In Athens with traditional Sausage and Pita Bread in Plaka
When arriving, the landing pattern banks over the coast, giving the flight crew and one-half of the passengers a breath-taking view of the great city of Athens. From the air, Athen’s mostly white, densely packed low-rise structures look like no other city-scape in the world. The city of Athens has existed for more than 2,000 years and the sprawl of the structures doesn’t follow over-engineered, computer-generated eight-lane freeway patterns, giving the city a very unique profile from the air.
We took a reserved private car from the airport to Omonia Square which is in the heart of Athens where several main boulevards intersect. The Athens City tour on the Big Bus allowed us to passively take in the lay of the land and major city sites while listening to the pre-recorded tour guide pointing out the highlights.
Once we had our feet under us, we knew exactly where we wanted to go next for our first dinner: the Plaka District with all of its shops and cafes and narrow streets – everything we wanted from our Mediterranean vacation. It wasn’t hard to find a cafe with outside seating where we could watch tourists and locals walking by, living their best lives in perfect weather: warm enough, not hot, sunny, and no wind. The local sausage was superb with the humus and pita and onions.
We walked a little further down and found a bar with rooftop seating with a clear view of the Acropolis. We moved tables once to get away from some smokers but soon figured out you can’t really get away from all the performed smokes and vapes.
Running through Parliament Park the next morning felt very pleasant with the early-morning coolness and the energy of the city coming to life after a short interlude for rest during the night. I ran the same route to the park from the square that I saw while on the Big Bus tour so I went out and back on a fairly busy street but it was easy enough to run past well-dressed office workers making their way to their office jobs. Most tourists in Athens appeared to be American or European with only some variations but not much. And also very few dogs were out and about the city on their morning walks.
The Parthenon was an interesting site to visit, recognizing how much engineering skill it took to set those several ton marble columns and structures in place without modern-day cranes. It did make me stop and wonder if we as a human race are still building structures like this as an act of worship or are we just maintaining the temples of the past?
We are on a Viking cruise and the next country we visited was Turkey with a tour scheduled to see the ancient city of Ephesus where the Apostle Paul spent some time preaching about The Way and stirring up the local silver smiths that made their living selling figures of the temple of Artemis, a Greek god.
Ironically, there was a lecture onboard the ship the night before we toured Ephesus that focused mostly on the temple of Artemis but during the next day, the temple wasn’t part of our tour. But it really worked out wonderfully since the tour of Ephesus went through the ancient city of Ephesus down the original stone streets that had been extraverted by the archeologists that are working on this site. One either side of the very un-even stone road are structures that the archeologists have restored from the stone and marble artifacts found the in the area. Other artifacts that didn’t fit neatly are all lined up on the side of the road waiting to be used to restore other structures.
One the island of Crete, we toured the city of Chonya, a sea-side village, again with narrow streets lined with cafes and shops where we visited an Greek Orthodox church and had a shop around like all the other tourists that were there with us.
When we arrived in Sicily in the city of Messina, we were picked up for a cooking class by one of the most extroverted and hospitable Italians around. Or maybe they are all like our host Carlinna? She drove us to her aunt’s villa that overlooked the coast with a view from their balcony high up on the hills. The view from her house, overlooking the coast, is what you would always imagine Italian costal villa views to be. it was like it should be on a brochure selling Messina to the United States land-locked citizens.
Carlinna and her aunt ? taught us how to make Tiramisu and hand-made pasta followed by a 5 course meal at a well-set table (my wife noticed the table, I was too focused on the wine and food). Caralina said she was looking for a good man – not for support but for love. I sure hope she finds him.
Cooking class in Messina followed by 5 Course Meal with the pasta and Tiramisu we made during class – Caralina is taking selfie
On Naples, we took a tour first to Sorrento, on the scenic Italian Rivera, where we tried Limoncello for the first time. I didn’t even know lemons were a thing but apparently the lemon trade was one of the first things the Mafia controlled back in the day.
One of the highlights of the Naples stop was the water-taxi rid to the Amalfi coast which I believe could be described as one of the most scenic villages on the Italian Riviera. While still on the water-taxi and approaching the inlet to the pier, I couldn’t help but to the think that the view I was seeing then from the water-taxi was a hundred times better view than from the when you were walking around the actual village.
Amalfi
What can you say about Rome that hasn’t already been said? If you compare the United States to Rome, the U.S. is still in its infancy so you at least have to pay attention to how things are done in one of the longest lasting cities in the world.
One thing to notice right away is that there’s not one square foot of pavement (including sidewalks) that aren’t being used by pedestrians, cars, taxi, scooters, motorcycles or buses. Even narrow streets lined with shops have cars making their way through the pedestrians and cafe tables, sometimes coming within inches of patrons sipping coffees or Fritzes.
The flow of traffic and pedestrians around Rome is like a choregraphed ballet – no one is raging even if you are moving over from the far right and crossing in front of 4 cars to make a left or scooters squeezing in front with just inches to spare.
Of course the Colosseum was a must see. Our tour guide was a working archeologist on the site so he brought some very deep perspective to the history of the Colosseum. For example, he mentioned how it was a domed stadium at one time as well as how a quarter of the marble from the Colosseum had been “re-purposed” for use in building St. Peter’s Basilica, the spiritual heart of the Roman Catholic Church.
Colosseum
For a novice art appreciator, Michelangelo’s works in the Sistine Chapel moved me more than would be the case if I just saw them in a States-side art museum. I really connected with the “The Creation of Adam” which is the painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that shows God touching Adam’s finger, giving him life. I’d actually like to have a small print of this in my home office for inspiration. Another work by Michelangelo that had an impact on me was was “Judgement Day” where one of the apostles, Bartholomew, had been painted holding onto his own skin after being skinned alive or one of Michelangelo’s critics depicted in Hell with a snake wrapped around him biting his vessel.
One thing I liked about Rome was how accessible the food and drink were. You could basically just walk down one of those narrow streets with cafes lined up on either side and sit at an open table and have one of the best meals of your life. We had arranged to take a walking food tour of the historic center of Rome which turned out to be a great way to spend our last night there.
We ate our way through the Trastevere neighborhood where we stopped in the Jewish Ghetto for some fried artichokes which was one of my favorite street foods we had. But my all time favorite Roman street food was near the farmers market where we had some IL Suppli, which is deep-fried risotto balls of deliciousness. It’s kind of like a stuffed jalapeno we would have in the states but stuffed with mozzarella cheese and tomato paste as opposed to a pepper.
Deep-Fried Artichokes in Jewish Ghetto
This is one of those rare trips when you get back home and have no regrets and only good memories of the privilege of getting on a plane and being transported back in time to where modern history began. Being able to visit regions where the foods I enjoy have their origin and where the arts had influenced societies and where humans still built temples and created art as homage to the gods they worshiped was a vacation that I won’t soon forget.