Athens, Greece

I spent the day today with the best tour guide of my trip so far.  I found out a friend of mine from college, Paige, is living in Athens and she volunteered to spend the day with me while I was there. I was free of fancy tour busses and old folk tours for the day, and was able to see the city from the perspective of a local. We hiked our way up to a viewing place that overlooked the whole city and Acropolis and was completely tourist free. We continued our walk through the busy streets, passing by the merchants who were selling local trinkets, t-shirts, and snacks along the way.  Paige took me to a few shops that were not as easily recognizable by the typical postcard and t-shirt display. I loved getting to see places that I usually would have missed had I been walking with a large tourist group. For lunch, we went to a local favorite of hers, and now mine too.  We sat outside the restaurant along the path of people walking by, bumping into our table as they passed. I stared, feeling clueless, as Paige spoke to our waiter, and ordered for the both of us, in Greek. We had the most amazing Greek salad and kebab with pita that I have ever had.  Ok, it’s the only Greek food I’ve ever had, but I’m sure it will be the best of future experiences as well. 

 

After lunch, I got to experience the real life of the locals, as we took the metro to a coffee shop up towards the part of town where she lives.  Millennium coffee shop is a quaint little place that has couches taking up most of its floor space, and walls covered with a design of black velvet paisley wallpaper.  The iced frappes we had, with a side of powdered sugar nutella filled donuts were the perfect taste to this eclectic little place. If you’ve never had nutella, you need to have some. The chocolate hazelnut peanutbutterish stuff is quite possibly the best thing I have ever tasted.  With about 30 minutes until I had to be back, we went on a desperate mission to find me a jar of nutella to take back on the ship. The local grocery store was closed on Sunday, so it was up to the few neighborhood sales men in the small one room “convenient” stores. After Paige tried describing to him in broken Greek what it was we needed (it’s hard enough describing the stuff in English), the language barrier finally fell and he showed us he had what we were looking for.  After all that, the jar stayed right there on the shelf where we found it, because the guy looked at me like I was crazy when I showed him I was going to pay in dollars. The first time dollars have been denied on my trip, I knew now that I was truly in a local area of town. My second option of a credit card didn’t work either and one guy even examined my card like he had never seen one before.  In the end, I did find a place that was up to date in the world of credit cards and accepted my visa.  Of course though not without a charge of at least 10 Euros.  With about five minutes until I was going to be left behind, Paige, the salesman and I quickly searched the store and we each threw a few things on the counter to help my total. I left with the much needed nutella jar, a pack of gum, and some true Greek olive oil and liquor…it’s a good thing I only have a week left on this ship, or I might find myself alone in my room with an empty bottle of Greek liquor.  Whether it was Greece itself, or the fact that I haven’t hung out with anyone above the age of 12 and under the age of 50 in the past two months, I had such a fun day exploring Athens with Paige.