Athens waking up

We arrived at Athens’ sparkling Port of Pireaus at 6.30am on Sunday and headed north along the coast to Glyfada, an affluent beachside suburb of broad avenues and luxury apartments.

Bringing in the catch, Athens northern suburbs

Dotted along the beaches here were superclubs – in summer the club scene heads beachside, and partygoers were emerging to make their way home by motorbike, tram or taxi, hair and clothes still immaculate after a night dancing.

Opposite them, fishermen were bringing in nets by the marina and retired folk were heading in to the sea for their early morning dip. Stalls were setting up on the footpath alongside parked utes – goats cheese, tomatoes, watermelon, cucumbers.   

Athens, good morning.

We deserted our car at the hotel and headed back into the central city by tram.

There is no such thing as beating the crowds at the most iconic aspect of the Acropolis, the Parthenon. It was thick with people and heat at 9.30 in the morning. You simply cannot go to Athens without visiting the Parthenon, because it is visible wherever you are in the city, if not on the hill, on a t-shirt or a snow globe. its omnipresence a reminder that you simply cannot visit Athens without visiting the Parthenon.... 

Stoa at the Ancient Agora, Acropolis - reconstruction

By contrast the agora – the ancient marketplace where Socrates used to lecture - is spread over the valley below. It’s altogether more evocative. Maybe this is because we waited until 7pm as the light was softening, the heat was diminishing and the crowds had thinned. Or maybe it was because the agora felt more like a place for the people rather than for the Gods. The agora is where public meetings were held, where people traded, where councils of magistrates met, where great minds spoke and ideas were debated. There are temples to the Gods here also, but this site’s lasting legacy was towards the development of human civilization.

The New Acropolis Museum displays the treasures of the Acropolis magnificently. It opened in 2009 just down from the Parthenon. On excavating the site they discovered the foundations of an ancient village underneath and archeologists are now preparing this area so that visitors to the museum can also tour the village underneath. See The Acropolis Museum website for more details.

Changing of the Guards

At Syntagma Square, the civic centre of Athens (also the centre of protests when Greece was in the international media spotlight for the debt crisis in June), we stood on the footpath on Sunday morning in the middle of the dual carriageway to watch the changing of the guards – costume of short kilts, tights and shoes with pompoms. 

Syntagma Square: protesters' tent village

Behind us lay the tent village of the most dedicated protesters objecting to the austerity measures, with burnt-out kiosks a reminder of very recent violence. But at 11am on a Sunday the village slept.

I have a blurry photo of Mum and me in Syntagma Square 8 years ago when, having been deposited in Athens after a late-night ferry from Santorini, we walked around central Athens with giant backpacks for about 2 hours trying in vain to find a hotel with vacancies and ended up sleeping at the airport.

This time we got very lost one afternoon, and ended up walking for an hour in what turned out to be the wrong direction. We hailed a taxi, and were offered some warnings from the driver: “This is the Albanian part of town. Put everything valuable in your front pockets. They are like mosquitos; you don’t even notice they have bitten you.” A reminder this is the Balkans: everyone free to be suspicious of the next guy.

Athens

I am comfortable in big cities. Urbanity has its downsides: ugly high-density post-war architecture, traffic congestion, crowds…  but cities give rise to interesting cultures that emerge from concentrations of diverse and creative people.

Athens is a cosmopolitan port city of 4 million, with many of those accompanying flaws; and for many years it had a particularly avoidable reputation. But watching fashionable Athenians enjoying the summer evenings, and strolling through suburbs with intriguing shops and public art, it felt like a vibrant, energetic city (indeed, in contrast to its country’s current political and economic state). It felt like we only scratched the surface.