Our flight arrived around 9 p.m. and after climbing into a taxi we made our way along the broad highway towards Athens. While Lena and I sat in stunned silence in the backseat our driver Facetimed his son, letting him know he’d be home soon, while swerving across lanes and speeding around other traffic. Luckily he wrapped up his call before we made it into the city proper, where even at 9 p.m. the streets are filled with cars, trucks, and chaotic scooters. With his eyes more focused on the road he pointed out a few landmarks along the way in broken English. We nodded and pretended like we knew what he was talking about. In truth, we’d researched hardly at all.
At one intersection he pointed out the Acropolis in the distance, lit up by hundreds of floodlights and visible from anywhere in the city that had an unobstructed view. I only had a vague idea of what it was (again, no research) but knew instantly that I wanted to go. I’m a history nerd but Lena isn’t so I made a point of extracting a promise from her that we would go to some of the ruins in the city.
Our stop in Athens wasn’t really our destination, it was a way to get two trips out of one on our way to Skiathos, a small Greek island north of the capital, where we’d be spending two weeks for my mom’s 60th birthday. This was the justification for our lack of research.
In the end I didn’t need to extract any promise from Lena to see historical sites because that’s just about all there is to do in Athens anyway. Punctuated by brief stops for coffee and prolonged Greek feasts we hoofed it from one ancient ruin to another over two days.
For lunch Lena found a famous souvlaki stand that she said was worth the 20 minute walk through Athenian traffic. When we arrived there was a line of ten or so. Nine of which looked like tourists. We couldn’t all fit into the tiny shop so I volunteered to order for us when we got to the front of the line. I stepped through the door and waited for the cook behind the counter to show me he was ready to take my order.
“Two chicken, one veggie, and one beef souvlaki, please,” I said through my mask.
He looked at me with a blank stare. “We don’t have that, only pork,” he said in accented English.
I paused, feeling stupid for having no clue about what food I would be getting. I shrugged.
“Then four pork souvlaki, please!”
I passed the man’s wife 10 euros for the bag of souvlaki and squeezed past the line back outside. Still shocked that each bundle of pork and veggies wrapped in pita was only €2.50 I relayed the story to the others and they laughed, not at all upset that they wouldn’t get what they’d ordered. We walked to a nearby park and dug into what can only be described as heaven. The pita was soft and doughy, the pork tender, the veggies fresh and crisp, topped with fresh tzatziki for both creaminess and some zest. It’s one of the world’s many wonderful flatbread wraps. We enjoyed every moment of our wraps while resting our feet in the park before moving, somewhat reluctantly, on to the next set of ruins.
After a long first day our feet were all sore but over dinner and ouzo I insisted on waking up early to be at the acropolis at 8 a.m. when it opened. There was some pushback but we all agreed in the end that avoiding the heat of the Mediterranean sun and quite a few tourists would be a good idea. It didn’t hurt that the light for photography would be much better.
The next morning, with our bellies full of greek yogurt and caffeine, we made our way across town and up the hill that sits under the acropolis, arriving only a few minutes after 8. It was already bustling with people. I ran around shooting hundreds of photos of the Parthenon and Erechtheum as the sun marched higher into the sky. Before long we all craved a cold drink and some shade so we made our way back down the hill.
Before we knew it our two days were up. But we didn’t have a moment’s thought to spare before boarding a tiny Olympic Air propeller plane on our way to the real vacation: Skiathos.