring island architecture to the mainland and are reminiscent of the Greek flag.
Perched on Acropolis Hill, this is the kind of place Lonely Planet would call “unspoilt” which in today’s parlance means there are no Air BnBs or tourist shops. But sadly, it is very much spoilt. Anafiotika once covered a larger district but archaeological explorations destroyed all but 60 or so homes. However, what’s there today is still exceptionally gorgeous and a wonderful opposite to the crowded streets of Athens. In a city that doesn’t want for viewpoints, there are some stunning ones here and it’s far too easy to photograph everything, from the blooming bougainvillea to cats doing tightrope walks between buildings and the way the sun strikes the side of a building.
As tempting as it is to do that, we have tickets to visit the Acropolis and of course, it would feel incomplete to not go to where all eyes lead to in Athens. The Acropolis demands your attention and being up there gives a sense of scale to this remarkable complex, including the scale of the scaffolding of the Parthenon temple, which is said to be thousands of years old. The scaffolding was taken down briefly in 2010 but since then, they’ve been continuing the restoration work at a snail’s pace which means that the restoration work, including adding new marble to the temple, has taken longer to do than it took to build the temple in the first place. All sorts of nuisances have happened up on the Acropolis, from fires and looting, to wars and plucky Brits nicking bits of it and cowboy builders but it’s always a humbling experience to see a building constructed two and half thousand years ago, up close.
There’s really nothing to do up on the Acropolis but look at the ruins and scuttle around the crowds, but it’s deeply peaceful and a chance to just spend time soaking up the breath-taking views all around and contemplate life. From up high, you get an overview of Athens as a city. It seems to go on forever and the vantage point of the Acropolis, which is 490 feet above sea level, gives Athens a perspective that few cities have unless you’re up a skyscraper. You see the hills all around, the white blocks stretching out for miles and the sea.
I specified to my friend that what I really wanted every evening was a cocktail or glass of wine on a rooftop bar with a view and for our first edition of this we went to A for Athens. We hadn’t reserved and snatched the last available table with seconds to spare, giving us a superb view of the Acropolis and the city in front of it. Initially, I was a little miffed because the table we were at was by a window but magically, the window was retracted and all my dreams came true as we relaxed, chatted and let our minds empty of anything troubling. The wine we ordered was so good we ordered a second bottle as dusk became night and Athens was gloriously spread out in front of us.
