A few more Hellenic musings

A few more thoughts on our trip to Greece:

• I must look Greeker than I think.  More than half the time when a Greek spoke to me – at the Acropolis Museum, at restaurants, on the ferry boat – they spoke to me in Greek first, assuming I was a native.  Kind of cool.
• One thing that makes me very un-Greek – I don’t smoke. Unbelievable to see how many folks STILL smoke there.  However, that may change.  The week we were there the Greek government started to enforce a new ban on indoor smoking in public places.
• Two of the best things about visiting Greece: unlimited access to frappes, and the little periptero stores on every corner. The periptero stores sell sodas, water, stamps, key chains, newspapers and magazines, batteries, etc. and are everywhere.
• Athens seemed very clean, at least in terms of litter and air pollution. But graffiti has gotten worse, one by-product of the riots in December 2008. And you still see cars parked on sidewalks and all over the place, on curbs, in front of fire hydrants, street signs, etc.
• Driving in Greece was kooky by also fun.  I drove from Chania to Heraklion, and survived getting lost in the latter.  The drive from Athens to Spilia is easy, at least until you get to Tripoli.  That drive is on a modern, 4 to 6 lane highway. But the last 50 miles to Spilia is on old fashioned mountain roads complete with hairpin turns, steep climbs, and crazy Greek drivers.
• We used a travel agent for part of our trip, and it really worked out great.  Our agent - Dina Kastranaki at Fantasy Travel if you're interested - made getting from the hotel in Athens to our ferry boat, our ferry boat to our hotel, and picking up our rental car in Chania and later Athens, incredibly easy (mainly by providing a car service).  She also hooked us up with a fantastic suite - with a nice balcony overlooking the harbor - at the Porto Venezzo Hotel in Chania.
• We didn't have as much luck with our flights to and from Greece.  We flew from Dulles via Paris on Air France, and outside of the excellent food our flights stunk. We had trouble with our seats, our luggage weighed too much for Air France, we missed our connecting flight out of Paris, and AF lost one of our bags.  Last time we traveled to Greece we flew from JFK direct to Athens, and a direct flight is the way to go.  Next time we plan to fly direct to Athens from JFK or Philadelphia.
• Probably the most ironic thing you see in Greece is tourists on package tours.  What could be less Greek than traveling around in a group, doing what someone tells you, going along with everyone else?  I wonder if any tour leader ever tells his or her group “The essence of Hellenism - from Socrates to Kazantzakis to Charisteas - is the exact opposite of what you are doing right now.”

If you are not on Facebook and want to check out my vacation photos you can go to: http://www.me.com/gallery/#100039.  This MobileMe gallery includes video, which will be coming soon to Facebook.

Trip to Ellas

I'm glad to be home after 10 days of vacation, but I still wish I was in Greece. We had a good to great vacation in the motherland, visiting Athens, Chania in Crete, Nafplio for a day, spending 3 days and 2 nights in my mom's home village of Spilia in Messinia before wrapping up our stay with a trip to the Temple of Poseidon on Cape Sounion south of Athens.

Greeks are famous for living in the moment, and I think part of that may be due to Greece being such a tantalizing place. For a small country there is a lot to see and do, 3,000 years of unmatched history to soak up. If you didn't live in the moment you would go crazy in Greece contemplating which site to visit, taverna to eat in, fish to pick out the back of the kitchen to eat, even which relative to visit. So instead of lamenting a wrong choice or bad relative Greeks just live in the moment, reveling in what they have or where they are right now.

Democracy, reason, Kalamata olives, the Olympics, and living in the moment. A great legacy for a great place.

For me, the highlights of the trip were: the new Acropolis museum, visiting my family in Spilia, and Sounion, though it's hard to leave out Greece's two loveliest towns - Chania and Nafplio.

The new museum is excellent. It's a cool modern building just south of the Acropolis and on the edge of the Plaka (our hotel, the Philippos, was a block away). And the inside is elegant which beautiful and dignified displays of the artifacts from classical Greece, topped off by the third floor display of the Parthenon friezes and metopes (the ones not looted by "Lord" Elgin). A wonderful, beautiful space filled with the building blocks of western civilization.

Spilia, for a small village, is a charming place.  All four of us had a good time there but the kids especially enjoyed that part of our vacation. The good karma and affection from our many relatives - 4 surviving aunts and uncles plus countless cousins, second cousins, and I think some third cousins - is beautiful and palpable. And since no one there speaks English it's a great place for me to practice my Greek. Both Ariadne and Evan understand a little Greek, but despite a real language barrier our kids got along great with their Greek relatives.

They also enjoyed visiting the family farm, checking out my mom's portion of the family olive grove, and picking fresh fruits and vegetables from my uncle’s garden. Our first day in Spilia we ate at my uncle's house, and except for the spaghetti they offered as part of the kids' meal everything they served - the roasted chicken, the Greek fried potatoes cooked in olive oil, the Greek salad, feta cheese, olives, greens, bread, wine, watermelon, and cantaloupe were all home made/home grown/home cooked. To call my uncle’s family locovores would be an understatement.

Finally, wrapping up our trip with a visit to Cape Sounion was both magical and fitting. Though it’s on the water, the cape surrounded by mountains AND oceans, and is topped with the Parthenon-like Temple of Poseidon. We were there at sunset, and it's a stunning site at that time of day. For me, Sounion IS Greece: mountains, ocean, temples, and stunning. I’m ready to go back right now – pame!

I'll share some more random Greek observations soon.