(Athens, Greece)

I took a lot of pictures of Athens from the Acropolis, so we did our best to see some of the nearby neighbourhoods afterward.

As noted in an earlier post about Athens, we had a great lunch near Syntagma Square. A more famous sight at Syntagma Square is the Greek parliament building, along with its hourly changing-of-the-guard proceedings. Guards need to be a certain height (at least 1.87 metres, or about 6’2″), and must have exceptional abilities to focus on their duties. And they must be fit: their boots are incredibly heavy, at more than 3 kg!

That evening, we were looking for a quick but interesting dinner close to our hotel. We still had some jet lag to contend with, and we would be moving on from Athens the next morning. We ended up eating at a popular little place called Feyrouz, quite close to the Monastiraki metro station we had first visited just 24 hours earlier. They advertised themselves as a place to get “Levantine Street Food.”

For my main course, I opted for a Peinirli. It is a bread boat stuffed with savoury toppings. Mine was called “Roostic”, as in “rooster”. In addition to “rooster”, it included some fermented Middle Eastern “sauerkraut” and walnuts. Very tasty and interesting.

Dessert was some chocolate/cherry gelato from a dessert place near our hotel on Adrianou Street. We had to try it – we’ve already seen a lot of gelato here, and all of it has been displayed very attractively. We then had to figure out how our trip would move on from Athens, as we had only booked two nights there.

It wasn’t easy to figure out. I normally invest weeks or even months in the process of deciding where to spend my precious vacation time. And now I had to make that decision in a matter of hours, without any books or detailed research. The choices were somewhat limited too, due to what was happening in and around the Middle East. But, in a stressful phone call with an airline, we stumbled upon a solution.

To leave Athens the next morning, we headed back to Monastiraki station (the photo at the very top of this post was taken outside that station) with our luggage. This is the one aspect of travelling I really dislike: hauling luggage around. I always try to pack as little as possible, but in this case world events were unfolding on the day we left. If you don’t know exactly where you are going, efficient packing can be a real challenge.

We headed to the airport on the same subway line we took less than 48 hours before. Even though we had spent very little time in Greece so far, the ride already felt much more comfortable. We absolutely cannot speak Greek (other than a few social niceties), but we have made considerable progress in reading it.

So, where were we going? All shall be revealed in the next blog post!