Athens, Greece

Every trip has a point at which it feels like ‘okay, now I’m on vacation’. On this trip for me it was when we boarded the plane to Athens after our four hour layover in Cairo. We took a Cobus from the terminal, and it was 17C as we walked on the tarmac to board the plane. After one of the longest winters in Toronto, the warm breeze made it feel like our vacation had officially started.

A bonus was the ride on a Cobus, which long-time readers will recognize as my favourite brand of specialized transport. I find it funny at how they overly-brand their buses.

It took about 30 minutes to get through immigration in Athens. While waiting in line, we tracked our AirTags and saw that our bags had made it safely here as well.

We took a local taxi from the airport to our hotel. Our driver was familiar with Toronto and had visited Greektown on The Danforth! Although I’m suspecting many folks here have some connection to Toronto.

We arrived around 2pm at our hotel in Psyri, a gentrified neighbourhood near the historical sites in Athens. We unpacked and cleaned up, and then headed out to explore, trying to ward off our jet lag.

It was a perfect day for traveling - 18C and sunny. We walked around the narrow streets and alleys in Psyri, overflowing with cafés and restaurants. It felt like a movie set for a European street scene. It also didn’t feel overtaken by tourists, although I’m sure it’s different in peak season.

Scouted out a restaurant for dinner for later (Εστιατόριο Αυλή) that our hotel had recommended. The entrance is just a metal graffiti’d door to an alley, so not easy to recognize.

We then walked towards the Acropolis and other ruins. Every turn we took was another lively street scene with some ruin on a hill in the background. We have tickets to see the ruins in detail over the next few days (and also learn the names of each of the ruins), but as a first view, it was quite impressive. The relative lack of tourists was cool too. Heather said it reminded her of Kotor and Dubrovnik after the cruise ship passengers departed.

Anyways we spent a couple hours randomly wandering around. The Acropolis is high on a hill and made it easy for us to keep our bearings, so our wandering was just random and not aimless.

Around 6pm, we got back to our hotel, washed up and headed back out for dinner. Our homework paid off as we looked like we knew what we were doing as we opened the door to the restaurant. It was a really atmospheric place. We split a bunch of dishes, including the two specials, lima beans in tomato sauce, and an eggplant dish. It was all very tasty. They also had a very good 0% beer.

We were stuffed, so walked around a bit after dinner. The Acropolis and other ruins are all lit up at night and it’s really beautiful. It hardly seemed like we had just arrived this afternoon.