Happy Oxi!
The bells are ringing this morning to start the
holiday. This is sort of a patriotic day
in Greece but it starts at church for a lot of folks. The country is mostly Greek Orthodox (or
Orthodox Christian) and there are churches on every other corner, sort of like
bars in Wisconsin. There is a little
coffee shop next door where we grab a couple cups to go and a couple
lemon-filled flaky pastry things. We
want to see what is going on down on the square and take our treats down there
to sit on a wall like locals. There
isn’t a lot of activity but it is a crisp, cool morning with blue skies and
we’re happy.
We leave the square on Adrianou Street past the Greek Agora
on one side and rows of little restaurants on the other. There are a couple little restaurants down
here that we have on our list and wanted to make sure we could find them if
necessary. Whoever told us that all the
shops would be closed today was very mistaken.
Some of the bigger businesses are closed but the little places are still
scrambling for euros. We reverse course
going back through the square again looking for some sort of celebration taking
place but it isn’t happening. There are
a couple folks with little Greek flags but no parades or fireworks.
We trudge most of the way back up the Acropolis hill to the
Acropolis Museum. There is a pretty long
line of people waiting to get in (it is free today) but it is moving
quickly. It is pretty crowded with a lot
of families—bring your little kids to look at old vases and statues—which maybe
means it is a patriotic thing to do today.
The place is huge, however, so we can get close to anything we need to
see or read.
The marble statues, many reconstructed from scraps, are
incredible. We’re amazed that the people
who do this can start with a few pieces of a jigsaw puzzle and be able to make
it whole. There are also large pieces of
the structures of the Acropolis that are preserved here acting as models for
some of the reconstruction.
Interestingly, the museum is built over the ruins of a part of the
original city of Athens that you can view through a glass floor. Pictures were not allowed so for future
reference we will be reminded of our day by going on-line to http://www.theacropolismuseum.gr/en/photos-amateur-use.
It’s about 12:30 when we leave the museum and walk up to the
Acropolis Hop-on bus stop. We’re going
to finish our tour today. We take the
green line for two reasons. This bus
goes to the Port of Piraeus, our departure point on Thursday that we want to check out in advance, and we want to
have lunch down on the water. The bus
employee tells us to get off at stop #5 for a nice authentic lunch on the
water. On the way to Piraeus we go past
some of the venues from the 2004 Olympics; the basketball/volleyball arena and
the beach volleyball stadium. We see our
ferry pier as we go around the harbor and on past the cruise ship terminal and
some pretty fancy marinas. We see a lot
of places on the water for lunch so stop #5 must really be special. Even the automated narration on the bus
suggests that stop #5 is the place for a fun on the water experience.
Well, we got off at stop #5.
What we see is a smallish harbor lined with restaurants about 200 feet
below us. Well, it’s a nice day for a
walk but we dread the walk back up.
Since we have zero information we decide that we should look for a place
that has a view and is busy with locals so we head down. As it turns out every place has a view and is
filled with locals so just grab one. Now
we know what people in Greece do on holidays, they go to lunch with their
families.
We wait for a while for menus and then another while for a
waiter who eventually brings us a couple beers.
There is a long list of fish on the menu priced by the kg. and we really
don’t know the ropes. Our waiter is
having long conversations with other tables obviously discussing the options,
but the language barrier doesn’t allow for that level of dialogue. Finally we just order a Greek salad and a
plate of fried shrimp to share. The
salad arrives fairly soon but not so much with the shrimp. The real restaurant is across the street and
waiters run back and forth with trays of food and we keep watching for
ours. In fact it takes about 45 minutes
and when it comes there are 5 shrimp on a plate with a menu price of 17
euros. This is just great. We scarf those down grumbling all the while
and get our check. The price of the
shrimp turned out to be 10 euros so we don’t know if that was a crappy service
price adjustment or if the menu was wrong.
We do cross the street to use the WC and we got to share side by side
stalls in the unisex bathroom—a first for us.
We trudge back up the hill, catch the green line back to the
Acropolis and switch to the red line for the rest of the tour. We see the rest of Athens that we have
ignored for the last 48 hours. Pretty
parks, impressive museums, the parliament, embassies and the Olympic stadium
from 1896. We also pass the Athens
tennis club that has hosted three Olympic tennis events. We like staying close to the ground in the
neighborhoods but the pretty places are fun to see too.
The sun is pretty well down by the time we finish the bus
ride and we are cold to the bone from sitting in the upper open deck. We get off at “our” square and hustle back to
the hotel to warm up. John does a little
more restaurant research and finds a “don’t miss” place about a 15 minute walk
away. They have some Greek dishes but it
has a greater variety in a cool Sinatra sort of setting. Perfect.
We’re pretty hungry after two lemon pastries, a salad and
five shrimp between us for the day. The
restaurant is tiny and more bar-like than restaurant. We get a seat inside and there aren’t many
people here. We order a bottle of cheap
wine—sorry but we’re out of that, but we can bring you this. OK, no problem. We order a houlimi (the grilled cheese) and a
lamb burger with mashed potatoes and green beans for John and a pesto pizza for
Mary.
Now we notice that several people are smoking and we ask our
server if you can smoke in here. Of
course. We tell her that we are going to
move to an outside table. When she
brings out the houlimi Mary points out the no smoking sign on the window and
ask why there is smoking allowed inside.
“That’s Greece,” she says. A few
minutes later John gets his burger, a regular burger, not the lamb burger,
fries not mashed, no green beans. The
pizza will be out in just a minute. John
slowly starts to nibble on his burger, no pizza yet. The burger is half gone 10 minutes later, no
pizza yet. John shares the last half of
his burger with Mary, 15 minutes later no pizza yet. We ask for the check and take off the
pizza. OK, so sorry. Well, that’s Greece.
It’s a good day to be on a diet. We take a leisurely stroll down Ermou street,
a newly invented shopping/pedestrian street.
When we get to the hotel we each take a hit of the local liqueur that
resides on the front desk and head upstairs.
We have a 4:50 wake up in the morning.
The clouds and full moon and Parthenon make a great sight from our
balcony.
What did we learn today?
Maybe there’s a reason tourists go to tourist restaurants.
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