I arrive outside of Venice and stay near the airport, meeting up with the adopted one and enjoying and Asian meal (there is no Asian restaurants in Auronzo) Then we are off to Athens!
Have to admit Aegean Air was very quick, whilst we’d heard of issues in England and Germany with flights being cancelled, here there weren’t even queues. We arrived in the Athens heat and were whisked off to our hotel. We lunched at a colourful Mexican place and later we looked in the churches. I love Greek churches. They’re tiny, ancient, hidden away between all the new buildings and full of paintings of saints in frames of the most beautifully worked silver with celestial curved and painted ceilings. The candles are handmade and perfumed with myrrh and frankincense and you leave some money and light them for many reasons. I light them for those who aren’t with us any more.
I spy an unusual cafe and bar across from our hotel and have my first Greek coffee for the day. It’s expensive after Italy when there would be an uprising is coffee was this expensive (same price as Australia). Cafe Tazza is crazily beautiful. It looks like an old house from the 1930’s. I can imagine visiting a Greek Aunt here, who has been collecting tasselled, embroidered lights, velvet seats and gilded everything and sitting down to a coffee with her and a chat. The waitress tells me to go the bathroom just to looks and so I wander through two other rooms that are set up like dining rooms and go downstairs to another room of curiosities for some selfies.
We met our girls for drinks that night in a very cool bar and then dined in one of the oldest tavernas in Athens. The food was wonderful. We had zucchini fritters, Greek salad with slabs of fetta, oregano and capers and that quintessential but elusive Greek vegetable, Horta. When you ask Greeks in Australia if they have seeds they say they have but somehow they never appear. When you look it up it says it’s dandelion but it’s nothing like it. They serve it boiled with lemon and olive oil and it’s wonderful. On the way home, we pass a square lit by the fading sun and there’s the Acropolis hill, the Parthenon turning pink as we watch.
We go the Agora the next morning. The heat is palpable, even early in the day. We wander through the fields, ruins all around us, ancient statues, crickets in full chorus, our sandalled feet covered in dust. I feel like an ancient Greek, toga clad, walking and discussing philosophy. There is such a small gap when you walk here, from past to present that you can feel them merging.
We lunch and dine on such wonderful seasonal foods. Tomato fritters, zucchini and feta ones. Big plates of the horta, oiled, salty and with a squeeze of lemon. The bread is rustic and at the end of the meal they bring us big triangles of the pinkest, sweetest watermelon when you ask for the check.
They build around the tiny churches here, they look incongruous in the porticoes of modern hotels but inside they tell their story and keep their beauty. Old ladies tend them, growing pots of basil outside. Sitting inside as us tourists gaze at the silver encased icons, as we light the beautiful thin candles and place them in the big bronze bowls of sand, for our loved ones who’ve departed.
After I find an amazing shop of weird and wonderful jewellery and crafts, many of them nautical based that an old man who has the look of a sailor, produces. And I buy beautiful little ancient boat earrings in wood and bronze. And then we move from our hotel for just the two of us, the adopted one and I, to another place to meet up with the daughter and her partner. We find the place and I wonder what I’ve done. There is street art everywhere, it looks totally derelict but the daughter said it’s close to a lot of things so we leave our bags in our shared room that looks like a hostel when we open our bags everywhere and head off to see where we are exactly. And she’s right. There are cute cafes, boutique shops and interesting restaurants abound. Athens reminds me of Thailand, slightly dilapidated, it gives post WW11 like Naples. Many of the buildings would have been destroyed. There are empty sites or dilapidated ones that haven’t been touched, the domain of the cats. They’re starting to put tourist accommodation in the quite ugly modern apartment buildings and they’re beautiful inside. But it’s a shock to realise you still have to put the toilet paper into a bin in the bathroom and although you can drink the water in Athens, you can’t on the islands. But certainly the pandemic has bred a range of beautiful cafes and bars and the craft and art is still stunning.
The heat is exhausting though, walking out the door after a shower, you are warmed to a sweat instantly. We decide to go to a beach not far from Athens (well a rocky bay really) but it’s welcome to our hot bodies. The water is just below warm. We eat at a taverna on the cliff, admiring the azure blue of the sea.
That night we chose a Mexican restaurant and have chilli margheritas. This place is again so eccentric and wonderful, colourful and alluring. The waitress is giving Frida Kahlo vibes with her headband of roses. The toilets are also worth a visit. Then on the way back home, we discover the crazy Little Kook cafe and bar, done out with an Alice in Wonderland theme. This is over the top and even though we feel we should venture in, it’s a bit too much.
I wander the next day and find the antique streets, full of wonderful antiques that I long to buy but can’t afford and can’t carry back with me. From there I head towards Monastriaki to more interesting shops with fantastical jewellery and beautiful churches near the ancient Library of Hadrian.
That afternoon we meet at another wonderful bar, Juan Rodriguez, done up like someone’s house and then off to another taverna for fried Saganaki with chilli and honey, smoky eggplant salad and free at the end, thick Greek yoghurt with caramelised grated carrots on top. And then our time in Athens is done. Tomorrow we’re on the road to the islands.
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