Epiphany!

Thursday, January 6th 2010

Our last full day in Greece. We decided to take it easy and rest up in preparation for our journeys to Madrid/Paris tomorrow. Woke up at 7:30am, got breakfast at the Anytime! market (bananas, rice pudding) and spent some leisurely time in our room repacking our suitcases, checking our flights, weather, blogging, etc. Around 11am we headed outside (beautiful sunny day! ) to tour the last sites we hadn't yet seen. Actually, first we tried to rent bicycles but every bicycle rental shop we had ever seen or searched for on the internet was closed down with grills. Is this a New Year's thing or just a Greek economic slowdown thing? Who knows, but I guess bicycling in Greece will just have to wait for another time.

Decided to photograph some aspects of modern Athens that particularly appealed to us -- splat ball tchotchkes, babushka ladies with massive bundles of inflatable (perhaps also re-inflatable since who knows how many of those things they actually sell each day?) balloons and pretzel bread guys.

We visited Hadrian's library, right near Monastiraki. Learned that parchment scrolls were kept there, and a church was also built on the site. I feel like Hadrian left one of the biggest legacies in Athens in terms of architecture -- sounds like quite a guy. Rachel and I observed a man meditating in the center of a circular ruin (probably part of the church). We thought he wasn't doing such a great job meditating because he got easily distracted by the birds, but we couldn't blame him -- it was such a beautiful day outside, why wouldn't you want to keep your eyes open and absorb the sunlight?

After Hadrian's library, Rachel and I decided to venture into the tourist shops to get little trinkets of our own. I set my eyes on earrings -- blue with round dangling things of Greek art inspiration. Rachel wanted a round head in the Cycladian art style. Once we knew exactly what we wanted, we sped through the shops, checking prices, asking gentlyuntil we found exactly what we wanted. Very efficient, we joked, and we managed to find these little tokens.

After shopping and warding off salespersons, we decided to return to cafe Abyssinia for lunch. We had visited there on New Year's Eve and we wanted one last meal with a view of the Acropolis. Rachel spilled coins (from her money belt) everywhere as we walked in, but the waiter recognized us and welcomed us with a smile anyway. We had the Santorini fava bean dip and an assortment of mushrooms, onions, peppers and other vegetables. There was a cute Italian family eating nearby -- the father wore sunglasses inside and talked on his cellphone loudly during the meal. They ordered way too much food, and their cute little girls couldn't finish their plates.

After lunch we decided to explore what we called "the bomb hill" -- the hill from which 17th century invaders launched the bomb that destroyed so much of the parthenon. We scrabbled up to the top and took lots of photos, as usual. Some creepy guy asked if we wanted our picture taken together and asked for our names. We used our code/fake name -- Marissa and Bella -- and quickly turned away from him. Managed to get some pictures of the 2 of us anyway -- and it was cool to have a straight shot view of not only the Acropolis but also the Hill of Wolves and the Port of Piraeus. It was really fun to be able to look all around the city from so high up and realize how much of it we had explored and how many stories we had from each part of the city.

Descended the hill and wandered around the rocky trails -- we imagine that rebellious Greek teens come to this part of the park to smoke, drink and vandalize (judging by the amount of grafitti we found). Then we walked the perimeter of the park, stopping at a couple of bakeries along the way. We got baklava (made of almonds this time) from one and a little dough puff soaked in something with cream on top at the second. We enjoyed our Greek sweets back to our hostel, unsuccessfully researching to find the name of the 2nd dessert, and then proceeded to do laundry (it was busy this afternoon), drink tea and pack up.

At 7:30pm we ventured out for Kolonaki for our 8pm reservation at Oikeio -- the Michelin recommended restaurant which was also an "our pick" in lonely planet. It was very cute and homey inside (Oikeio means "homey" in Greek) with all kinds of mismatched chairs, fabric decorations and soft lighting. Our table had a great sweeping view of the whole restaurant and we enjoyed observing our fellow restaurant patrons. Many of them had iphones (some men had both the 3 and 4 version) and we were very confused when, at one point in the evening, the girls from one table went to join the guys at another table (Even though they had showed no sign of recognition when they walked in). Curious Greeks indeed.

After much menu-perusing and asking the waitress for recommendations, we chose the special tomato pie (very delicious and flavorful), Oikeo salad (also very fresh, with Haloumi cheese, which I liked for its saltiness and Rachel liked despite its rubberiness haha), smoked salmon rolls with dill (our favorite herb!) and delicious bread with Katiki-olive cheese. The house wine paired nicely too -- light and spritely, perfect for our excitement about tomorrow. After dinner we tried the cheesecake -- very different from anything you'd find at the Cheesecake factory. The cheese was almost like a yogurt-goat cheese, the bottom layer was like a cookie, and the cake was studded with cherries (for a brief second, Rachel and I thought they were olives haha) and drizzled with strawberry puree. It took a little while for the waitress to "update" our receipt with the dessert charge (Greek waiters always seem to give us the bill when they serve our main meal, so the bill always needs to be updated if we order dessert), but we were amused to sit and observe and imagine all the places we plan to explore in France and Spain.

On our walk home, we noticed that the big Sofias street that we usually walk on was closed off to cars and pedestrians. We asked the police officer what was going on and he said there'd been a bomb threat, so we turned around and walked down Konstantinou back to our hostel. Apart from the traffic jams everywhere, it didn't seem like a big deal, but we were glad to get back to our room anyway. Set our alarm for 6am and went to bed by 11pm.