Maybe the best thing about Athens was the view from the apartment we stayed in. We rode the tiny elevator (one person at a time…that's how tiny it was…and Malachi just ran up the stairs because he didn't want to wait) to the 5th floor, walked through the doorway and looked out the window and saw this:
I knew we were seeing the Parthenon, I remembered that much from ancient history classes, but I hadn't realized it was up on a big cliff like that (the rocky hill is the Acropolis, which apparently isn't only a word for this hill but any ancient Greek fortification…but really, I think this one is "the" Acropolis) and I definitely hadn't realized it would just be right there! Malachi immediately seized the best room (just kidding, we told him to take that room because the other room had a little balcony and that's what I liked best) and every time I glanced in there it almost took my breath away!
The view from the balcony was great too!
What do you think of the art above the bed? Strangely terrifying, I think.
I liked seeing all the rooftop balconies on buildings nearby. How lovely to just enjoy a meal on the terrace whenever you liked, with the Acropolis watching over you!
Oh, there's Milky (the bunny). Milky came with us so she could show Greece to Clementine. She'll get her own post.
Courtyard of the building behind ours—huge vines of purple flowers (bougainvillea, maybe?) spilling off the balconies.
We could hear the bell ringing in this church tower sometimes. It reminded me of Quebec.
I hadn't expected Athens to be so sprawling and huge (I don't know what I did expect), but what I liked best about looking out at the city was how uniformly-colored the buildings were, spilling up and down hills as far as you could see. It just looked so different from other cities I've seen. No specific area full of high-rises, but many multi-story buildings made of the same types of materials, with the occasional church steeple rising up above them. It was particularly beautiful near sunset and sunrise, when the buildings caught that clear Mediterranean light:
The light through the building got really golden right near sunset and everything inside glowed.
You could see the ocean from our apartment (really the Ægean Sea, I suppose) but it was hard to tell that's what you were seeing until you saw the sun reflecting off the water. It was really beautiful!
At night the Acropolis is lit and takes on even a different character.
Well! I could go on about the view at some length (and I have), but suffice it to say that I really loved it and probably would have enjoyed Greece even if we'd just spent our entire time sitting out on the balcony looking out at the city and taking pictures of it. I loved the mix of old and new, the foreignness of the terrain and architecture, and the changing light throughout the days.
But then, if we'd spent our entire time on the balcony, we would not have tasted the food. And that would have been a tragedy. (These pictures will probably not make your mouths water like they do ours. It's hard to tell what you are even looking at. But we will look back at them and remember and feel a wistful sadness. I already do!) We walked from our apartment (in kind of a quiet neighborhood, not downtown or anything) down to a small restaurant on the next block, and the owner was so nice. When he heard we had just arrived in the country he took away our menus and said he would just bring us all the best things we needed to try. Ha! We trusted him and our trust was not in vain. It was one of the best meals we've ever had!
We love everything we've tried of Greek food (there used to be a Greek place in Salt Lake that we loved, but we haven't had that much else) but real Greek Greek food was on another level. Just so different from food I know how to cook, but also not so different that I couldn't enjoy it. This was moussaka (above) which is a kind of stuffed eggplant.
These weird-looking things were courgette (zucchini? are they the same?) stuffed with minced meat, sausage maybe, and onions and herbs. The sauce was creamy and kind of lemony. These were Sam's favorites.
Greek salad and the best tzatziki
The meat that was Malachi's favorite…I don't even know what it is, some kind of marinated pork perhaps?
So that was one meal. SUCH a good one. And all the food in Greece was so inexpensive. Not because the dollar is particularly strong against the Euro but just…I don't know why! We didn't pay more than $40 for a meal (for all three of us!) while we were there. Gyros (not just mediocre gyros but the most juicy, amazing, delicious gyros) were usually $3-4 each. I regret not having several more of them while I had the chance!
Here is the building our apartment was in. Tall and kind of weirdly shaped. The green arrow is pointing to Malachi's beautiful window, and the little window next to it (with balcony to the left) was Sam's and my room.
Going down the stairs by our building
And those stairs at night
Window in the other room
Lobby of the building—Malachi always ran up the stairs and usually got up to the 5th floor before the elevator did.
Tiny tiny elevator. Sam and I could actually both fit in there together, if we didn't have suitcases or anything, but not at a proximity Malachi was comfortable with! Ha.
One time the elevator came down to the lobby extra slowly and seemed to be just struggling to move at all. We got in anyway and then it went up even MORE slowly, and when it reached the next floor, it wasn't quite FULLY to the next floor and so the door wouldn't open! It was so terrifying! We kept pushing the button and the elevator kept inching and inching upwards, and finally the doors did open, and we BURST out of there and were happy to take the stairs the rest of the way!
(I thought I would never get inside it again, but the next evening after walking up and down a million hills all day [Athens is so hilly!], I saw that the elevator seemed to be moving normally again and decided I'd rather chance it than walking up another 6 flights of stairs! It worked fine all the rest of the time we were there.)
Here is Malachi after having just devoured a gyro so fast I didn't even have time to take a picture of it. You just have to imagine from his countenance how good it was. (In fact, he walked back into the shop right after this and got another one!)
And here's a gyro from another night. We got them whenever we could, but it should have been far more often. They are superficially like the gyros we have in the United States, but in Greece the pita is so fresh, and the tzatziki is extra creamy, and the meat is quite different—whole shaved bits of crispy pork rather than the pressed beef/lamb stuff I've tried at Greek restaurants at home. Maybe there are different styles in different parts of Greece, or maybe some gyros are from Turkey or something. Anyway, these were the pinnacle of gyros. Worth eating every day.
We booked and went on this trip so quickly, I barely had time to consider the fact that we would be in a foreign country where we couldn't even read the language! When I went to Russia with my friend's family in high school, that always felt terrifying to me because I knew if I got lost, I couldn't even find my way home or figure out where I was! It's a little less scary now with Google Translate and other tools, but I had still forgotten how disorienting it is to stare at a word as hard as you can and still not be able to read it, not even a little bit! I did a few lessons in Greek on Duolingo while we were there, and learned some of the letters, and that was kind of fun. It would be cool to learn more. But even the familiar letters (or the ones you know from math or the Bible, like Pi and Omega) don't always say the sound you expect them to! And they look different in upper or lower case!
Ziggy had made us promise to bring him some things written in Greek, so we picked up pamphlets and advertisements where we could. We got this at church, an invitation to the ward Christmas party:
And this was Caw Coffee we saw at a store somewhere (but we told Ziggy it was hot chocolate because he can't handle the fact that someone, somewhere is drinking coffee at any time, haha).
As for not speaking the language, it was fine. The metro has signs in Greek and English, and most people spoke English to us. We didn't have a car so we hardly got outside of our little neighborhood, except for church and a boat ride we took. And of course the Acropolis and other famous places are catered to tourists and English-speakers. And I actually really enjoyed seeing written Greek everywhere. It makes the most ordinary things look exotic and special! Doesn't "Αθήνα" seem so much more beautiful than "Athens"? (Of course, then my mind wants to go over and over that trying to read it and saying "A-oan-va. Atheenva. Aeoniva." until I almost drive myself crazy.)
I was pleased to see (from what I could tell) that the Greeks take their bakeries seriously. We saw several places with rows and rows of baked goods for sale. This was a place called "Bread Factory" where we got a bunch of pastries, both sweet and savory, to take home and have for our breakfast on Sunday.
The small cake we tried was good, and they had these whole cakes, so Malachi talked us into getting one of those for later. It's a little harder to finish things with three people than it is with our usual ten (we basically always finish everything when it's the ten of us eating) but we still managed to eat a respectable amount of it before we went home.
While we are speaking of food we should mention the Fanta in Greece. Have we discussed Fanta here before? Surely we must have. (A little here?) So first of all let's be clear that we don't have true Fanta at all in America. It's bright orange colored and very sweet and I don't even like it. (We aren't big soda drinkers in general.) However…we've had Fanta in Germany and liked it, and then in France and Italy and liked it even more [We also could get Orangina in Quebec, which is nearly as good as European Fanta, but the Fanta in Quebec was just like the U.S.'s]—and all of that led us finding to this chart, which is the kind of data one can really use:
(I am a patriotic American, of course, and would never wish to insult my beloved homeland, but we already know our chocolate is lacking in comparison to Europe's or basically…anywhere's…and I'm sorry to also have to point out the line at the top of this chart: "US Fanta contains no juice." Well! Thus we see why it is really not the same product at all. Much like our chocolate. And…too often…our bread. And our cheese 😢😢😢)
I had actually forgotten all about this chart until we went to Greece and tasted the Fanta and then I realized that this—20% orange juice!—was the Fanta Nirvana—the Fanta Mecca, if you will—we had been searching for without knowing it our whole lives.
(You may be wondering, if we like juice so much, why we wouldn't just buy orange juice, which is 100% juice. But Fanta is a different category entirely. It isn't supposed to be totally juice. Not drunk in place of real juice. It's juice-like and sourish, but also fizzy and somehow thirst-quenching almost like water? but also so good to set off certain foods, almost like real orange juice is. Anyway, it's just its own thing. And we like it. Especially in Greece.)
Can you bear any more food? These were breakfast pastries (or, we had them for breakfast on a couple of the days, I have no idea if they are for breakfast)—spanakopita (which you've probably tried before, it's spinach and feta in phyllo dough) and then some kind of sausage roll, and a little pie with a creamy cheese in it. All delicious. And there is also just some plain feta on the plate, which we drizzled with honey or broke off and ate by itself whenever we could because it is SO GOOD.
These were three kinds of hot chocolate we tried somewhere. (Delicious, but Daisy and Sam can make it just as good at home.)
Eggs benedict with smoked salmon and avocado
This avocado toast had the best feta on it, and a pistachio cream that was amazing
The one disappointing restaurant we went to was also the most expensive. How sad. We should have gotten another gyro instead. But it was pretty inside, and kind of fun to experience something different, anyway.
It was fun to come upon little interesting spots like this in our neighborhood, buildings climbing up the sides of a hill or surprising churches on a corner or sidewalks that suddenly became bridges over underground parking. All the things that you'd never seek out intentionally, but which contribute so much to impressions and feelings you have about a place.
Every night before bed, and in the middle of the night even, I loved going outside and just taking in this view, trying to memorize how it looked and how it felt to be standing in the cool night air with foreign voices yelling and unfamiliar sirens and the noises of city streets around me. I knew it would seem like a dream once I was gone. And now it does.
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