Wednesday was Greek Independence Day so there were no classes. I woke up a little later to cloudy skies, wind and some light rain...so I lingered in bed for a while. Eventually, I heard the sound of loud machines on the street below and saw them setting up for the parade. I was warned by Mary and my AirBnB host that this wasn't the "fun" type of parade with dancers, floats, and Santa Claus - but instead a military parade. Not being keen on military-anything I delayed going out until the weather improved. Eventually, I got curious and walked down to the street and towards Syntagma to see what all the fuss was about. After a few minutes of soldiers marching and rockets being displayed on truck beds in an attempt to one-up the Turks, I decided to roam around Plaka and the city center instead.
Cute kids (and an adult) getting ready to watch the parade.
Meh - kinda boring.
The city center was very lively and there were many people wandering around enjoying their vacation or the national holiday. Later in the day, I had a cooking class planned so I only spent a couple hours wandering around before heading back to my AirBnB to clean up and make my way to Omonoia to meet the instructor and other students. I popped into the Holy Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary (try saying that three times real fast) to check out the interior (and to avoid the noise of the very low flying patriotic jets circling the city). Oh! I almost forgot! Have a cocktail with me in celebration of Greek independence while listening to the song Κοκτέιλ (Cocktail) by Nalyssa Green. It's my Greek song for this blog post. Υάμας Ελλάδα! (Cheers Greece)
From there I ran across the oldest house in Athens - the Benizelos Mansion - and wandered around and read more about Turkish occupation of the city. From there I wandered around Plaka with its cute, winding, narrow streets and looped back through Monastiraki where I found some Bubble Tea on the pedestrian street Aiolou (where the first hostel I ever stayed at in Athens with Paul and Christina was located). There were some buskers singing American rock which I listened to for a few minutes before making my way back towards my AirBnB along the shopping street Adriano. I popped into some shops and settled on some souvenir packaged olives, soaps and snacks as gifts for people back in America. I grabbed a small pizza from a store across the street from my AirBnB for a snack - I would end up working on finishing this very average pizza for the next three days.
Holy Metropolitan Church of the Annunciation to the Virgin Mary.
The Benizelos Mansion - the oldest remaining house in Athens. Dating to the Ottoman period around the early 1700s.
Bright and sunny Plaka street.
Looking over the Roman Forum towards the acropolis.
Some rocking buskers.
Roma Pizza is apparently the Greek Dominos - but at $6 I'm fine with that.
After chilling in the AirBnB for a bit with my bargain pizza and homework assignments, I took the metro and met up with the instructors and 6 other students for a Greek cooking class. I'm fairly familiar with Greek food - but I thought this would be a fun excuse to chat with new people and maybe learn a thing or two. The company running the class was called "Eat with Your Greek Cousin" and it was a family run affair. The instructor was named Dionysia Katafygi and her assistant was her brother-in-law and 10 year old niece. The other six students were from America - with one younger woman studying abroad in Athens and the rest mostly off a cruise ship for a day or two. So much for meeting "new" people. That said, everyone was very nice and the class was tremendously fun and delicious - check them out if you're ever in the mood to take a cooking class in Athens. Opening this class was a dream of Dionysia's while she was working a corporate job, which included international travel every month in a management position - earning only €1,000 per month. Now she and her family all work together in this cooking business - give them some support.
It didn't take Dionysia long to figure out I was part Greek - with family from the Peloponnesus - so she liked to jab at me as her family was from near Constantinople (Istanbul) and her perception of people from my family's region was that we were very particular about our food, which is generally not the case for me. While talking about olive oil, she explained to me that the Peloponnesus generally has the best and that the worst, by far, is from the island of Corfu. Apparently, the Greeks there were forced to grow the olives by the British to use as lamp oil, so they never cared for the trees and never bothered to harvest the olives still on the tree - instead letting them fall to the ground and then collecting them. These habits never changed and here we are. This story would matter more later in the trip, stay tuned!
In the class, we prepared pork and chicken souvlaki, homemade pita bread, tzatziki, tirokafteri (spicy feta dip) and a little self-serve quick freeze cheesecake. I was most impressed with how straightforward it is to make very delicious pita - something I will work on at home in the future.
Souvlaki was easier to make than I expected - but I'm lacking a home gyro spit!
The gyro spread - onions, fries and tomatoes.
My homemade dips. I made the tirokafteri a little too spicy.
Yum! Look at that yummy pita bread!
I walked back from Omonoia to my AirBnB - which took around 40 minutes - partly because it was so nice outside and partly because some of the other Americans were walking that way and we were trash-talking American politics. When I got back to the AirBnB it was already dark and I wrapped up homework and called it a day.
On Thursday classes resumed, as did my new habit of waking up early, finding some matcha and a snack and getting ready for class - which lasted until 12:30. Today was very nice and sunny, so I decided after class I'd take the tram down to the beach near Flisvos. There were lots of little shops and cafes tucked down the side streets and a nice promenade along the water front that led through some parks and up to a posh marina. I strolled for a bit and then sat at a restaurant along the marina to have an aperol spritz, some salmon (meh) and some really great feta-cheese stuffed pepper.
The beach at Flisvos - there were people swimming in mid-March! Scandinavians?
I lost count of the number of Aperol Spritzs I had this trip...which in my opinion is a good indicator of a fun trip.
Delicious feta stuffed peppers.
From there I walked to the Stavros Niarchos Park (a large new park in Kallithea that houses the opera) and strolled a bit before grabbing a bus and heading back towards the city center to visit the Museum of Cycladic Art. This museum housed a great collection of art from the main central set of Greek islands (the Cyclades). Bronze age civilizations sprouted up here first among Greece, dating to around 4000 BCE. From the museum I wandered up into the nice Kolonaki neighborhood, on the foot of the Lycabettus Hill to look at some fancy food shops before wandering up the hill itself for sunset - something I have done on almost every trip to Greece dating back to 2009. From there it was back to the AirBnB to complete homework and chill for the evening.
The Greek National Opera - I debated going to a show but decided it would be "too Italian."
Typical early Cycladic statute.
A room dedicated to bronze age civilization on Cyprus.
Sunsets on Lycabettus really can't be beat.
If it's not clear to you that I love a good non-motorized path, we probably aren't really friends.
Athens, mountains, sun and the sea in the distance.
Sunset in Athens.
Delightful.
Only 1 more day of class and one free day to go before I leave and head back to America.
After leaving Hydra, I returned to Athens by ferry and arrived back in Piraeus around 2pm. Athens has great public transportation so it was just a short metro ride to the city center and my AirBnB south east of the Acropolis near the Συγγρού - Φιχ (Sygrou-Fix) metro station. My AirBnB was a top floor unit on an 8 story building with a small studio of inside space and a whole lotta balcony.
Technically an Acropolis view, but a little bit of a stretch. From my bed, I could open the curtains just right to look out and see it without as much visual clutter and it made me happy.
Looking around the other side from the balcony near sunset. My school was a three minute walk in this direction.
There was a cute little church across the way.
By the way, the Greek song for this blog post is one that Paul found for me when we were trying to find some indie Greek music - Ταξίδι (Taxidi) by Marina Spanou. Taxidi means "journey" so it was pretty fitting to my current experience. Also, Marina is a really great singer/song writer - give her a listen.
After settling in, I decided to grab some groceries for the week, because I didn't really want to eat out for every meal. I went to a nearby store and grabbed a matcha latte on the way back. That evening I walked along the south side of the acropolis along Dionysiou Areopagitou and listened to some buskers before wandering up around the lower part of the Filopappou Hill.
My matcha latte from a Mexican-inspired restaurant/coffee shop.
Athens has lots of really cool pedestrian spaces up hills.
Heading around the Fillopapou Hill
Acropolis from the park.
From there, I was hungry so I stopped by a pedestrian street in Fix and went to a Cretan restaurant called Κουκάτσι (Koukatsi). I ordered some Cretan wine (μαρουβάς - marouvas) - the smallest size they had was 500 ml - and was recommended the special of the day, which was snail soup. I figured I'd pass this time and instead got some φάβα με απάκι και κρεμμύδι (fava with "apaki" and onions) and xorta Cretan calzone. Spoiler alert - I have a really different definitions of "calzone" than the folks on Crete. That said, the Fava was probably the best single thing I ate on the entire trip. Apaki is a smoked Cretan pork that's slightly vinegary and delicious.
Bread
Cretan "Calzones" - I took 2 of these as leftovers and ate them for a couple days.
The smallest amount of wine they would give me.
Fava with apaki - the star of the trip foodwise.
After dinner I was pretty tired so I headed back to the AirBnB - I'd only had two nights of sleep in Greece so far and jetlag was a killer this trip.
The next day (a Monday) was my first day of Greek school! You know, the main reason I came to Greece? It's easy to forget after a couple days on an island and with dreams of apaki and the acropolis in my mind. My class started at 10:00 am and I was up by around 7. The only downside of my AirBnB was that it got pretty bright in the morning so I was up with the sun most days. Before class I grabbed another matcha and a koulouri from a nearby coffee shop. There are as many coffee shops in Athens as there are grains of sand on a beach. It's always amazing to me how they all stay in business.
I won't speak too much about the classes in this travel blog - but just some high level info so you know (also so I remember) how I spent 2.5 hours/day plus an extra 2 or so hours a night on homework. I was hoping for a small group class to speak with other people around my level and to maybe make some friends. Unfortunately, while there were other students, some were more advanced and some less so I ended up having private lessons.
My instructor's name was Spiros - he is 27 years old, he's from Athens and he lives about 20 mins from the school with his girlfriend. He was super chill, very friendly and very patient. We spent some time on the first day discussing what my goals were - which were primarily to improve my speaking and listening skills. He then spent some time probing me to see how much Greek I knew. We spent about 1 hour of each 2.5 hour class just talking in a mix of Greek and English. I found this to be very fun and challenging. Spiros would jot down new words I was trying to communicate and we'd make a game of me trying to memorize them before the next class.
The rest of the time we did exercises with cards with verbs on one side and scenes on the other. I'd have to make sentences out of them. Throughout the week he introduced how to conjugate verbs in simple future and simple past. Simple future is required to form the infinitive, so I was pretty happy to be working on that because I really want to tell people things I need to do from time to time. The cards then became a game of conjugate this word and tell me a sentence about the verb in the future or in the past. I was pretty close to starting simple future with my tutor (Mary) so it seemed like a good next step.
Most days we'd get a little break mid-way through the lesson and Spiros would step out (to smoke - this is Greece after all). He invited me to hang out during the break on the second day and the rest of the time it just became a chat session for the two of us outside on topics from politics (bleh global situation) to where to get good pizza (apparently Mario and Luigi about 20 mins from the school) or what it's like living in our countries (good and bad, obviously, in both places). It was really interesting and I really enjoy chatting with people about the world...now more so than usual since I'm working towards Greek citizenship, learning more about Greece was helpful.
Vocab words for the day. Despite the smiley face, that eraser was absolutely useless. Also, Spiros always asked if he could "delete" the white board when he wanted to erase it. I didn't correct him until the last day b/c I thought it was cute/funny.
Verbs - can't "do" anything without them!
After class, I dropped my stuff off and took the metro up to Kifissia - a nice suburb of Athens to the north of town. I have never really seen a Greek suburb before so I was curious what it would be like. Spoiler: it didn't look that different than the city, it was still mostly multi-family housing with shopping and restaurants but there were more trees and plants in general.
Leafy Kifissia.
Nice housing - mostly all still multi-family.
While in Kifissia, I visited the National Museum of Natural History Goulandris (Εθνικό Μουσείο Φυσικής Ιστορίας Φουλανδρή). The museum was small with just a handful of exhibits on wildlife, minerals and climate change. I wouldn't go out of my way to visit as a tourist. Afterwards, I walked around a bit and did some window shopping before settling on Mexican food for a late lunch - mostly out of a morbid curiosity of what Greek people think that means - from Ancho Grill. This is probably the closest approximation to a Chipotle or Willy's I've seen abroad. I had a quesadilla and some guac and chips. After spending a few hours in Kifissia, I took the metro back to my AirBnB and did homework (a common theme).
Triceratops skeleton at the Natural History Museum.
There were lots of taxidermized animals.
An exhibit on Climate Change. At least now I know the word in Greek! Κλιματική Αλλαγή.
Some of the nicer housing in Kifissia was really quite pretty.
Mexico food for lunch in Athens. Odd but ok.
Back in the city center at Syntagma.
I strolled through the National Garden on the way back towards my AirBnB.
On Tuesday my morning repeated with a snack and matcha from a coffee shop then school from 10 - 12:30pm. I met an Aussie half-Greek guy on the way out of class who has family in Lesbos. He's just starting his Greek learning adventure, and luckily will be in Greece for a few months. After, I went to the National Archaeological Museum. The museum houses some of the best artifacts from across the country. It's in need of a facelift, and work is underway towards that goal, but it's still a must-see when you're in Athens.
I really like the bronze statutes. I like to imagine them painted and wearing clothes. They must have been very impressive.
One of the more famous artifacts is the "Jockey of Artemision" from around 150 BCE.
After the museum, I walked around Exarcheia. I popped in a comic book store and was scolded for not knowing the greatest Greek and European comic artists by an older man. I left with a few books mostly out of guilt. I also popped in a store that had some LGBT colors and cat imprinted items in the window. The woman running the shop was in her 20s and there was no one there so I figured I'd try speaking to her in Greek and asking if she would speak to me. She happily agreed...I paused and looked around at leather wallets, rainbows, scarves, etc. and realized I didn't really know the words for anything in the store. I landed on something like "my sister likes cats...what do you recommend" and walked out with a small leather bag with a chonky cat. I consider it a communication win.
Parts of Exarcheia are rough around the edges.
From the eclectic shop I headed towards the center and stopped at a bookstore recommended to me by Mary - Βιβλιοπωλείο Πολιτεία (Bookstore Politeia). This store was huge and occupied multiple store fronts - you'd have to leave one store and reenter to see everything. Many of them were multi-story. I asked if they had any Greek/English books and they had some poetry books by Kostas Karyotakis and Nikiforos Vrettakos that I picked up. They also had some Greek learning books so I grabbed some books on grammar and a book for kids called "Το χειροτερο βιβλιο του κοσμου" (the worst book in the world). Overall, a good haul.
The Greek version of one of my favorite sci-fi books - maybe some day I'll read it in Greek.
By now I was pretty hungry - I didn't eat lunch after class today - so I popped by a taverna near a park a few minutes walk from my AirBnB that was recommended to me by the school - Λοστρέ Κουζίνα (Lostre Kitchen). There were only a couple people there and the food was really good. I had a dip trio and a carbonara. I wrapped up the day back at my AirBnB with homework - despite there being no classes on Wednesday for the Greek National Holiday. To be continued!
