GREECE DAY 3 – ARRIVING IN BLISS

Wake, pack, into a waiting cab to the airport.  The cabby is proud of hie big Mercedes and chats us up the whole ride.  He mentions a good bakery at the airport for some spinach pie and strong coffee, the official breakfast of Greece.  The Aegean flight is a slingshot, by the time it gets to altitude, it’s already time for descent.  The Sixt desk is a disaster, but we end up with a nice Audi A3 instead of the Renault Clio we were expecting.  Driving to the hotel, we realized our upgrade is a mixed blessing.  These are some of the craziest drivers on some of the narrowest streets filled with everything from motor coach busses, to Mercedes Sprinter vans to Smart Cars and countless oblivious pedestrians.  On the roads here, smaller is better.

A bit about Santorini.  Santorini is one of the Cyclades islands in the Aegean Sea about 120 miles from the Greek mainland.  Its entire history involves being formed and reformed by volcanic eruptions, including the biggest, baddest eruption in recorded history around 3600 years ago.  That event left a huge caldera, or volcanic crater, behind.  That caldera is now completely underwater and, along with the smaller islands, essentially forms a massive harbor.  The harbor is on the west side of Santorini, the side most developed with houses dug right into the pumice stone, primarily white and usually with bright blue roofs or accents.  Between the beautiful architecture, great climate, stunning sunsets, wonderful food and kind people, it’s no wonder that this has become the top island holiday destination in the world.  

(click on the pictures to see full size images)

It’s a half-hour, nail-biting drive to one of the highest points on the island where we find Absolute Bliss, our hotel who apparently specializes in setting your expectations too high.  One look at the view from check-in and we have to adjust our expectations up yet again.  We’re shown to our room, down 78 steps, and WOWWIE!  Crazy even by our standards.  The outside is what Instagram was designed for.  Sweeping views of Santorini’s legendary caldera from our private pool.  A private balcony overlooking our private pool with even better views of the caldera.  The room itself it carved right into the mountainside and is complete with living room (with a view) two-person hot tub (with a view) steam room and huge bathroom complex, all surrounding a king size canopy bed strewn with flower pedals and wrapped hard candies for our arrival.  Expectations be damned, this place is amazing.

Checked in, time for lunch.  Because everything is built into the side of a mountain, the road, with its bars and shops and restaurants, is at the top, and you walk down steps to all the living accommodations.  Which means back up those 78 steep steps every time we go out.  We’re both mouth breathing by the time we get back to the lobby.  Lunch is a little open-air café serving a menu of traditional Greek fare with plenty of the fresh local seafood.  The vibe of the place is very laid back, island time with a Lake Como ease about it, chill, and we need a minute (and a beer) to adjust our pace.  It's a place that needs a big-floppy-hat-that-makes-a-statement, and fortunately, right next door, is a big-floppy-hat-that-makes-a-statement store.

 

It’s hot, 90F and humid and plenty of bright sunshine.  We cool down in our pool, kept refreshingly cool by the frequent addition of fresh water.  We take in the scenery, really take the time to enjoy this place.

 Refreshed and napped, we head back up the 78 steps for our trek to Oia (pronounced EE-a), the town on the northern end of the island.  The first two thirds of the drive is picturesque seaside twisty road, the kind of drive that should have its own soundtrack.  The minute we pull into Oia, everything changes.  Twice as many cars as road, all trying to pass by each other at the same time.  GPS is hopeless for us driving all the way to the restaurant, so we dump the car in a semi-legal parking spot and set out on foot.  Maps seems happier with walking directions, winding us through the narrow, shop lined walkways carved into the side of the mountain.  When the line of shops end, we see Dimitris, the Amoudi Bay waterfront restaurant holding tonight’s reservation.  It’s just 312 steep, rocky, uneven, donkey-dung laden steps down from where we are standing.  We know it’s 312 steps because someone, at some point, painted the step number on the riser of each step.  We know it’s donkey dung because there’s a long line of donkey’s, complete with a team of donkey wranglers.  we’ve hiked worse, we got this.  

At the bottom there’s half a dozen seaside restaurants, and you have to walk through each one to get to the next.  Dimitri’s is the last one in the line, and our table for Santorini’s famous sunset is right on the water.  I mean RIGHT on the water.  I mean if Mandy got out of the left side of her chair, it’s a three-foot drop into the drink, no railing, just edge.  Dinner starts with fried feta, lightly breaded, salty and savory with black and white sesame seeds and honey.  Tomato fritters are next crispy on the outside, sweet and tangy on the inside (I always order anything that ends in fritter!)  Mandy’s timing is rarely an accident, and tonight was well planned for sunset over the sea.  Throughout appetizers, the sunset cruises sailed into the bay laden with sunset cruisers.  Sunset never gets old, and sunset over this water makes you feel happy to be alive.

After the big event, our entrée arrives.  It seems Dimitri’s timing is no accident, either.  We share the local red snapper, cooked 5 feet away on an ancient charcoal pit, split and treated to olive oil, garlic and salt, finished with a big squeeze of fresh lemon.  Plenty of the local house white rounds out our feast. 

Full and happy, we face 312 challenges to get back to the car.  Entrepreneurship is based on opportunity, and here at the bottom is another long line of donkeys.  I ask a one-word question.  “Baby?”  Mandy answers “we already know it’ll be a better story with the donkeys”. The pictures tell the story better than I ever could.

Only slightly traumatized, and still in surprisingly good humor, Mandy dismounts the donkey when the wrangler says “come here, lady” and somehow she ends up on him, then lowered to the ground.  Back in the car, we take the less busy low road, the one right along the beach, home.  Closing the night on our balcony, we watch as clouds pass right by, or, more accurately, right through us.  

 

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.

GREECE DAY 1 – DESTINATION ATHENS

An epic summer at the shore, maybe the best weather in decades. We say legitimately sad goodbyes and head back to Bucks County. For exactly 48 hours. Uber to EWR for a very civilized wait in the United Polaris Lounge. It’s a long overnight flight to Athens, and we get to lay flat. Takeoff is delayed but nothing serious as the wine cart is already flowing. It’s Mandy’s first time in a pod in business, hers right in front of mine along the windows. Halfway through the original Top Gun movie (we’re gonna watch both) we’re texting 

Landing is uneventful, the best kind, but an unnamed travel partner of mine left her phone on the plane. An hour or so later in the chaotic luggage-problem desk and we’re on our way.  The founding senators failed to make provisions for air travel. So it’s a 40 minute ride to the Academias Autograph Hotel in the center of town. We check in sorta, as the room isn’t ready, drop our bags, and head out exploring on foot. We’re on the hunt for the elusive best gyro in Athens. The interweb suggests this mythological creature may be found at O Thanasis in Monastiraki square so there we head. It’s a touristy neighborhood, but most of the patrons at the restaurant are speaking Greek – we can tell because I recognize the characters in the cartoon speech balloons over their heads from my time in Sigma Alpha Mu in college. We over-order, equal measures of being delirious from the time zone change and wanting to try everything on the menu. Michael, our waiter, has a short-lived tenure as our new best friend as he fills our glasses with our newer best friend, a cold dry white that pours more like agave syrup then an Italian Pinot Grigio.  We start with a traditional Greek salad and Saganaki, fried yellow cheese that behaved like halumi but tasted like a grilled cheese without the bread.  Mains were beef Souvlaki and their signature Thanasis Kebab, an unrolled gyro.  The food is delish and makes me think that the woman at my favorite food truck in college really nailed the authenticity of it all. 

(click on the pictures to see full size images)

Check in, get room, nap hard.  We’re back out around 7:30 and head for a rooftop recommended by the front desk.  As we approach the Parliament building, the streets are filled with 10 busses of police in riot gear, lazily playing with their phones and smoking real cigarettes (this is not a vaping crew).  They are here, ready, but for what?  A few blocks later we see the sitch… A harsh, almost fascist sounding rally in the park across from Parliament, and a many-times-larger demonstration of students marching in the streets surrounding the rally.  The students begin their movement just before we cross, singing songs and carrying signs, but we slide through without incident.  While we finish the walk to our destination, the entire event unfolds peacefully.  Hooray for our side.  And the original democracy. 

The entrance to the rooftop bar at Emoru 18 is a bit of a challenge, the elevator bank hidden between a few small vendor stalls selling their wares to the tourists.  The elevator car is miniscule, unventilated and smelly from the bodies in this 90F weather.  I’m losing hope by the second.  Getting off, it’s another spiral up to the very top and into the Beyond The Horizon bar.  And wow.  Sunset over a panoramic view of the city, the Parthenon on the top of the Acropolis dominating the view.  I instantly understand I’m in the presence of one of the most significant contributions of Greece to the world… dramatic architectural uplighting.  They just kill it.  The vibe is amazing, dim, cooler than words with thumpy house music filling the air.  Although there’s a full drink menu, there’s only two real choices.  We order a couple glasses of dry rose as we already plowed through a bottle or white earlier today.  We spend a very leisurely hour sipping, talking and looking.  We agree, best rooftop bar anywhere.

 We’re in the Monastiraki neighborhood and need a nosh, so we wander around to find something intriguing.  We find the beautifully gaudy Tazza, done in Greek Ya-Ya’s (grandmother’s) tacky best.  More local white wine, its thickness pleasantly in contrast to its dryness.  We’re getting the hang of Greek wine pretty quickly.  The mezze platter and stuffed grape leaves, an Israeli street guitarist, an 11 year old playing a traditional Toubeleki drum and a flirty bombshell hostess perfectly set the scene for the end of first Athenian night.