It has become our habit to always do a Rick Steves tour of the city we enter as our first action. His walking tours help us to understand the layout of the city, its history, the points of interest we will want to explore in depth later and a taste of the culture. The free tours are usually about 70-80 minutes long, available as a podcast or downloadable from his “Europe” app. Knowing jet lag and time zone shift would be an issue on our first day in Athens, doing his tour is the only activity we planned for today. Sleep in, do the tour, see how we feel, prepare for a bigger day tomorrow.
However, even with our lack of sleep across the three flights of the previous two days, sleep did not come easy the night before our tour. Exhausted, we had climbed in bed about 9:30pm. Unfortunately, that is 11:30am Toledo time, which our bodies were still operating on. Even though we were super tired, we lay there only resting, trying to will ourselves to sleep. It was well past 2:00am when we fell asleep, but I didn’t wake again until 9:45am. That was later than I had hoped, but the extra sleep couldn’t hurt.
With phones, earbuds, downloaded audio tour, extra battery and a little sunscreen, we headed out into the streets of downtown Athens.
Before we began our tour, we had critical work to be done. We needed to get active Greek SIMM cards in our phones so we could access the Internet with its maps, messaging, information, etc without incurring a $15 a day charge from ATT. We found the shop Athina had suggested. 5 clerks, no customers. We were instantly helped and given 10 Gb of data, 300 minutes of talk and unlimited messaging for 30 days for 21 euros. Eat that ATT. With our phones active again, we headed out to begin our tour.
Our tour began in Syntagma (SEEN-dag-ma) Square, where we got off the subway yesterday. The traffic through the downtown streets was heavy. We threaded our way through the cars, trucks, lights and mopeds and arrived at the square. A lot of the tour is standing in one place getting the history and the geographic connections to the next places. We sat in the shade of a bus stop shelter and listened about how one of the big attractions in Athens is the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown soldier, which was right across the busy 6 lane street in front of us. With luck, it was happening right then and we watched it from a distance from our bus shelter. We both giggled at the description of “one of Athen’s biggest attractions”. Including us, there were 8 people watching, 6 on the other side of the street and us. THERE IS NO ONE HERE! We were hoping to “thread the needle” between the opening of Greece from its 6 month lock down due to COVID and the return of the tourists and cruise ships. This was our first hint that our thread had found its mark. We walked down Ermou Street, a pedestrian only roadway as we listed to Rick in our earbuds tell us about how crowded the street is; lined with busy and exhausted shoppers. All we saw were a couple dozen locals and shop keepers standing in their doorways looking for customers.
A small Orthodox Church is part of the walking tour. I enjoyed seeing the inside of one for the first time, the layout of the building, the iconography painted on the ceilings and wall, the small intimate space. Back outside, we passed down a lane with small mom and pop stores lining it. We stopped to eye some Greek style dresses outside one of them and the owner came out, bubbling with excitement when he learned we were from America. He offered everything in his store at 50% if we would just “PLEASE” buy something. He told us how he had to layoff 7 girls that worked the two adjacent shops, how he couldn’t afford to keep his credit card reader account active. We spotted a Lapiz pendent that Sally has been searching for and purchased it for 30 euro-50% off. We had seen the same in Mexico for $130, so we felt good about the price. He was even more excited to have 30 euros in his hands. “GOD BLESS AMERICA!” he shouted as he bumped elbows with us as we walked out of the open air shop.
We stopped at two more churches on the tour, one large, one tiny, then Sally spotted a Pepsi logo on a restaurant and we had to stop in for her first Pepsi in Athens.
The proprietor greeted and sat us, brought us our Pepsis and we then began a long discussion about just opening, no customers, hope the Americans come in July and August. We were only one of two table occupied in this outdoor restaurant of 40 tables. The discussion turned to seafood and he began describing their calamari, mussels, shrimp, etc.
The other occupied table was obviously a local and had a spread of just this seafood. We went to inspect. We returned to our table. As we sat down, we noticed the waiter grabbing calamari and shrimp off the other customer’s platters and putting it on small plates which he brought to us. What!?! It was delicious! We went to thank him for sharing a sampler of his meal and another discussion ensued. Such warm and friendly people.
On our way again, we walked through the “busiest tourist street in Athens”, selling trinkets and such. Again, maybe . . . maybe 10 people in the 1/2 mile long stretch. Amazing.
We visited Hadrian’s Arch, then walked down the the highway to a bank machine to get cash. Most shops were asking for cash, having turned off their card machines. We visited with a nut vendor on the street and two restaurant owners as we made our way up toward the Acropolis.
The tour does not hit the Acropolis, that is a separate day, but veers into the Anafiotika section clinging to the side of steep hill below. 30 feet up the path into this unique area of Athens we found a 69 year old retired man now a street musician under the foliage strumming his mandolin type instrument. Sally was ahead of me by a few paces as I was taking a few photos of Athens below. By the time I got there they were in full discussion of world politics, AirB&B, immigrants and grandkids. We talked for 15-20 minutes, getting the Greek view of the world before he serenaded us with “Never on a Sunday”. I left 2 euro in his case and we moved on.
Hopefully, it is beginning to become apparent why the 90 minute tour was creeping close to 4 hours.
We toured the Anafiotika neighborhood with its narrow passageways, white
buildings and lush vegetation before emerging out the other side, then dropping down into the Plaka area - tourist central of Athens - at the base of the Acropolis.
We had dinner on the sidewalk, snared in by a Greek waiter born in Brooklyn. We were looking for dinner as it was not 5:30, and this turned out to be a great spot. We were the only ones served in the 50 minutes we were there. Much conversation ensued between us and the 5 idle waiters as they scanned the street for non-existent customer. Mousaka and Greek Salad. Delicious. 18.00 euros.
We finished the tour at Monistirika Plaza, walked to the entrance to Agora to buy museum passes for tomorrow (it was now 7:30pm) and then we headed for home, about a mile and a half away. Our path took us back through Syntagma Square. It was now filled with hundreds of people carrying red flags with the hammer and sickle.
It was a massive communist party rally. The fiery speaker bellowed at the microphone while loudspeakers, the cone shaped ones reminiscent of Nazi germany blared all around the square. We mingled with the communists, took a few photos, tried to remember a successful and fair communist government, couldn’t, rejected the notion and headed for our room.
We stopped at the local grocery and purchased eggs, yogurt, cheese and pop to carry us through Saturday night, then continued to our flat about a block away. It was now 8:30. Another sleepless night, neither of us falling asleep until well after 2:00am.
What a great introduction to Athens. So many friendly people. We both went schizophrenic. We loved being the only ones in town, able to see and do everything without a crowd, while at the same time felt terribly sorry for the locals, so dependent on tourist money that is non-existent. Hopefully, when we leave, the tourists will come and save the Greek economy.
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