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Published: October 29th 2022
Every story can be told in different ways… ~ Greek Proverb
HE SAID... Today we were setting out to explore the ancient city of
Athens.
Having navigated three different time zones (Australia, United Arab Emirates and Greece) in as many days, we struggled to wake the next morning. Our bodies were still trying to adjust to the seven-hour difference. We headed straight to the hotel’s breakfast room and hydrated with fruit juice and seven cups of tea (each)! I couldn’t get enough of the Greek yoghurt with fruit and honey, and Ren couldn’t resist the
spanakopita (spinach and feta phyllo pie). 😊
We were still dazed from our last three days of travel, so we took a bit of time to organise ourselves in our room before heading out at 11am for a market tour of Athens. Ren had been gifted an Urban Adventures ‘Private Taste of Athens Experience’ for contributing to Intrepid Travel’s diversity policy. We decided to use the walking tour on our first morning in Athens, as we thought it would allow us to get our bearings without too much map work and navigation.
As we made our way to Kotzia Square – the meeting point for the market tour – I heard a
slight commotion behind me. A local shopkeeper was running after us. We stopped in bewilderment on the pavement. He informed me that a couple of dodgy blokes had been eyeing off my camera (which I had on a strap around my neck) and suggested I secure it tightly. When he pointed out the two blokes, who were standing only metres away, I could see what he meant. I took a few seconds to slip the camera under my shoulder, and when I looked up again, they’d disappeared. We looked up and down Athinas Street and the adjacent side streets, but they’d vanished into thin air. The shopkeeper simply smiled and waved as he shuffled back to his shop.
When we arrived at Kotzia Square, our guide George was waiting for us. I have to say, at a very early stage, that I wasn’t sure about George. He had a lot to say, and he heard very little, which has always been a flashing red flag for me. Someone once said: ‘Beware people with big mouths and small ears.’ I’ve always found this to be sound advice. 😊
Anyway, George took us for a walk around the shops and
markets close to our hotel, talking all the while and listening to very little. We enjoyed coffee frappe at a rooftop bar with yet another amazing view of the Acropolis. We sampled
spanakopita and
bougatsa (custard phyllo pie) on the street. We sampled olives, olive oil and
mastika from a small corner store that was owned by an older, friendlier George (who listened to and answered all of our questions and happily shared his knowledge of olives). It was from this George that I discovered the magic of
mastika, a liqueur seasoned with resin from the mastic tree (a small evergreen that is native to the Greek island of Chios). Our hotel had a large glass container of
mastika on the reception counter as a welcome drink, and despite everyone’s well-meaning warnings that it is an acquired taste, I loved it immediately.
We walked through a fruit market where we encountered an elderly (and very angry) Greek woman berating a young store holder for not having a certain type of fruit. We stopped at a small delicatessen and sampled three different cheeses – a feta, a gruyere-type cheese and a sheep’s milk cheese – which we enjoyed with dried
figs, olives, dry crumbly rusks and the odd glass of
tsipouro (a home-brewed spirit with a high alcohol content). We stood on the pavement and sampled all of this exceptional produce from a folding table provided by the friendly delicatessen staff, and it was the absolute highlight of the tour for me.
We discovered George had a degree in history, and a degree in archaeology, but was unable to work as an academic in his area of expertise. As a result, he had to work as a tour guide. He understandably wasn’t happy about it, and it showed.
As George walked us through the Central Market with limited commentary (I think he was over the tour by this stage), we encountered the meat and fish stalls. I started to realise that shoes would have been a better option than thongs (flip flops) for this part of the tour, but it was too late. The market floor was flowing with a wet slurry of blood and offal, and my thongs offered little (if any) protection.
We made our way to Monastiraki Square, where we sampled
souvlaki (grilled meat wrapped in a pita with hot chips, tomatoes, onion and
yoghurt sauce) from the ‘best souvlaki shop in Athens, if not Greece’ – according to George. He’d started to make stuff up on the fly. He walked us into the middle of the square and stopped, for no apparent reason, in the searing afternoon sun. We were far too hot to eat in Monastiraki’s busy surrounds, so we decided to save our
souvlaki for later. Anything to escape the sun!
We had one last stop – a popular
loukoumades shop in Agia Irini Square.
Loukoumades are doughnuts covered in honey and cinnamon, and they’re not for the calorie conscious or faint of heart. George emerged from the shop with a box of ten, and we knew immediately we would never manage them all. They were nice enough, but very stodgy, and far too heavy for a hot afternoon snack. I packed them away with the
souvlaki, knowing we’d revisit them later in the day.
George was finished. He’d told us a lot about himself and heard nothing about us. He was running a ‘Taste of Athens’ food tour, but he didn’t like Athenian food. He only liked food from the region in Greece where he was born. While
his three-hour tour encompassed the key streets and precincts around our hotel, we could easily have discovered these in the same timeframe with a basic map. There had been a few highlights, but George wasn’t among them. I realised we had a problem with George when he took umbrage at Ren for wafting away cigarette smoke from a group sitting beside us. He lectured us on the rights of Greek men to smoke whenever and wherever they liked, and that people who visit Greece must respect this. A picture was emerging of George, and it wasn’t a happy one.
We bid farewell and made our way back to Hotel Attalos, which was only a short walk from Agia Irini Square. We desperately needed to recover from the amount of food we’d consumed and the amount of sun we’d absorbed.
Feeling suitably refreshed after a few welcome cups of tea, we headed back out into the mid-afternoon sun to explore the grungy narrow lanes on the western side of our hotel. We loved the urban landscape of this precinct (known as Psyrri), and we were fascinated by the cobblestone lanes that spindled and weaved around our hotel like a
spider web. It was fast becoming one of our favourite precincts in Athens.
We returned to our hotel in the late afternoon and headed straight to the rooftop bar, where we settled at a table with a couple of cold drinks and worked on our travel notes. Every so often I would look up and marvel at the magnificent Acropolis in front of us. It was still hard to believe that we were actually here, and that we had finally embarked on our Greek adventure.
SHE SAID... On our first morning in
Athens we both stirred at about 3am, but forced ourselves to go back to sleep. However, when the alarm went off at 7am, I just couldn’t wake up. I find if I don’t fight jetlag in those first 24 hours, it plagues me for a long time, so I struggled awake. We eventually wandered down for breakfast.
The breakfast buffet at Hotel Attalos held a vast selection of the usual western hotel breakfast items, but also had many Greek options including yoghurt and honey, fresh cucumber, tomatoes, feta (a white slightly salty sheep milk cheese), two types of local yellow cheese, salami, and
dolmades (vine leaf rolls stuffed with herbed rice). There were also Greek bakery items like
spanakopita (spinach and feta phyllo pie),
tiropita (feta phyllo pie), syrupy sweet
baklava (layered phyllo pastry filled with chopped nuts and soaked in honey syrup),
kartaifi (vermicelli-like pastry stuffed with nuts and soaked in honey syrup),
halva (a fluffy nougat-like variety of halva made with sugar and peanut paste), and other sweets I didn’t recognise.
As is always the case when I first get to a country, my eyes were much bigger than my stomach, and I ate far too much considering we were doing a food tour of the Central Market later that morning. After all these years of travelling together, Andrew is still trying to figure out how someone who has no desire to eat breakfast at home, can eat so many (sometimes quite unusual and different) food items for breakfast when in a new country. 😄
When we stepped out of Hotel Attalos in downtown Athens at 10:30am, the day was already heating up. I looked up past the non-descript medium-rise buildings on Athinas Street and immediately saw the Parthenon. This was my first view of it in daylight, and
again, as I had the night before, I felt its magnetic power. I absolutely loved its colossal size and how it omnipresent-ly watched over its city.
We were about to embark on a three-hour Urban Adventures walking tour called ‘A Taste of Athens’, so we walked a couple of blocks up Athinas Street to Kotzia Square where we were meeting our guide. The large square is bordered by neoclassical buildings on all sides (including the Town Hall) and has a statement fountain in the middle. It probably is quite beautiful; however, the fountain and half the square were sectioned off, and it looked like they were setting up for some of event. We met our Urban Adventures guide George under a shady tree.
To give some background to Urban Adventures – they are a subsidiary of Intrepid Travel, who we have a long association with. We often do Urban Adventures’ walking and food tours in cities when we first arrive. It’s a fabulous way to get our bearings in a new city – both directional and food-wise! It also gives us a feel for the food culture directly from a local.
We have had some amazing food
tours around the world, so obviously our expectations were high. However, there were two things different about this trip – firstly, this was a private tour for the two of us (normally there would be four or five other people in the group), and we wondered how we would cope with being the main and only focus of the guide. Secondly, this was a free trip that Intrepid Travel had gifted me as a thank you for helping with their ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ guidelines. I was grateful for such a thoughtful and generous gift; but I was slightly uncomfortable that it was a freebie.
George introduced himself as an Archaeologist and Historian. I immediately wondered if Intrepid had erroneously sent me the details to join one of their Ancient Ruins tours instead of their Food tour. But after a few minutes George mentioned walking to the Central Market, so I said nothing.
George gave us a brief history of Kotzia Square and then asked us if we’d like to have some coffee. We walked down a small side street with a tiny church in among the shops and apartments. George explained that while there were large churches
and basilicas for big occasions, most people preferred to ‘everyday pray’ at these small one-room neighbourhood churches. I was intrigued by them. We had woken to church bells that morning, and I now wanted to find the neighbourhood church that was closest to our hotel.
We cut onto Athinas Street and walked back down towards the Acropolis, ducked down a small lane and into the foyer of a hotel. We took the lift to a rooftop cafe (MS Roof Garden), which had a great view of the Acropolis. Given it was a warm morning, George suggested we have frappes. Now I had been looking forward to Greek frappes ever since I’d heard of them, but unfortunately my expectations were not met. It was basically a cup of cold instant coffee served in a tall glass topped with foam. I had no idea it was made with instant coffee, or that it was strong enough to floor a small donkey! Lesson learnt. I think the
freddo cappuccino (a cappuccino served over ice) will be what I’ll be ordering in future.
I have to admit that while the setting on the rooftop cafe had a lovely view of the Acropolis,
I had been expecting a far more local and less touristy coffee stop. Poor George didn’t know that our hotel was only a block away and also had this same view – so he didn’t get the massive Wow! from us that he was clearly expecting.
So far, the food tour wasn’t going fabulously for me. While having our coffees and chatting, I got a massive lecture from George about smokers’ rights. I happened to ask a very sincere question about the smoking laws in Greece (after cigarette smoke from the next table had wafted into my face), and he got really fired up! I got a speech about smoking being a part of the Greek culture and it was a bloke’s right to smoke with a coffee or his food. He ended with an emphatic ‘if you come to Greece, this is what we do!’. Wow. Okey dokey then. I guess he was really frustrated that Greece had introduced anti-smoking legislation, and as a smoker he somehow blamed tourists for the change! Imagine his reaction if instead of a simple question, I had shared my views on public smoking etiquette with him! 😉
Anyway, moving on… George
walked us back up Athinas Street. We stopped at Creme Royal Bakehouse Cafe for a taste of
spanakopita and
bougatsa (custard phyllo pie). They were both seriously delicious, but oh my god that
bougatsa was beyond luscious!
Bougatsa is a typical Greek breakfast pastry, and I’d been hanging out to try it – and this time my expectations were very much exceeded. 😊
We kept walking towards the Central Market area, and turned down Evripidou Street which skirts the market and is filled with shops renowned for high quality herbs, spices and deli products. We stopped at a small but busy olive shop (called Roe Olives). Georgios (another George) was the lovely owner of this corner store, and he took time out of serving his customers to give us a briefing on the olives and olive oils he carried. We loved the fact that everything he sells is from his family’s organic farms in the Peloponnese peninsula, and that he personally knows how everything has been grown and produced.
We had an olive oil tasting, which sadly, to my uninitiated palate, tasted like any other extra virgin olive oil I’ve had. We also had an olive tasting, and
it turns out I have a discerning palate for olives but not olive oil! Georgios explained how they extract different flavours from the olives (for different food requirements). He gave us olives from the same tree picked when green and then black, and then the same batch of olives that had been cured in different ways – just soaked in water, brined, dry salted or in vinegar etc. I couldn’t believe how different they all tasted. My favourite was a large black olive from Sparta (on the Peloponnese Peninsula) that was unsalted – it tasted like a savoury prune.
I feel a bit foolish that I have been eating olives virtually my whole adult life but never really pondered why we don’t eat ripe olives straight off the tree. How have I never been aware that all olives regardless of maturity need to have the bitterness removed through a curing process? I learnt so much from Georgios in that short time we spent with him.
We then moved on to a tasting of different raw honeys – thyme, orange and pine. I loved the aromatic thyme honey the most, but the dark pine fir honey was also very
interesting (and vaguely familiar). Pine honey is extremely unusual because pine trees don’t produce pollen, so in mountainous areas with no flowers or fruit blossom, the bees collect the sugary honeydew secretions from an insect which lives on the sap of pine trees. And it was only later that night I realised I’d had (and loved) this dark honey in Turkey too, but clearly hadn’t known what it was!
Our last sample was of
mastic liqueur (also called
mastika).
Mastic is a resin gathered from the mastic tree; a small evergreen tree native to the Greek island of Chios. It’s very sought-after and used in many products, both for its texture and very distinct flavour. Our hotel had a self-service ‘welcome drink’ in a large glass jar with a tap. Andrew loved it, but I wasn’t so sure about it… and we’d only just realised exactly what it was. We’ll definitely come back to Roe Olives to buy some
mastika before we fly home.
We said goodbye to the lovely Georgios and walked through the fruit and vegetable section of the market to a small cheese shop that also sold all manner of dried rations like pasta, biscuits
and rusks. George greeted Costa like an old friend, and on seeing us, Costa brought out a tiny folding table and set it up on the footpath. We shared a small platter of three cheeses – a soft crumbly Feta (a white slightly salty sheep milk cheese, the most famous of Greek cheeses), a Graviera (a yellow nutty hard sheep milk cheese from Crete, very much like a Gruyere) and a Kasseri (a yellow tangy semi-hard sheep and goat milk cheese from the Thessaloniki area). These were served with Kalamata olives, dried figs and carob rusks.
I didn’t understand or appreciate the dry rusks in this context, but everything else worked well together. Having never seen carob rusks before I quizzed George on them, but all I gathered is that people like to eat them with cheese. I’ve only known carob powder as a substitute for coffee or chocolate, but never used as a flour. And I think I would have liked the rusk if it had been served with something with moisture or oil. It was just too dry with only cheese. I’ll have to investigate further.
We also tasted
tsipouro for the first time. It’s a
strong grape-distilled brandy that is very similar to Italian grappa. Andrew took to it immediately, but it was way too strong for me (especially at that time of day). George explained the cultural significance of having small plates of food when catching up with friends, and chatting while sipping a drink like
tsipouro or
ouzo (an aniseed flavoured Greek spirit). It was something people would do after work or in the late afternoon to tide them over until dinner (which is served notoriously late in Greece). I enjoyed this stop, but we were already so full from the coffee, two pies and olive and honey tastings that we just couldn’t finish the cheeses. 😞
We continued our walk through the meat and fish sections of the Central Market. Being the main meat and fish market in the city, it was quite busy; but it was also full-on in terms of having animal carcasses and offal on display. It was great to see a nose-to-tail approach to butchery here – some of the butchery stalls had whole carcasses hanging in glass cabinets (I saw lamb, goat, and pigs) and customers would merely point to the cut they wanted. There were
also stalls that seemed to only have offal, especially tripe. There was a lot of tripe. I loved that nothing goes to waste, but it definitely wasn’t a market for the squeamish.
The fish section in an adjoining building was thriving too, but it wasn’t the most pleasant place to walk through with centimetres of fishy melt water (and occasionally guts) slushing around on the floor. Thankfully it wasn’t smelly in the least!
It was an interesting experience walking through these market sections. However, we could have walked through on our own. I had expected more of an interactive and educational market tour which added value to the experience. I also wish we’d come to the market as one of the first stops on the tour, rather than so late in the afternoon. We’d been literally standing just a few metres away in Kotzia Square, but bypassed the market and went for coffee! While many of the stalls were still doing a good trade when we visited, they were clearly getting ready to close for the day.
We exited the market and George led us back down Athinas Street for the third time on our way to
the next stop at Monastiraki Square. It seemed like a missed opportunity and a waste of time to keep walking up and down the same main street… Anyway, Monastiraki Square is a popular central meeting point and has all the touristy, tacky and unsavoury elements to go with such a place. When reading up on Athens’ neighbourhoods, I had thought I’d love Monastiraki Square; but in reality, I really didn’t take to it.
From this point on, the tour got a bit weird. George told us to wait on the corner of the square while he went to buy us
souvlaki (grilled meat wrapped in a pita with hot chips, tomatoes, onion and yoghurt sauce). Now the whole point of a food tour is to understand the food, speak to the people involved and visit the places where the food is served. Therefore, we were quite perplexed that he’d left us. We wondered if we’d heard him incorrectly, so we followed him anyway. I’m glad we did. The
souvlakis were from Bairaktaris Taverna – an expansive bustling place that spilled onto the pavement area bordering the square.
We’d normally never ever frequent a place that looked like a
massive tourist trap, but this was our first lesson in picking restaurants in Greece – what may look like a tourist trap (tables on the footpath, menus in multiple languages, and waiters trying to persuade you to come in) isn’t always one; and even if it caters to tourists (like this one clearly did), it didn’t at all mean the food wasn’t traditional, delicious or reasonably priced! Bairaktaris Taverna is a sixth-generation restaurant run by the same family since 1879, and has a reputation for serving great
souvlaki the traditional way. I was a bit surprised to see hot chips included inside the pita wrap rather than on the side (like I’ve always had them), but this was the traditional way it was done. 😊
We got our
souvlaki (one chicken and one pork) and then realised George expected us to eat them while standing in the blazing sun in the middle of Monastiraki Square while he stood awkwardly next to us! I was extremely confused. I tentatively asked him if this was the end of the tour. He listlessly replied that there was one more stop at a dessert place. By this stage I was ready for the
tour to end, so while Andrew had a half-hearted go at his
souvlaki, I wrapped mine up as best I could and put it in an outside pocket of my bag… and prayed it didn’t leak yoghurt sauce all over my things!
We were both very hot and bothered by now, but soldiered on to the last stop. We walked down Ermou Street and up Eolou Street to a place that specialised in
loukoumades. I’m a very big fan of these puffy doughnut balls drenched in honey and sprinkled with cinnamon. However, as with the coffee stop, I was quite surprised that we were at a very modern shop where people were walking out with chocolate
loukoumades. Thankfully, the ones he bought us were the traditional ones. Again, despite us repeatedly asking him to join us in eating the generous portion of
loukoumades, he stood around awkwardly as we ate. Needless to say, we were both super relieved when the tour ended. We said our goodbyes and hobbled back to the hotel (luckily just a block away) for a rest and to debrief about one of the weirdest food tours we’ve ever done. 😊
On reflection, it hadn’t
been a bad tour at all – I had very much enjoyed the ‘meet the producers’ part of the day, but even the best planned tours are only as good as the guides who execute them. And sadly, I don’t think George’s heart was in guiding food tours. He gave the strong impression that he’d rather be doing something closer to what he valued, like working on an archaeological dig or teaching history. I totally understand his position and I very much hope he gets his wish.
After a few cups of tea and some aircon cool down in our hotel room, we felt sufficiently reenergised to tackle more of the city. Coming straight from a cold winter into a hot summer is clearly knocking my body around and it looks like the heat is going to take a bit of getting used to!
When planning our days in Athens, I had approached it like I do with any city and had broken it down into neighbourhoods. Our hotel was between the Monastiraki and Psyrri neighbourhoods, so it made sense to start where we were staying.
We set off to explore the neighbourhood of Psyrri, which was
just behind our hotel. We predictably got lost in all the winding streets and lanes that twisted and turned in on themselves. This neighbourhood was dilapidated in parts, but extremely lively and vibrant in others. There were pockets of chic urban fashion, niche giftware shops and handmade shoe workshops hidden in among boarded up and scaffolded buildings. There were lanes and squares full of cafes and restaurants spilling onto the pavement.
It’s not a huge neighbourhood but I found it so appealing that I could easily have spent whole days looking in the unique shops, and trying all the cafes and restaurants. Both of us absolutely loved this part of town.
However, after a couple of hours of walking around, our sunburnt necks and tired feet told us in no uncertain terms that it was time to head back to the hotel and rest. We listened, and spent the rest of the very late afternoon and evening sitting on the hotel rooftop. We had been in Athens less than 24 hours at that point, and we had already been to our beloved rooftop three times… we had even chosen a favourite table! 😄
With cold drinks ordered
(Fix beer for Andrew and mixed juice cocktail for me), we wrote travel notes and watched the setting sun transform the Parthenon in interesting ways. The stone pillars changed from white to cream to golden pinks and reds over the course of a few hours. However, by the time the floodlights lit up the Acropolis and the other rooftop bars around us came alive, I was sporting far too many mosquito bites for comfort. It was time to move inside.
We were too full from the food tour to even consider dinner, so we had a relatively early night and continued catching up on our travel notes in our room. One lovely thing George had done for us was get takeaway bags for our leftover
bougatsa and
loukoumades, and together with our leftover
souvlaki, they made for a lovely room picnic. 😊
Despite the slightly disappointing food tour (and despite dreary George), I had begun to fall deeply in love with Athens! I’m not sure it’s always a good thing, but I have very strong first impressions of people and places, and from the onset, I had felt very safe, very comfortable, and very welcome in Athens.
We have another two days in this amazing city (on this section of the trip), and I really can’t wait to get to know it better!
See you around Athens!
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DaveandIssy
Dave and Issy Sheehan
George
I’ve often heard it said that God gave us two ears and one mouth for a reason, but sounds like George didn’t get the memo. …and telling people off for not wanting to kill themselves by inhaling other people’s disgusting smoke…. Someone’s definitely in the wrong job.