We’ve arrived in Athens: from a 55Star lux hotel to 2.5-Star hostel in a mere 12 hours. I’ve been transported back to backpacking here in the 1980s with my kids, such fantastic brave travel companions.
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| Almost 40 years ago with Anne-Marie and Nathan. They were so cute (and I was sooo much thinner!) |
We were ragtag lotus-eaters living for a time in Elysium - on the sniff of an oily rag most of the time! During our six months' wanderings, we spent over four marvellous weeks in Greece. So now for me, 40 years later, there’s so much to explore, so many memories to revisit, so much to share with Lindsay in this wonderful City of the Violet Crown.
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| View from the rooftop of our hotel including the Acropolis in the distance |
This morning (after not enough sleep last night - 1st night weirdness plus), Lins and I strolled the local streets around noon looking for food and generally stickybeaking into tiny shops standing cheek-by-jowl spilling their goods far out onto the sidewalks - one could buy just about anything there from tools to bedding, from antiques to travel goods. We then dropped into an oh-so-typical local Greek souvlaki hole-in-the-wall to eat. I ordered a glass of local wine (not retsina, they’d run out!), which turned out to be more schooner-sized, and a pork gyros; Lins a beer and Greek sausage. Delicious.
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| Loads of nuts in the local market |
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| Sweet yummies then bin after bin of all sorts of olives |
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| My ‘glass’ of wine came out in a filled-to-the-brim ‘tankard’ with a shot glass |
That night we had a welcome drink of Mastika, a liqueur from the resin of the mastic tree, a small tree native to the Mediterranean region. Supposed to taste a bit like pine but it tasted fruity to me. It is supposed to be drunk at the end of a meal but we had it with ice and soda, rather refreshing. It is claimed to have medicinal properties and to aid digestion - I’m about to go eat dinner!
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| Mastika on ice with soda |
“City of light, with thy violet crown, beloved of the poets, thou art the bulwark of Greece.”
(C5 BC poet Pindar). A wonderful first day!
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