Put Your Hand in Your Pocket and Fork out For a Ticket to Athens

June 26th, 2010

Go and visit Metamorphisville
The noisy, polluted sprawl of the 2004 Olympics has been transformed into a vivacious and sophisticated urban centre. The locals are convinced their city is the new Barcelona for short-breakers. Airlines and hotels have plenty of space for those wishing to visit the Greek capital – Athenians are bewildered by the hostile press that portrays their country as a basket case. There are no signs of civil war and no boarded-up shops or deserted café terraces. Indeed, now is an excellent time to discover the city many credit with the birth of civilization and which still flourishes.

Get your bearings
As you get to grips with the modern city, you make the acquaintance of the ancient one. The core of the city encompasses the Ancient Agora and Roman Agora, lying between the two unmistakable hills of the Acropolis and the conical Lykavittos, which despite its daunting appearance, takes less than half-an-hour to climb.

Take a hike
The partial banishment of cars makes it both pleasurable and fascinating to cover the mile on foot from Hadrian’s Arch to the intact Temple of Hephaistos, skirting the southern slopes of the Acropolis. This broad, cobbled pedestrian boulevard, known as the Unification of the Archaeological Sites, is especially enjoyable in the cool of the evening, when Greeks and foreigners share the evening promenade.

Lunch on the run
The Central Market is a very lively place to eat, with plenty of fast, fresh food on offer.

Window shopping
You can enjoy a fairly raucous shopping experience at the Central Market: butchers bustle around with shopping trolleys filled with sides of lamb, and skinned sheep’s heads are displayed on marble slabs. A more practical gift for your loved ones would be a bag of tasty pistachios. The shop at the Museum of Cycladic Art stocks beautifully crafted reproductions of the Aegean’s most ancient art objects, jewelry, pots and figurines that are so stylized they are nearly abstract.

Take a view
The elegant Roof Garden restaurant of the historic Grande Bretagne Hotel offers an unparalleled night-time view of the Acropolis. The beautifully lit spectacle appears so close you feel you can reach out and touch it, and so magical that you must remind yourself that it is not a Hollywood set but buildings constructed nearly 2,500 years ago.

An aperitif
The pedestrianized Iraklidon street – in hip and hopping Thissio – is lined with cafés and restaurants. Bohemians drawn to the idea of absinthe will make for the Apsenti Café at number 19. A leafy courtyard is the best place to dare yourself to order the 70 percent aquamarine poison. You could opt for a less-testing cocktail or try a more appropriately local aperitif such as raki with honey.

Dine with the locals
In the moderately upmarket neighborhood of Pagrati the restaurants are populated exclusively by locals. Traditional Greek dishes are served with a modern twist: the chunky fava are topped with capers, the slow-cooked lamb baked in paper is flavored subtly with garlic and mint.

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 26th, 2010 at 5:02 am and is filed under Finance, Personal / Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Leave a Reply

Click here to cancel reply.

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website