GREECE DAY 2 – TOP OF THE 'CROP 

We wake early and can already tell it’s gonna be a hot one.  Glad Mandy booked the early tour of the Acropolis.  We set out on the 15 minute walk to the meeting point and find a very local café for a light breakfast along the way.  We’re the only people not smoking when we sit down with our strong coffee and spanakopita.  It’s the equivalent to my dad’s favorite coffee shop in the 1970s, locals, regulars, having a quick bite before work.    

We have a few minutes to spare before we meet up with our group, so we wander the nearby Zappeion Gardens and the archaeological remains of the Roman baths.  At 8:30 our group is off, each of us literally tuned into our tour guide through the Walkman looking gismo.  She’s knowledgeable, as you would expect, chatting about the popular Plaka neighborhood as we pass by.  We reach the entrance and start our ascent. 

(click the picture to see the full size images)

Acropolis translates to “top of the city” and 5000 years ago the first settlers realized the benefits of being up high, especially since it had its own fresh water supply.  1500 years later, the ancient Greeks decided that real estate this primo should be used to honor their gods, so their first-ever democracy voted to build the Parthenon as a temple to honor Athena, the virgin goddess of war, handicraft and practical reason.  (I don’t understand why her sex life, or lack of success in that arena, is still so important after three-and-a-half millennium, but here we are, still bringing it up…)  An engineering marvel and a construction wonder, this massive structure was built with just 500 men laying some 13,400 perfectly precut marble blocks in just 8 years.  Maybe even more impressive is that the entire structure is completely dry-set, using no mortar to hold it together, making it the coolest Lego set ever.  Even the 34-foot-high tapered columns are made from premade disc sections, aligned with precision cut holes through the center. 

Of course, once it took off, other gods wanted in on the ground floor, um, top floor, of this most prestigious of real estate development deals.  Two other major temples, Temple of Athena Nike and the Erectheion were built at the very top, and more down the southwest slope including a theatre (for Dionysos, god of wine and pleasure), many other minor temples.  When the Romans showed up (they always showed up back then) the Theatre of Herodes Atticus was added, a 5000-seat venue still in use today which has hosted performances by the likes of Elton John, Jethro Tull, Luciano Pavarotti, Frank Sinatra and Sting. 

Although our guide has kept us in the small respites of shade as much as possible, it’s crazy hot up here and time to move on.  We spend a bit of time in the grounds of the Temple of Zeus, a working archaeological site, where the academics are trying to assemble a full-scale puzzle without all the parts or a picture on the front of the box.  My favorite is the fallen column, the disc sections laying like a rack of splayed poker chips.  The cross sections reveal the inner alignment holes which made these columns last so amazingly long, and my inner engineering-geek is fascinated, lost in imagining the ancients manually cranking wooden cranes, lowering 40-ton blocks into place with precision rivaling that of any modern skyscraper.

 

The relentless sun is evaporating our fluids as fast as we can replenish them, so time for a new plan.  Funny how that always happens around lunchtime.  Into the narrow, shop lined streets of Plaka, stopping at Erato, the quiet place with grilled fresh sardines on the menu.  We tell ourselves that a bottle of cold, dry, local white will really help stave off dehydration, but we get a big bottle of water, too, just in case.  Grilled haloumi cheese, tomato and cucumber salad, and some gyro are just the right accompaniment to the big dish of little grilled fish, salty and crispy with a nice drizzle of EVOO.  Near the end or our meal, a family comes in with a fussy infant, so I make a joke with the waiter “we’re buying that kid an Ouzo!”  Not my best comedic work, I know, but a fine reference to when grandmothers around the globe rub whatever local liquor on teething children’s teeth.  Our waiter laughs politely, then brings us 2 chilled shots of Ouzo.  He may have been right.  The kid grows up sans brain-development issues and we minded his outcrys quite a bit less.

We wander through the shops, Mandy worried that she will not be able to find the Greek beads she is seeking.  Almost ready to give up, we find a shop minded by a thin Greek lady who Stephen King would have cast as “Old Gypsy Woman”.  She helps Mandy pick out a couple nice pieces.  But Mandy is on a quest all the way from the New World and has her mind set on a few more.  We plug Kombologadiko into the GPS and walk the 15 minutes there.  This is the finest shop in Athens, so maybe the world, specializing in kombolois, what we in the west colloquially refer to as “worry beads.”  A cross between a Rosary and a fidget spinner, these beads serve as a way to occupy your hands and rest your mind with absolutely no religious undertones.  Mandy had a set her parents got her in the 1980s, but went missing when we moved in together about 6 years ago.  She’s been worried ever since.  Now that were at the mecca for kombolois, she is already more at ease.  Mandy and the shopkeeper pick materials, colors and sizes while I chat with some other patrons.  The beads are assembled with care in just a few minutes and beautifully packages for the road.

Our vacation rhythm, and the wine, and the Ouzo conspire to insist on a nap.  Then those very same forces demand a drink at our hotel's swank rooftop sushi bar.

Dinner is a recommendation from our concierge, and just a few block walk.  Kiouzin bills itself as “Greek cuisine with a twist”, and really deliver on that promise.  We started with a most beautiful mille-feuille, baked feta with roasted peppers and grilled fresh tomatoes in a “nest”, a sort of taco shell made from a few layers of filo dough baked into crispy thinness.  A real wow dish whose ingredients played off each other perfectly by design.  Next, Mandy got the Sea Bream, two fillets sauteed skin on to crispy served with a fat layer of wild forest greens in between.  I got the Goat en Papillote, slow roasted with potatoes and garlic in parchment that was falling off the bone succulent.  The meal, the presentation, the open-air seating, the vibe of the whole place – we can’t help but to walk back and thank the chef personally for our experience with modern Greek cuisine.