I didn’t really give much thought to visiting Athens until DJ discovered a cheap direct flight from Singapore with Scoot. Whenever Greece came up in our travel planning, I was more interested in the small islands and uninterrupted views of turquoise blue waters. As we were flying all the way, we kept aside 2.5 days for Athens in our itinerary, anyway.
We arrived at Athens International Airport on a pleasant morning in the May of 2019. As it was morning I wanted a caffeine fix and some food in the belly because we had just flown 11 hours on a low cost carrier. It wasn’t so bad as it may sound and we had the middle seat vacant, which made a huge difference. We browsed at the cafes at the airport, chose one and the first solid food item we had in Greece was a Spanakopita aka Greek Spinach Pie. DJ loved it so much that we had it almost everyday during our time in the country.
After the pie and coffee, we walked to the metro station to get to the city. The ride was uneventful but I enjoyed it as these metro rides are always your first introduction to a new place – how people dress, how they talk, how the houses are in the suburbs and how the buildings change as you get closer to the city center. It tells you something about the people and the place, doesn’t it?
As per google maps, we had to get off at Monastiraki Square station and from there we could just walk to our airbnb stay. As I stepped onto the ancient square of this ancient city, I could notice the architecture, the acropolis in the distance on top the hill and the tavernas in the adjacent laneways.
We found our airbnb with ease, were shown around by a young fellow and then left alone to our own devices. We explored the one-bedroom apartment, tinkered with the gas burner, the water heating settings and other appliances and fairly satisfied, plopped ourselves on the inviting bed to stretch our backs after almost 20 hours of travel.
We explored Athens partly on foot and partly by taking a hop-on-hop-off bus tour. As we explored the city we were pleasantly surprised by how much we were enjoying the historical sites, the interesting paraphernalia at the flea markets and the food, which was so good and so affordable.
As I toured in this time-capsule and took in the sights and smells, I started to realize that Athens reeked of a bygone grandeur. It had beautiful old buildings, painted in pretty pastel yellows right next to utterly worn-out ones which looked like they would crumble any second. It had the majestic Acropolis overlooking the entire city, the grand panathenaic (olympic) stadium made entirely of marble and it had ancient temples, arches and agoras – in ruins but still standing. You just had to close your eyes and imagine the capital from centuries ago, the seat of a formidable empire, the kings, nobels, warriors and the rest of the folk who walked here. How imposing those marble pillars and arches must have looked and how soul stirring or perhaps hair raising the ceremonies at the Temple of Zeus might have been?
It had the hill of the Areopagus from where to watch beautiful sunsets, pretty laneway cafes, old tavernas brimming with food, drink and conversations and it had hideous graffiti littering the city walls everywhere. It had beautiful handsome people and hapless homeless inhabitants, it had talented street performers and it had con-artists and scammers lurking around at the tourist spots.
Come to think of it, Athens was lovely-ugly and delicious. Just ignore the ugly because this capital has so much to offer.
– Sakshi
