After more than a decade, Amber and I were finally getting the chance for a long trip without the kids.
Getting To Athens
Our first major destination was Crete, where we’d be attending JCrete. But one does not get to Crete direct from the west coast of the United States. First stop, Athens.
We’d booked with Air Canada, which I’d traveled on before relatively happily. Not too many weeks before the departure date, though, they cancelled a leg of our flight. We had scheduled our classic super-duper early morning departure, but when Amber scrambled on the computer to reschedule she ended up finding something mid-afternoon our original departure day. It ended up losing a partial day in Athens, which will be pertinent later, but was so much more comfortable.
How I feel about early flights
The Portland Airport had some major renovations since the last time we’d been through. The rather narrow check-in area had been knocked way back, making room for a spacious modern layout underneath a ceiling of light wooden shapes that felt very Portland. The drop-off had another major new aspect too – Cora drove us up and dropped us off, as she was staying at home for the duration. Asher had already left the day before and would be splitting time between the grandparents, leaving Cora solo. It was such an odd feeling for my daughter to be doing something so, well, grown up, but the time had come.
The trip itself was uneventful, as one hopes for with air travel. Our route went Portland, Vancouver, Munich, Athens. The only minor hitch was in Munich where we had to go through passport control. Beyond the stations where documents were checked was a glassed in area with some doors marked plainly as “exit only” with lots of red and signs. Yet apparently someone had decided after walking through to turn back around and come back through the doors. This set off alarms, and everyone in the intervening space had to stand around in the shrill, piercing noise for about fifteen minutes until some incomprehensible protocol had been followed releasing us.
With the late departure we got into Athens relatively late. A cab dropped us downtown at our hotel, the Skylark. The air was thick and humid as we got our luggage from the back. The hotel was definitely hipster tinged, mostly in ways that made us Portlanders feel right at home.
Lighting, curtsey of BIRD
The only off note in the hotel environment was in the elevator. It had a full screen in the ceiling with a fancy purple geometric animation running in a loop, and played an annoying dance beat. While the music itself grated a little, it stopped the music every time the doors opened before resuming at the same spot. Any sense of rhythm was entirely lost but hey, folks heading up to the “club” on the top floor might have enjoyed it.
Gotta hand it to them
After we checked in it wasn’t quite late enough to collapse. We keep a firm policy of staying up until 9PM to start kicking the jet lag when travelling. We found a little gyro spot around the corner, got the first of many Greek salads with some fries but failed to order the meat we’d expected. We were so tired that we didn’t bother fixing it and just ate up before heading upstairs to bed.
Did you bring your antlers?
National Archaeological Museum
The breakfast included with the hotel was rather nice, so we enjoyed the morning dining on the many pickled treats, Greek yogurt, and strong coffee. Our plan for the day was to go to the National Archaeological Museum, one of the major places to see in Athens apart from, you know, the Parthenon and all that.
I haven’t studied Greek history a ton, so the museum was very revealing about the many many different eras and regions that we think of now as Greece. The museum had many spacious, open rooms with statuary, leading off then to smaller rooms off to the sides with glassed in cases showing off the antiquities.
Aphrodite giving Pan the chancla
An interesting point to me in looking at all those objects was the wide variety in their quality. Some things were so incredibly intricately crafted, a wonder to look at, clearly something from a different age. Then other items, while so old, honestly looked a bit like you could find them at the Portland Saturday Market without them being out of place.
Ancient jewelry you could imagine buying
And then there were a few bits that, well, I’m not much of an artist but judge for yourself.
Art?
Another oddity was coming upon various things which looked strangely modern, often for reasons that the creator would have had no clue about. For instance, one of the statues, I think maybe of one of the Furies, really just reminded me of some old witch from a Studio Ghibli movie.
Looks like something from a Ghibli movie
And ancient people weren’t above enjoying a little cuteness in their days either.
This hedgehog is chill instead of fast
Having said that, there were some spectacular pieces. The statues were often so lifelike and flowing it was hard to believe they were made of stone. And then down in an open courtyard by the cafe was a fabulous mosaic of the Medusa. The fine detail – and the fact it had held up through all of those years – was amazing to see.
Medusa Mosaic
Overall, it was a solid museum I would highly recommend for anyone making it through Athens.
Got your nose!
After the museum, we set out on a quest. You see, every year the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Cathedral in Portland throws a Greek Festival, and one of Amber’s favorite things is a dessert item they serve there called loukoumades. These lovely little fried dough balls, coated in honey and cinnamon, are a yearly treat. It seemed like a miss to come to Greece and not see how the “real thing” stacked up. A little web sleuthing turned up a couple possible locations. The most traditional option, Krinos, was a short walk away so we headed out.
Loukoumades from Krinos
We went in with some nerves. Were we in love with a fake, Americanized version of the treat? But the answer was a resounding “no!” Krinos’ loukoumades came in a slightly different shape – circular rather than the donut hole style we were familiar with – but the light crispiness, the perfect sticky sweetness of the honey, the dash of cinnamon all hit just right.
On the walk back to the hotel we passed a shop with tables out on the sidewalk selling spices. We almost went by, then Amber paused. The salesman started offering advice, asking questions, and in general pulling us in like fish on a hook. By the time we left he’d managed to sell us several different local spices and a couple varieties of local honey – one of Amber’s hobby items to gather when traveling.
Dinner that night was at Karamanlidika. We didn’t get reservations set, and when we arrived we found the corner of the brick building surrounded by quite a few people. We asked and mostly they were without reservations too, and bit by bit folks were being let inside so we lined up.
Tasty Karamanlidika
I’m glad we did. The place was effectively a restaurant attached with an awesome deli. We had a number of classics – fava bean “salad” that was more of a paste but delicious, another typical but delicious Greek salad, lamb meatballs, anchovies in white vinegar and of course a massive charcuterie plate. It’s a deli after all! A lovely red wine to top it off, and we were rolling when we left.
But of course, one cannot just have dinner when traveling. What about dessert? Another of the loukoumades places – called Lukumades wasn’t too far away, so we walked off some of the meal and joined the evening throng down the narrow streets.
Lukumades, new school
Where Krinos, which had been open since the 1920s, represented tradition, this place was all about remixing the classics. You want your loukoumades with filled with chocolate or pistachio? Dipped in some sort of frosting? Served with gelato? Savory instead of sweet with goat cheese? You got it buddy! It was like the Salt and Straw of loukoumades.
Overall I’ve got to say that it wasn’t as good as the originals. However, the same chain did have an outpost at the airport and hey, even not-the-best loukoumades are still loukoumades!
Howdy
Roman Agora and Out
One part of our time in Athens was a failure. We lost most of a day getting there with the flight re-arrangements, and we didn’t realize that the entry to the Parthenon and Acropolis were time-ticketed events. Finally researching when we were in town, we found that there just wasn’t a reasonable time for us to make it to these iconic locations. At least we could see them from a distance.
Acropolis in the distance
Fortunately, Athens has more ruins than just the Parthenon. And in fact, many of them don’t entail hours standing in line, in the hottest part of the day, while climbing huge stairs.
Our chosen backup was the Roman Agora. We didn’t get out of the hotel in a hurry, so it was still very hot near the middle of the day by the time we approached. Following Google maps, we popped to the edge of the site, only to find that the highlighted entrance was closed. It wasn’t obvious at all which way to go, so we picked a direction and started circling around to try and find an entrance. Of course, we picked the wrong way, ending up circling 3/4 of the rather large area before getting, sweaty and already tired, to the entrance.
Sunshine at the Agora
The Agora was beautiful, large with columns climbing up into the sky that really caught a sense of majesty. It’s amazing to think that those were built so many thousands of years ago and still stand.
The long view near the Roman Agora
We made a relatively brief tour of the museum that was there – we were fast approaching the “oh, more old stuff” point in viewing archaeological relics. Backtracking the way we’d walked to the Agora, we grabbed a cafe lunch. The fans at the edges of the outdoor seating really sold it.
From there it was back to the hotel to check out, and a taxi to the airport. It proved to be a frustrating check-in, as there was a whole system for people to self-check their bags but literally no one was doing so and one single attendant was helping everyone by pressing buttons on the self-serve screens. By the time we got to the front we just stepped up to one of the machines and it worked fine. No idea what the holdup was there. That tenor held throughout the boarding process – everyone was packed together a little too tight, and a little fussy and angry as things were delayed. We walked out through the punishing heat, though, boarded the plane and were on our way to the next stop, Crete!
What I read along the way
- And Then There Were None - Agatha Christie
- The Living Mountain: A Celebration of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland - Nan Shepherd
- Interior Chinatown - Charles Yu
- What Moves the Dead - T. Kingfisher