Barb and Baden’s Excellent Greek Adventure – Part 2

More Athens

When you get to a new city you obviously want to sped some time looking at the highlights that it has to offer, trying to soak up the culture and vibe and to generally see what makes that city unique. From Barb’s and my experience, only spending two (full) days in a large city like Athens is pretty short amount of time but we thought that it was good enough given that our overall Greek Adventure is not really about Athens at all but the other two parts of our trip. More on those parts a bit later.

Live Music, Breaking Dishes

At this point in my blog we’re just completed our first full day in Athens and so far it has been really nice. The weather has been in the mid 20’s and has often been overcast, making it very pleasant to walk around. But by far the best part so far has been the food. We’ve had several really great meals so far and everyone that we’ve met has been very warm and helpful. All of the side salads that we have ordered with our meals come with the darkest, tasty tomatoes and everything is really fresh tasting.

Our dinner last night stood out in our minds. We went out around 7:30 and walked around the Plaka district near our hotel which is a (mostly) pedestrian area and as it is in these types of places there were restaurant after restaurant with a seemingly endless choice. All of the restaurants had outdoor seating and we saw a sign that drew our attention: “Live Music. Breaking Dishes”.

Of course there was a live Greek band playing, adding a perfect ambiance to the evening. I said to Barb that when they start playing that famous Greek song that the dishes will start flying. Sure enough, when they started to play this song (sorry, haven’t been able to look up the name) people started standing up and throwing dishes to the floor and breaking them, the band playing furiously and shouting “Opa!” as it all occurred.

We noticed that the dishes that were being smashed were made of a very soft material and wasn’t a real plate which would break into dangerous shards. One has to suppose that if the dinner patrons are injured by shards of plates it might put a negative spin on the otherwise enjoyable evening.

How do I Blog?

By far the most common question that I get asked, after “where are you guys going to next?”, is “how much of your time does it take to write your travel blog?”. The answer is takes a fair amount but that it doesn’t really cut into any real productive “getting around” time.

This is basically how things work. As we’re walking around a place like Athens, I have two things on me pretty much all of the time: my camera and a small paper notepad. I think that the camera is fairy self-explanatory and with the notepad I’m jotting down things that I see throughout the day or interesting comments that I think that might be worth writing about. The actual blog writing part usually occurs either late at night or as it is now, early in the morning. In both cases, it’s almost always when I’m awake and Barb isn’t. It’s very, very rare that I’m writing on the computer when Barb is waiting for me to go somewhere or I missed out on doing something just because of the blog.

Next Stage

Tonight is our last night in Athens and tomorrow we move on to the next stage of our Greek Adventure. Today we bought a whole day subway pass (an incredible bargain at 4 Euros each) and went out across the city to the National Archaeological Museum. I should state in advance that Barb and I don’t usually go to a lot of museums when we travel but every single travel reference said that this museum was a must-see and they were all pretty much true. I liked that they allowed cameras to be taken in (as long as you didn’t use a flash) and the museum was pretty massive and took about 90 minutes and that was going at a pretty fast pace. Some of the stone and bronze sculptures were such as the one in the above photo were very impressive to see how they were sculpted a couple of thousand years ago.

One of the highlights of our few days in Athens was a bit of a surprise to me as I didn’t think that it would be worth going again: the Acropolis. Why the surprise? Well, not only is it the iconic structure of Athens, it also happens to be the major tourist magnet and it’s not uncommon to see dozens of tour busses parked at the bottom and thousands of people packed in at all times. Did we really want to climb up the steps to see this along with the hordes of other people?

Absolutely!

Pro tip: if you’re going to visit the Acropolis, get there for 8AM when it opens. Not only are the crowds a fraction of what they would be later on but if you’re by yourself, you can run ahead of the slower moving tour groups and get some photos (in perfect morning light). Yes, we saw the Acropolis 20 years ago but it was one of the highlights of the trip so far and is a must-see in my opinion.

This will very likely be the last blog update for about a week. Tomorrow morning we are boarding a small ship for a cruise through the Greek islands. The ship is very small, only about 25 cabins, and it will actually only be my second time on a cruise ship, the first time on our honeymoon. I have to say that I’m really looking forward to this part of the trip but our Internet access may be very limited so you may not hear from us until we disembark the following Saturday.

Until then.

Baden