Spring Break, Part 4: Athens

I flew into Athens on Thursday night, and was there only to sleep for 3 hours before getting up at 5 and taking the metro to the port in order to catch the ferry to Santorini. my first impression, bsaed on that short visit, was that Athens was (to be blunt and reductionist) a shithole. this may have been informed by the location of our hostel, which was right beside the red light district and which, when I shared where I was staying with a few random Greek acquaintances, incited raised eyebrows and an inhalation of breath through clamped teeth. but we were totally fine, aside from my travel companions being tear- gassed on their first night: city bus drivers were on strike (causing a glitch in my arrival-- the bus just pulled over to the side of the road and stopped moving far away from where it was supposed to go. luckily a nice Greek man pointed me to the metro, and eventually I found my way to the hostel), and my companions got caught in a protest.

I developed a more favorable impression the second time around (we came back to Athens for two nights after the island of Naxos), though that's a relative term-- I still wouldn't call myself a big fan of Athens. the city doesn't have much going for it, beyond housing a bunch of really old stuff. it was cool to see some of the old stuff, but not as cool as I'd expected due to the hordes of tourists which rendered the experience at the Parthenon fairly unenjoyable. I much more enjoyed seeing the 'smaller' tourist attractions (such as the Agora and Zeus' temple).

our last night-- after negotiating the shut-down of the entire metro station while we were en-route to our hostel (the train just stopped and they turned off all the lights. that was a new one.) we wandered around for close to hour trying to find somewhere to eat, and ultimately settled on a 24- hour restaurant which produced plenty of entertainment, from language barriers with the waiter to questionable food to stray animals circling our feet and random people walking up to our table and attempting to sell us toy parrots and squirt guns.

oh, Greek food: not as phenomenal as I'd been expecting. though my judgment is framed through the lens of a vegetarian-- it is really hard to be a vegetarian and eat out in Greece. still, I managed, and I made sure to get baklava on my last night.

so I came away from Greece not quite as enchanted as I'd been expecting. part of that could be chalked up to too- high expectations, sure. but those expectations were high for a reason-- Greece gets a heckuva lot of hype. I think a large part of what I've learned from this experience is that I have very little interest any more in going to areas that are big tourist attractions-- it's just not really possible to have any kind of experience when you're being jostled about by people who don't understand the concept of a line, damnit! (it's a pet peeve)

None of this is to say that I wish I hadn't gone-- it was, without a doubt, an experience, and I feel like I've affirmed some thoughts which I've recently been distilling in my brain.
and good things come from all places-- the upside of being in the hostel was that I roomed with a nice guy from Argentina with whom I discussed the state of the world; and as we left for the airport on our last morning the man working the front desk told us,

"Have a nice life, yes? Life is beautiful."


#1 the feet of a really old statue
#2 really old theater beneath the hill that houses the Parthenon. They have the stage roped off, but not the seating-- so I plopped my butt down on the same seat used by ancient Greeks on a night out
#3 Emily and I in front of the Greek Agora (marketplace).
#4 Temple to two Gods. I can't remember either of their names, but the one was Goddess of "Pottery and Crafts in General", which I think is an hilarious job description. I took this picture from the Agora, looking out across the marketplace and up the hill to the temple. this was probably my favorite place in Athens-- so beautiful and green and good for imagining what it was like when people actually conducted their daily lives
#5 Temple of Zeus, about a 10- minute walk away from the Parthenon