Welcome to Athens

On our last trip, we arrived in Iceland at 6am after a long plane trip overnight. This is the worst-case scenario for jet lag. You’re dead tired, it feels like the middle of the night to you, and you want to go to sleep, but local time says you should just be waking up. If you want to set your internal clock to local time, you need to stay awake another 16 hours or so. Not gonna happen!

This trip, we arrived in the evening, so even though we were sleep-deprived on arrival, we didn’t need to stay up much longer and we didn’t have the awkward nap cycles we had in Iceland.

But even though we were able to crash early (9pm is really early for me - I usually go to bed around 1am), our tiredness allowed us to sleep on through. Well, sorta. Because our internal clocks said that it was the middle of the day, going to sleep felt like nap time, so in a couple of hours, it’s like, “well, that was refreshing. Time to get up!”… only that was at 12:30am. I made myself go back to sleep, then woke up again at 2am. I was going to write the travelogue post then, but the hotel wifi was down, so I made myself go back to sleep again. This happened all night long, and I eventually got up with a cumulative amount of sleep greater than what I normally get at home, so maybe… maybe… jet lag won’t be so bad this time.

The hotel has blackout curtains, so when we finally opened them this morning, the bright sunlight was almost shocking. This was the view:

Eventually, the wifi came back on and I was able to get the Travel Day post done and published. Rob was enjoying his lazy morning, but I was ready to go exploring. I decided to hit the park around the opera house across the street while Rob did his morning routine.

It was a gorgeous day for it, with blue skies and temps around 17 or so with a brisk breeze. The locals consider this “jacket weather”, apparently, as many of them were out in long sleeves and puffy ski jackets in the morning. Those came off by midday, but they were still overdressed compared to Canadians at those temps! I got a few looks in my shorts and t-shirt this morning, until they saw the big maple leaf design on the front of my shirt. Then it all made sense to them.

Anyway: the park.

It takes up a sizeable chunk of real estate. Very near the entrance, you’re greeted by a sculpture that makes you wonder if you aren’t in a scene from War of the Worlds

Things calm down considerably after that and a long, rectangular water feature leads from the base of the park to the opera house

That long, slanted bit is a park/ green space. The angle of it is gradual enough and the park itself wide enough, that you don’t really get the sensation of climbing as you make your way from the base to the main structure.

Only as you near the building does the slant become obvious. Sight lines are still restricted, though, so you’ve no concept of how far you’ve gone up or even that there’s a whole opera house beneath the building you’re looking at.

From the area around the building (which appears to be a free library and reading room), you have a nice view of the harbour - but there’s a fence keeping you far back from the edge, and some strategic grass planting, so you still can’t really tell how high up you are.

To the left of the harbour, there’s the Saddledome-esque Olympic Tae Kwon Do stadium

And facing back in the direction of the hill you just climbed, you can see the Acropolis and Parthenon in the distance

Going inside the building, there’s a long glass hallway that dead-ends near the elevators. Wait… elevators? This is where you can see (finally) how much vertical distance you’ve traveled, as the floor drops away and the hallway is suspended out in space over the courtyard in front of the opera house, which you’re seeing from above.

Down the elevator to the courtyard and you have a nice view of the opera house itself.

Back to the hotel and Rob is ready to go, so we hopped the hotel’s shuttle bus to the city centre, which dropped us off at Syntagma Square, across from the Monument to the Unknown Soldier

We were both hungry, so we set off toward the shopping district in search of a little cafe or something. We happened upon a Gregory’s - which is EVERYWHERE here, kinda like the Greek Tim Horton’s. The logo looks like this:

Thank gods (Zeus, Nike, and all the rest) that the Google Translate app understands the signage around here, because i't’s all Greek to me.

(rim shot!) Thanks, I’m here till Tuesday. Try the veal.

Anyway, they have good food, mostly sandwiches and pastries for reasonable prices. Rob got a big heart-shaped donut and I got a… um… bread boat with cheese and bacon? Dunno what it was called.

I expected the cheese to be mozzarella or maybe provolone, but it was something else - a pungent, parmesan-like cheese that was surprisingly bold, but delicious. After lunch, we headed back into the shopping street, where we found a Marks & Spencer. Like many stores and businesses in this area, it was on a small piece of land and multi-storeyed. This particular store has 8 floors, which means the top floor is Floor 6. Lemme explain. As is common in Europe, the ground floor isn’t Floor 1, but rather Floor 0. I was expecting that much. But where I got flummoxed is the Floor H between the 0 and 1 floors.

I don’t know if all building have this or not, but our hotel does and so does this shop. I did notice that in both those buildings, the Hth floor (is that how you’d say it?) is not a full floor, but has a mezzanine overlooking the 0th floor below. Whatever. Rob bought a nice sweater in the store and I got a bottle of wine in the grocery store on the top floor. Apparently, having a grocery in a Marks & Spencer department store is normal. It was my first time in one, so I was surprised.

Right in the middle of the road sits the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It’s a tiny little thing, just below grade, so it seems even smaller.

Not far from there is the Metropolitan Church of Athens.

…and unlike the previous Church Making Assumptions about Mary, the Metro let you take pictures inside

Next to the Metropolitan Church is the Little Metropolitan Church. It’s overshadowed by its big brother next door.

Tiny little churches pop up all over the place around here, even when modern buildings encroach on them. Case in point, this tiny little Holy Church of Hagia Dynamis (Sacred Power) sheltered under the canopy of a big hotel. Circa 16th century. No, not the hotel.

A couple of things I’ve noticed about Athens on this first day is the massive number of scooters and motorbikes, which makes sense, given the very narrow streets and complete lack of parking for a full-sized car

and the other thing I noticed is the graffiti. It’s everywhere you look (although, thankfully they seem to avoid tagging the historic buildings)

I don’t know if Athens has a worse-than-average graffiti problem, or perhaps the city doesn’t bother with cleaning it off and so it accumulates. Regardless, it’s a blight on what could be a lovely city.

On the way back to the hotel on the shuttle, I snapped a pic of a thing we saw on the way out, which is something I’ve never seen anywhere before. I’m guessing I might never see it anywhere again. Behold: someone in a high rise REALLY wanted a tree outside their window.

Back at the hotel, we both crashed pretty hard for a long nap, because jet lag. Then it was dinner at Made in Athens, the hotel restaurant. I started off with grilled halloumi (goat/sheep cheese), figs, and salad drizzled with honey. Delicious.

For the main, we both had beet risotto topped with blue cheese and toasted hazelnuts. Really, really good. It’s not often that I eat pink food for dinner, nor do I normally eat vegetarian, but here we are.

Other than the noisy kids at the next table (I’m a noisy kid magnet. Even if the place is mostly empty and there are a sea of other tables, the family with the brats will sit right next to me. Every time.), the meal was really enjoyable. For after-dinner drinks, though, we headed up to the rooftop bar again and left the kids behind. Bonus: they got their ouzo shipment in and we enjoyed the traditional Greek drink in full view of the night-lit Parthenon.

…and that’s when we learned that they allow kids in bars here. The family we thought we’d escaped came upstairs a few minutes after we did. Luckily, they were a bit quieter after dinner than during, so it wasn’t too bad.

Back to the room, then I made a quick hop to the tiny little snack shop across the street to pick up some milk for the morning in-room coffee and I grabbed a chocolate bar that looked interesting.

The chocolate bar was really good. It’s a chewy nougat centre, coconut flavoured, with a crunchy coating. It’s like if a Nestle Crunch and a Mounds Bar hooked up with Three Musketeers. That sounds dirtier than it ought to.

Tomorrow: heading to a place I can see from the hotel bar.

On to the next day!

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