Day 3: visiting the Acropolis

Trip

Greece 2022

Location

Athens 🇬🇷

Date

August 29, 2022

Our day began, as any day does, with breakfast. We haven’t found our Greek rhythm yet. In Italy, we would go for an espresso and then head to a bakery for pizza sold by weight or a mozzarella bar and call it breakfast. In Greece, we haven’t found the equivalent yet. Lunch places open around noon, and that’s a little late for us (11:00 would be the sweet spot). They do have coffee shops that serve food, but from our research and our experience this morning, their menu is dominated by adapted North American breakfast staples. If you’re wondering what an adapted North American breakfast item is, think of anything you would get for breakfast at a restaurant in the US, and if it has cheese, replace it with feta.

This is our first and only full day in Athens. We’re starting with the obligatory visit to the Acropolis. As I did 11 years ago, we followed the Routard’s recommendation and avoided the “main” entrance where the buses go and went for the south slope entrance by the Acropolis Museum. Before beginning our trek, we took a moment to marvel at how contactless payment and Apple Pay on our phones made so many of our daily interactions much smoother. Buying a ticket at a machine is not new, but freeing ourselves from fetching our card from our wallet (as opposed to not having to carry a wallet now) and not having to play the confirmation of amount and doing the PIN dance with the keypad makes the whole process smoother. We will miss the “Free the code,” the hilarious and terrible translation that Transitilia machines used, which brought us endless laughter when the automated voice would speak it with authority during our train ticket purchase.

Most people will tell you to avoid going up to the Acropolis between noon and 15:00 as there’s next to no shade and the light stone reflects the heat right onto you. They’ll tell you it’s a good way to get cooked. Well, that’s assuming you don’t want to get cooked! We love baking in the warmth. Getting in from the south slope, we meandered our way through the two theatres on the site, including the 📍Dionysos Theatre still in use today, before making our way to the gates of the Acropolis summit. The site offers panoramic views of the city of Athens, along with the chance to explore ancient ruins and old stones up close.

After completing the visit, we made our way down and around the city to grab some water and then headed to the 📍Acropolis Museum, where they keep most of the artifacts that were removed from the site. Although some aspects remain in other countries, including Canada, they have made a genuine effort to help people understand what the site must have looked like through its use. It’s beautifully laid out and a pleasure to visit.

We rounded out our day with a second visit to 📍 Kafeneio for a mid-day meal (at 16:00) and their fried feta with honey, which we enjoyed so much the day before. From there, a couple more historical sites with the Ancient Agora of Athens (with the Temple of Hephaestus) and 📍Hadrian's Library. While we enjoyed the sites and views, both the Acropolis Museum and the museum on the site of the Agora confirmed we’re not yet over our clay pots and old stone overdose, which we got from the 📍Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi in Siracusa. It’s been four years. We were warned that the museum was dedicated to the subject and had many, many, many rooms devoted to pots, stone, and small objects found in the region, but we did not listen and ended up overdoing it. We were unable to focus on any plaque or give more than a passing glance to most small objects or reconstructions that did not include an original fragment that was at least person-sized. Also, the Greeks are not prominent in context. A sculpture of a horse will have the description: “Horse, 400 B.C.”. If that doesn’t bring a mental “thank you, Captain Obvious” to mind most times, I think you need your life captioned a bit too much.

We came down from our old stone visit in our apartment for a couple of hours and then headed for dinner at 📍Tzitzikas kai Mermigas. We chose the location mostly on the promise of a culinary tour of Greece. We were well served, including getting the occasion to try Naxos fried cheese ahead of our visit to Naxos later in our trip. It’s fried cheese with honey on top, all good stuff; what’s not to like? We tried our fourth Greek wine of the trip and are developing a liking for Greek wines. While the white and rosé tend to be on the sweet side, you can get a good dry finish. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed our food from around Greece (while not having left Athens yet), and it has made us look forward to discovering more dishes from the different islands we’ll be visiting throughout the month.