Vacation time: Athens

I have actually never went somewhere for vacation since I moved here - initially I had no interest to travel since for many years prior I had to travel for work + I was glad to be in one place + this is the city I always wanted to live, so during vacations I simply enjoyed being free from work and was often house sitting for friends. Than Covid came and nobody could travel anyway. And finally, this year, I actually made a big step and traveled somewhere else as a proper vacation.

Of course I have been to Athens a hundreds of times - but it was always rush, always just a few hours before my ship would sail away and my time there was limited to a search for Wi Fi place, supermarket and perhaps quick visit to a particular place. This was the first time in my life that I actually had a proper time to enjoy Athens in my own pace - naturally I wanted to see everything and this is understandable since this was the first proper journey after Covid experience - so at certain point it turned out exhausting and we had to take a random day off, when we just relaxed and slept, because otherwise this whole "vacation" would be just running around.

Here I also must say that as much as vacations are nice, the whole process of traveling itself was extremely exhausting and we did not enjoy going from place to place - there were always some sorts of delays, crowds, nervous people, the journeys never lasted as planned and usually sucked all the fun from the trip itself - if we could just teleport ourselves to a certain place that would have been great, but waiting for the delayed train and delayed flight again & again was just nightmare. After experience of traveling to see Meteora which was extremely exhausting (since we depended on public transport) we decided not to bother with visit to islands because this is vacation after all, islands can wait. 

Some observations: 

- Tiny pavements that serve as nothing but decoration. There is no way you can walk on the pavements and everybody is forced to simply walk in the middle of the road

- Contrary to other big cities, people were extremely nice & friendly almost everywhere (except occasional pushy waiter demanding the tip). It was so obvious that we were actually genuinely shocked and surprised that people were so nice to a complete strangers, this is definitely not the case in Amsterdam where locals are openly impatient and rude to everybody.

- Outside of the most famous landmarks, city is not beautiful - its simply too huge for its own good and sometimes I even felt that the pressure on infrastructure might be too heavy. Millions of people all over and the houses are often simply growing like mushrooms without any aesthetic plans or considerations. 

- As always, I was totally in love in decrepit and old houses that have some history behind them and could not care less for "proper" buildings but loved everything that was obviously ruined, old and deserted.

- For such a famously Mediterranean location, they serve a surprisingly trendy, international food - we were naively expecting a diet of Olives, Feta, Moussaka and Souvlaki but actually everybody was enjoying Salmon, Quinoa and things that one would expect in the North. 

- The biggest food discovery was something so natural and simple but it never occurred to me: combination of thick, creamy Greek Yoghurt with fresh fruit and honey on top of it. We tasted it on the spectacular terrace of Acropolis Museum right after our early morning visit to Acropolis and it was so delicious, refreshing and divine that I said this must be food for Gods. We are eating it ever since.

Besides chaotic traffic, we ourselves did everything proper: we were always on time, planned accordingly and the best of all, we packed extremely cautiously - I have never packed as good as this time. Each of us had a backpack and a small suitcase that fitted above our heads in a plane. Underwear to last us for a week, some shirts, two trousers and I actually had only one pair of shoes, whatever we needed we bought there. On departure, my small suitcase was actually half empty and pleasure to carry around (on departure just slightly less so, but still it was a small suitcase and not the monstrosities that other people carry with them). 

Best of all, the return home was wonderful - even though the flight was exhausting (again delays, crowds and chaotic organisation) - it was a huge relief to sleep in our own bed and to simply be home, even though its totally Autumnal here now and a huge difference in temperature. It makes you appreciate home even more!