Amy and I got on a plane this last week to fly out to Athens for the wedding of her cousin David's daughter Melinda.
Our trip over was on Aer Lingus; the flight was decent, but the airline managed to leave our luggage behind in Dublin, so we arrived on Thursday without our bags, argh. Many others on the flight were in the same boat; we chatted with a woman who said that she was looking out the window when our plan started to move away from the gate, and she could see her suitcase sitting on a luggage train next to the plane still waiting to get on. After chatting with the airline folks they told us that the earliest they could deliver our bags was Friday between 4 and 9pm, yikes (the wedding was that evening).
We took the express bus from the airport to our hotel ("Blazer Suites") sandwiched between the Glyfada and Vuola neighborhoods south of the Athens city center. The hotel was great; it is on a fairly busy street, but we couldn't tell once we were ensconced inside.
First order of business was shopping for a few last-minute items of clothing: Amy needed something to wear for the pre-wedding dinner that evening, and we both definitely needed a hat, ditto sunblock. We walked up to a local shopping area and visited various stores there to pick out some basic things: hats for both of us, a new t-shirt for me, and a dress and a scarf for Amy (predictably she looked very fashionable and nice, and I was basically just a little less scruffy :-).
We met up with Scott, Lucy, and Cate around 7:30 (they took a later flight, so they had only just made it in from the airport). We hopped in a couple of cabs and rode south to restaurant Akti, nice place on the coast 10 minutes drive to the south. Lovely patio/veranda with outdoor tables; we had a nice view of the post-sunset sky. Food, wine, an service were excellent: the menu included seafood, salad, grilled veggies, various other things.
At the dinner were David and Nadia, some friends of their from Maryland (whom they had met in Cairo), along with Amy, Scott, Lucy, Cate, and myself. Of course the Americans were all there more or less on time, while everyone arrived fashionable later, trickling in over the next couple of hours, including Julie, Karim and Melinda, then Karim's dad and cousin, and a few more family friends.
We managed to stay awake long enough to make it through dinner, then said our goodbyes and headed to call a cab again.
Some photos from the dinner:
Friday:
Tasty breakfast at the hotel, then bright and early it was off for a tour of the Acropolis; Amy and Lucy had arranged for a guide, and also a driver to pick us up and bring us back. The drive up into the city was pretty heavy traffic-wise, not the worst I have ever seen but very congested.
Our driving passed a huge open area near the highway that was completely dotted with construction cranes and other big equipment-- turns out that it was land that used to be the old Athens airport, now being feverishly redeveloped as a complex of casinos (eek).
The Acropolis tour was enjoyable; very crowded (people piling in every minute at a ferocious rate), but I think we had all been expecting that and were able to go with the flow. The weather was better than I expected; it was a bit overcast and not quite as hot as it might have been.
The views of the city from the top of the hill there are amazing, it is really quite a perch. Athens is enormous, five million people as I understand it, almost half the folks who live in Greece.
The museum was a highlight for me; nice modern construction, good signage in Greek and English. The museum itself is fairly recently constructed; when they went to build it they demolished an apartment building and then began digging down to establish the foundation and (of course) immediately encountered all sorts of ruins (this area has been inhabited for millennia). Rather than just cover it all up and cart off the remains, they arranged for the museum itself to sort of perch on top of the lowest level of excavation (left there intact), and they incorporated a bunch of the items they found (pottery, other household stuff etc) into the museum exhibits. When you walk up to the entrance to the museum the floor is made of glass, so you can look down into the dig site that they left behind.
The museum has a bunch of multi-media exhibits that give you a much better sense for the design and details of the Parthenon (e.g. not just the pillars), e.g. the bas-relief friezes along the sides, the statues in the pediments, the stone they used, and the way it was constructed.
Yours truly (wearing my grubby jeans from the airline flight, plus slightly less grubby last-minute t-shirt purchase).
The museum has three floors; the first and second have regular exhibits and then the third is devoted to a life size (full scale) model of the Parthenon friezes + pediments; for each panel they either show the real artwork or they have a replica and a sign showing which European museum has it. Of course many of the spots correspond to the panels that Lord Elgin hacked off and carted away, with a few in other major places like the Pergamon in Berlin. We asked the guide how things were going with the negotiations on repatriating all of the pieces and she rolled her eyes and said that the talks were "ongoing".
After the museum our driver picked us up again and zipped us over to the ruins of the temple of Zeus; we stayed there only briefly (not super interesting). Then we zipped on over to the Lycabettus hill, a high place just to the northeast where you can get another good view to the south of the Parthenon again. After that we parted company with our guide and the driver shuttled us back to the hotel.
The afternoon featured an extended scramble to try to help with the luggage recovery; the airline called our hotel and left a cryptic message with the front desk (they had allegedly tried to call Amy's phone, but there was no record of that). Amy tried to call them back, had trouble getting a human. To hedge our bets I grabbed the luggage paperwork and went down to take a bus to the airport to try to grab the bags early (so as to avoid the "4pm to 9pm" delivery window). Once I was one the bus however Amy called again and with help from the hotel folks she had been able to determine that our bags were in fact already on a delivery van, so I got off the bus and made my way back to the hotel to await our fate. Luck finally turned our way, however, and the delivery van turned up right on time at 4. Whew.
At around five the rental car people turned up early. We had paid extra to have them drop off our car at the hotel on Saturday morning, but for some reason they decided they wanted to deliver it early, so I got that sorted out with them.
There was another last-minute change of plans; the bus to the wedding venue was supposed to be at 7, but it was moved back to 8 (maybe weather related? not sure). Anyhow, we did finally get ourselves dressed and onto the bus.
A shot of Amy, Lucy and Cate in their finery just before heading out:
It took a while (an hour maybe?) to make it to the venue, which was out in the area to the north and east of the Athens airport. Lovely place once we got there, however; a winery apparently? Whatever it was, it had lots of nice spaces to gather for a wedding and reception.
The ceremony itself was nice, short and sweet; the area set aside for that had some really amazingly elaborate flower displays (haven't seen anything like that before). There was an absolute scrum of photographers competing with each other to get the best shots, literally four or five guys all trying to elbow the other aside to get better "footage", and then a drone overhead at certain points as well. Wow.
I am quite sure I have never been to a wedding where there were so many young and beautiful women dressed so well; it really felt like attending a fashion show (the men accompanying them were dressed nicely as well, but how much can you really say about a tuxedo?). Elaborate hair and makeup, long & slinky dresses with interesting color schemes and fairly daring "cutouts" of various sorts... it was something to see.
A few photos:
After that: a big reception with wine, dancing, and (eventually) a very nice dinner.
One part of the ceremony that I found particularly fun was where the newlywed couple made a big entrance followed by a small team of drummers, and they did a bunch of dancing while the drummers played; this is a traditional Egyptian wedding thing (as I understand from Amy) called Zaffa. Kind of hard to describe but very joyful and full of vitality.
Melinda looked incredibly happy and energetic, there was a smile on her face every time I saw her. A bit later the band struck up, and Amy and I had some fun dancing for a while (lots of tunes recycled from the 80's and 90's-- my favorites!). The dinner got going a bit after that (overlapping with the band); food was superb.
We bus'd and cabbed it back to the hotels around midnight (of course when we left the younger generation were probably just getting started).
Saturday:
Lazy morning for me, got up at the ridiculously late hour of 7:30am, then had a nice breakfast with Amy + Scott + Lucy + Cate. Around 10am we packed our rental car and hit the road to drive to Olympia. Instead of heading north-west (which would have been the most direct route), the GPS took us east and then north in a big circle so as to avoid hitting gridlock in the main part of Athens. Even with that maneuver the traffic was still pretty heavy; didn't really thin out until we reached the turnoff for Corinth (or Κόρινθος as they spell it here).
After Corinth we drove south to Nafplio (Ναύπλιο), a smallish city to the south as a place to stop and shop for provisions and eat lunch. Amy picked a nice lunch spot, Kastro Kareem, we had lovely grilled fish for our mid-day meal.
The open-air market was also a lot of fun, they had all sorts of different kinds of fruit, veggies, and fresh fish. I bought tomatoes + cucumbers, then we picked up some fruit as well.
From Nafplio we hopped in the car again and proceeded to drive up through the mountains to the other side of the peninsula to Olympia. Roads were a mix of smaller stuff plus big highways that took us over the high part of the mountains. During the drive the temperature dropped from 94 at the start to around 59 at one point up in the mountains; we also had some episodes of really hard rain as well. Arrived around 5:30pm; the town and surrounding area here are very sleepy looking, as is the hotel. We unpacked and then made our way down to the pool, which was a nice one; only a few people lounging around the edges, and just one or two little kids playing in the shallow end. Amy and I had a nice swim, then headed back to our room.
I think we timed our arrival nicely since as we were making our way through the lobby we could see a triplet of large tour buses that had arrived and were disgorging big groups of people (glad we made it to the pool when we did). Dinner in town at a gyro place, nothing fancy.
I did my best on this trip to learn at least a few bits of Greek (hello, good morning, please, thank you, yes, no, that sort of thing). When reading signs and such I feel as though I was able to make good progress with capital letters, but for some reason the lower case letters really tripped me up. The other odd things is that the Greek alphabet shares some letters with Cyrillic, so the parts of my brain that remember bits and pieces of Russian kept jumping in to confuse matters.
Sunday:
Breakfast at the hotel -- like the lobby, the breakfast room was huge and expansive, with a slightly 1950s feel. This place somehow has a Soviet Union vibe, built to handle masses but in a sprawling, laid back way.
After that it was off to visit the archeological site and the museum. We started with a separate stand-alone museum devoted entirely to the history of the Olympic games, looking at how they evolved over the years along with the politics and mechanics of the games. Won't bore with all the minutiae, but it had some interesting details about the games and gave us a good sense for how they worked. The original version of the games were apparently just simple foot races, but then of course over time (many, many hundreds of years) evolved to include all sorts of weird stuff, for example, a running race in which the participants wear armor. In the ancient version of the long jump, the competitors actually used hand weights as a way to jump farther; when the jumpers took off they would throw the weights forward, then throw them back on landing. The museum had some nice examples of hand weights in their collection.
The ruins of the Olympic grounds are very minimal, lots of low stone walls and a few places where stone columns and such have been reconstructed. You can get a good sense for the layout however and how things were organized. The original stadium is still there; they've restore the clay running surface and the starting blocks. The games were held for a ridiculously long period of time, from 776 BC all the way up through Roman times in the 2nd century AD. They began to fade at that point and then around 393 one of the Christian Roman emperors, Theodosius, decided he didn't like them any more (reeked of "idolatry") and had the grounds demolished. Structures range from the really old stuff (temple of Hera, which dates back to 500ish BC) to the comparatively recent structures, including things built by the Romans and by Philip of Macedon.
We also spent an hour or so in the museum, which is packed with all sorts of interesting stuff, ranging from bronze ornaments and figurines from the 7th + 6th centuries BC to marble sculptures that were part of the pediment from the temple of Zeus to the later roman stuff (mostly consisting of statues depicting various "important" Romans).
Got on the road again after that and drove north to Patras, then a bit father to the town of Rio, which has an enormous and beautiful suspension bridge going over the Gulf of Corinth to the mainland, to the town of Antirrio. From there we drove east along the coast to the town of Galaxidis, a nice seaside place about 45 minutes south of Delphi.
Beaches in this area are apparently classified as "organized" and "unorganized"; the former seem to feature cabanas and huge fields of lounge chairs etc, whereas the latter are usually just a small section of sandy or pebbly coastline. We found a small unorganized beach a bit to the south of town sand had a swim before dinner.
View from our Airbnb balcony:
Ate at a local fish restaurant in the main part of town; grilled sea bream.
Monday:
The drive from Galaxidis to Delphi is fairly easy, takes about 40 minutes -- regular roads for the first 15 or so and then the remainder on windy mountain roads with hairpin turns, etc.
We parked about 8:45 or so in town and then walked the rest of the way up the main road to the archeological site entrance. Warm but not super hot (glad about that), although with that said the sun here is incredibly strong even when the air is not hot. Definitely a place to bring your best sun lotion.
Delphi (pronounced "Delfee" by the Greeks) has a history that has a lot in common with Olympia; beginnings way back in the Mycenian era, then started to really come into its own around 700 BC or so, then experienced a sort of "golden age" around 400 BC, then a slow decline all the way until around 390 AD when it was pretty much done in by the Roman emperor Theodosius (same guy who demolished Olympia), plus a couple of major earthquakes.
There were games held every four years at Delphi (very similar to the setup at Olympia), but at Delphi there was also the Oracle, who drew pilgrims and visitors on a more or less constant basis (as opposed to Olympia, which was only visited/inhabited during the games). The other distinct thing about Delphi is that it is way the heck up above sea level perched on the side of a mountain, with expansive views of the surrounding mountains and valleys and all the way to the Gulf of Corinth in the distance.
The museum at Delphi was OK but a bit of a disappointment after Olympia, which in comparison was bigger and much more comprehensive. The Delphi site was also a good deal more crowded (sizable groups of German tourists, high schoolers with attendant adults it looked like). I suppose this makes sense given that Delphi is within easy striking range of Athens while Olympia is not.
Some photos:
Lunch (more of a snack) at a small outdoor cafe on the main drag after finishing with the archeological site and the museum; Amy had a piece of spinach pie (she has been enjoying those during our trip) and I had baked tomatoes stuffed with rice (they were very good, I might try to recreate them myself some time).
From Delphi we drove mostly north to Καλαμπάκα a town variously translated as "Kalabaka" and "Kalampaka" (not sure why there is that ambiguity, but so be it). The drive was lengthy, maybe about three and a half hours, including a stint up and over a big mountain range, so lots of twisty/turny stuff. Second half of the drive was mostly flat, then finally we edged up against the foothills again before hitting the town. The drive was fun; we listened to an audio book, "The Suitcase Clone" by Robin Sloan. This is a short novel that draws elements from two previous books we'd listened to by the same author, "Mr Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore" and "Sourdough".
Amy had arranged for an Airbnb rental house in Kalampaka that had a kitchen and a clothes washer, so we were able to run a load of laundry and cook at least one meal for ourselves instead of restaurant food. The kitchen was kind of a puzzle, I would describe it as a mix between "highly functional" (for example, a Nespresso pod coffee maker) and "nonexistent" (literally no knives except for dull butter knives -- zero, and almost no mixing bowls). We took this all in stride however, so after dumping our suitcases we set out to find a grocery store and load up on provisions. For dinner Amy made pasta with tomatoes, olives, and capers, very tasty. No parmesan available so she picked out some grated κεφαλοτύρι (kefalotouri) which stood in quite well. All the greens in the produce section of the supermarket looked tired and sad, so Amy improvised and bought a bag of frozen chicory greens, which were actually quite tasty sauteed with garlic (bitter, but flavorful). It was a nice meal.
Tuesday:
The area here is famous for its monasteries ; they have a series of them all perched up on the top of a set of rock formations that loom over the town the north. The geology reminds me distinctly of the Montserrat area outside Barcelona, with sedimentary rock that has a sort of droopy look to it. Most of the people visiting the monasteries get on a bus or some other vehicle to get up to the high places, but we decided that we would hike instead.
Amy and I both got up early (5:30 or so) and had some coffee and breakfast, then packed some food for lunch, laced up our shoes and headed for the trail. Hiking was a bit of mixed bag; although there is a nice footpath that leads up from the town to the first monastery, a fair amount of the walking we did after that was on the road. The other "mixed bag" part is that because the monasteries are accessible by road, there were many buses and tour groups that we had to compete with for access to the sites.
Our initial hike brought us up from the town to the Holy Trinity Monastery; at that point it was much too early still to visit, so we hiked east to the Monastery of Saint Stephens (again, still too early, so we looked it over but did not go in). From there we hiked west and eventually made it to the Convent Roussanou, and at that point it was late enough in the morning that we were able to go in and look around. All of the monasteries and convents have strict dress codes: no shorts, you have to have trousers that cover your knees, women have to wear skirts that cover the knees as well. Amy had planned for this and brought the right kind of clothing (you can slip a dress on over your hiking shorts if you want), but many of the other women visiting were handed "wrap-around" skirts that you can put on over whatever outfit you are wearing.
The visit to the Roussanou convent was interesting; fairly modest in size but with some lovely artwork; the nuns work on illuminated icons and other religious painting. The chapel was nice as well, although very modest in terms of size.
From there we walked back up the road to the Varlam monastery; this was a bigger operation with many more tour buses parked outside and swarming with many more visitors. There was a tiny museum inside the grounds that summarized the history of the place (and by implication the other monasteries in the area). Most were established around 1500 or so, first really as shoestring operations (just a couple of monks). They became more established in the 17th and 18th centuries, then had a period of "hard times" during the late 18th and 19th centuries (I assume due to the presence of the Ottomans).
There was one interesting exhibit featuring a black and white film shot in the 1920s showing some of the monks with their daily routines; in one of the scenes one monk was helping another monk return from a trip down to the village by essentially winching him up into the monastery using a cable and a big net (this was before they put in real stairs I gather).
From there we made our way gradually down along the road and second set of hiking trails, stopping in the adjacent town of Kastraki, where we rested for a bit and had some coffee at a local cafe. After that we walked a final 30 minutes back to our apartment, kind of uncomfortable by then (too sunny). Good walk overall, maybe 11 kilometers or a bit more. Rest during the afternoon (plenty of time for napping!) and then dinner out at a restaurant in town.
The food on this trip has been great, almost entirely fish and vegetables (I think we had chicken sandwiches at one point but that was about it). Greece is definitely not a scary place if you want to go all vegetarian. The eggplant dishes have been great; we've stuffed tomatoes, mushroom risotto, and various other plant-based meals as well. Fish has been sea bass and sea bream, all of it grilled whole (more work to take apart from the skin and bones, but worth the effort).
Wednesday:
This was a travel day for us; we needed to get back to within striking range of the Athens airport, so we devoted most of the day to driving. For entertainment we listened to various radio stations for part of the time and then Amy and I took turns reading from the book that I've just started, "Lessons from the Edge" -- a memoir by Maria Yovanovich (the former diplomat). First part of the book has been great; recollections from her early years working in the State Department.
Driving: we put a fair number of miles on our rental car (Athens -> Olympia -> Delphi -> Kalampaka -> Sounio -> Airport); it was generally a good experience out on the road. Signage is pretty decent, roads were in good shape overall, and the other drivers were not too bad. There were a few maniacs, but that's true pretty much everywhere. One thing that I did like was that the slower drivers would routinely pull over or pull to the side to let faster cars pass, that was really nice. I tried to do the same when I could see cars closing quickly in my rear view mirror.
Amy picked a hotel for our last night in Sounion; the place was right on the beach and within view of the ruins there (Temple of Poseiden). We had a workout in the hotel gym (mixed bag, not all the machines functioned), then a nice swim in the ocean, and one last meal of grilled fish sitting outside by the ocean (something kind of hard to arrange in the Boston area).
The temple:
It was a really nice trip, great to "unplug" from the world of software for a while, and wonderful to connect with David and Nadia and their kids for the wedding.
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