I Am A Rock

There are places in this world that I have spent a lot of time searching the internet trying to figure out the best way to visit for the first time. Not too many places but there are a few that I've come back to again and again. I've definitely game planned Turkey, Easter Island, Southeast Asia, some islands in the Caribbean and maybe one or two other spots ad nauseum. Greece would definitely be on that list. Now, it's no longer on the list because I just got back from there in October of this year.

For my what-if scenario planning for Greece, my debate was always would I island hop for a week and a half between places like Crete and Santorini and Mykonos or would I spend time in Athens and do a bit less island hopping. As it turns out, neither of those scenarios happened. We ended up with four nights in Athens as the end of a week plus in Croatia. No Aegean Sea. No island-hopping.

But I felt I couldn't go to Greece and not set foot on any islands and with Athens being a port town, I figured there must be some way to get out to one relatively close to the city. I figured we'd head down to the Port of Piraeus, jump on a boat of some sort and head out for a half or three-quarters day trip and get a little taste of what I had imagined my first trip to Greece would be like.  

The ferry Antigone, presumably named after the daughter of Oedipus.

We settled on Hydra. We thought the idea of exploring a car-free island would be a cool concept. Until we checked out what there was to do on that island and decided we'd pretty much go out there, eat and come back. Hey, we're not beach people. So, we found one with some temples. Aegina. And it's about to close as Athens as you can get. 

Now, I realize I already posted another blog post that detailed a visit to some temples (the Acropolis). Yes, we had to have more and spoiler alert, there's one more temple post coming. We were in Athens for four days and we visited at least one Greek temple on every day. Aegina was our last. And when I wrote this little island of just 33 or so square miles has some temples, I really mean it. There are two. On that tiny island.

Sometimes it is difficult for me to imagine a geopolitical world that is substantially different from the way it looks today. Today, Athens is the capital city of a country that also includes Aegina. But at one time (like 2,500+ years ago), Athens and Aegina were two separate entities competing with one another. I understand that there was no such country as Greece the way we know it today way back in the centuries before Christ's time. I'm also aware of the fact that Athens and Sparta and Corinth and other places that exist in modern Greece were at one time individual city-states whose people identified as Greek but as citizens of their city first and as Greek second. I just didn't imagine that a tiny island just 17 miles off the coast of Athens would support a society with its own king, its own coinage and that was a successful and flourishing sea power. These things happened back then. The world was a bigger place, I guess. Or is it smaller?

While historical records from the time of the height of Aegina's power in the region are spotty and incomplete at best, their rise to prominence as an important player in the Mediterranean seems undoubtedly related to (1) their ability to field a powerful navy; (2) the abundance of agricultural products on the island, including grains, grapes, almonds, olives, figs and particularly pistachios; and (3) their location along naval trade routes between Greece, Egypt and Asia Minor. Their crops were likely cultivated using significant amounts of slave labor. Just throwing that out there for consideration. Greek society relied heavily on slave labor.

Some of the recorded successes from Aegina are truly astounding. They were the first city-state to issue coins in Europe and they invented one of the two standards of weights and measures in existence in the Greek world. These might seem like small accomplishments but they were actually huge. Think about how essential money and a system of weights and measures were in a world where goods were the primary source of income for most everyone. Aegina was flourishing in the ancient world. Which is probably why they started building more than one temple. 

One of the many, many pistachio stands in the port of Aegina. This one was pretty good.

It's pretty easy to get to Aegina today. So easy, in fact, that we didn't book in advance, and we ALWAYS book in advance. We woke up without an alarm, left our hotel, hopped on Line 3 of the Athens Metro and got off at Piraeus. From there we found a ferry ticket office and bought a ticket on the next available ferry. About 75 minutes or so later, we were about the first people off at Aegina, meaning both the island and the town. The ferry ride is over the Saronic Gulf, by the way. No Aegean on this trip. Maybe next time.

The debarkation point of our trip from Piraeus was the port of Aegina, largest town on the island and the tourist center of everything. The harbor is this picturesque Mediterranean looking harbor with boats of every size; souvenir shops; buildings that serve the residents and visitors to the town; pistachio stands; and an enormous amount of restaurants all fronting opposite the harbor with outdoor shaded seating areas and (at least in the case of the one we picked...) the best Greek salads you've ever had in your life. Everything that happens tourist-wise on the island of Aegina likely starts in the port of Aegina.

The pistachios, by the way, are incredible. We brought a bag back home with us and they are the most delicate, most delicious and lemony nuts I've ever had in my life. I try not to have (or maybe at least try not to dwell on) regrets in life but I have to tell you, I regret not bringing more of these pistachios back home with us. They lasted over a month and I'm proud of the restraint we showed. But if I can get my hands on more of these things, I would in a heartbeat.

The Temple of Apollo's one mostly intact column.

We laid eyes upon the first of the two temples we sought out on Aegina before we ever set foot there. As you approach the island there is a spur of land pointed towards Athens with what looks to be an obelisk fashioned out of some sort of quarried stone. It's not. It's the last surviving column of what used to be the Temple of Apollo, built sometime in the 6th century B.C. 

This particular temple is not much to look at today. Its foundation is completely excavated as are the foundations and remains of surrounding buildings that together made up some sort of Acropolis. It's walkable from the port and is certainly worth the very quick walk out there. I think it took us less than 45 minutes to walk out there, walk the site, take a tour of the nearby museum and then get back to the town. There are certainly ways you can spend a lot more time out there. 

For us, this was about getting a sense of the second temple on our list for the day. I think we got two things out of our very quick visit. First, you can get a lot closer to this ruin than most any other that we visited in our four days in Greece. You can actually walk on top of the base of the Temple itself. Second, when this thing was built and operational, it must have been a spectacular site on the edge of the sea facing out towards the water, welcoming travelers and traders while simultaneously showing off the wealth and might of Aegina. I've said this before (in my Acropolis post) and I'll say it again: the Greeks really knew how to locate a building on a site. It must have been glorious back in the day, before time and particularly the saltwater took its toll on the place. 

But Apollo was not why we came to Aegina. We went to visit the Temple of Athena Aphaia and that would not be walkable from the port. 

Looking from the back of the ruin of the Temple of Apollo to the front and the Saronic Gulf beyond.

The Temple of Athena Aphaia is about as far as you can get on the island of Aegina from the port where we arrived on the island. The island is roughly triangular in shape with the north edge of the island forming one side of the triangle and the two other sides meeting at a point all the way in the south. The port is all the way on the northwest corner. The Temple of Athena Aphaia is about on the northeast corner on the top of the highest point around.

As a bit of an aside here, if you were to draw a line from Athena Aphaia to the Temple of Hephaestus in Athens and another to the Temple of Poseidon in Sounion, the lines would make an almost perfect isosceles triangle, meaning two of the three legs of the triangle are identical in length. Some historians view this as no accident. The Greeks were famous mathematicians (remember Pythagoras and his theorem?) and cartographers so were certainly capable of pulling this off. Check it out on a map. There's no doubt it's true.

Athena Aphaia is supposed to be part of a second isosceles triangle formed between it, the Parthenon and the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. This one I don't see. But the other one? Totally true. No idea if it was intentional. If it was, it's a heck of a feat.

First view of the Temple of Athena Aphaia.

We researched our visit to Aegina pretty thoroughly, despite the lack of an advance reservation on a ferry. We read about some unreliable public transportation that could get us out there if we were willing to work a little. We also looked over some information about scooter and car rental. But the consensus advice to get to the Temple seemed to be to take a cab. Now, you can't very well take a cab out to somewhere like where the Temple is located and then just catch another one back. So the advice was negotiate with a cab driver to take you out to the Temple, have him (or her, I guess) wait for 30 minutes and then have him take you back to the port.

When our ferry docked, we were pretty much the first ones off the boat; made a beeline for the cab stand; asked the first cabbie how much for the Temple, a 30 minutes wait and a ride back; and shook on a rate of 35 Euros, which included a stop at the Monastery of Agios Nectarios. We'd never heard of the Monastery but I had a top price in mind of 40 Euros so something else thrown in for below our top price seemed like a good idea. We might find something we loved, although the promised stop time at the Monastery was just 5 minutes.

About 15 minutes after our ferry docked, we were in a cab on the way to Athena Aphaia.

I have to say I have no idea how you would get to this site any other way than in a cab. The road to the Temple is by no means a straight line and the roads are twisty-turny most of the way. I have no idea if public transportation actually exists to take you from the port to the Temple but if it does, there's no way it's taking you on your schedule. The cab advice was good advice.

When you get to the Temple, there's a small parking area and a ticket booth and pretty much nothing else. Or at least that was the case when we got there. No other buildings, no traffic, no noise and no people. In great contrast to our visit to the Parthenon a few days earlier, there was absolutely nobody at Athena Aphaia when we arrived. Not a soul. There's nothing like getting to an ancient site and having it all to yourselves. We got there just after noon and that's the way we found it. It was pretty awesome.

It's probably been that way for a while. It is thought that the Temple was built around 500 B.C. and it's quite likely that there was not much more there then than there is now. This version of the Temple was built on top of the ruins of a prior temple, which was also built on top of some even older ruins.  The whole place was built as a sanctuary so it wasn't just a temple when it was complete but it's likely whatever was built near it to support the Temple functions didn't house a ton of people.

The Temple today is approached from the parking area to the south. I have to assume the approach in ancient times was the same, otherwise there would be a very steep climb to reach the place from...well, pretty much the sea. The front of the Temple is pointed out towards the gorgeous green-blue of the Saronic Sea and pretty much totally indifferent to the approach of the visitor. Your view of both the Temple front and the water is continually denied until you reach the top of the hill and can all of a sudden see both. Of course, the water is the most enticing and draws the eye immediately, delaying your frontal view of the building.

Every Greek temple I have described on this blog from this trip is the same story. The relationship to the site and to the procession to the temple itself teases and reveals in the same sort of way. It's simple but brilliant. The Parthenon. The Erichtheion. Athena Nike. Apollo on Aegina. Athena Aphaia. All of them the same. It's like they really knew what they were doing. And yes, I know I already said that in this post.

Side view of the Temple, with assorted building parts in the foreground (top); the view from the hill (bottom).

Ultimately, the building itself is pretty simple. It's a straightforward Doric temple (albeit a very well executed one) with six columns on the short side and 12 on the longer face. It's not spatially complex inside (are any of them?) and other than the fact that it's on top of a hill with no obvious way to get materials (and by that I mean giant pieces of stone) up there, there's not a ton to admire or look at. Sure it's well detailed and the location is amazing and the fact that it's still there is a testament to the soundness of the construction. But it's still impressive. Perhaps more so because there's no scaffolding to interfere with the view.

The thing that really gets me here is what this place must have been like back in the day when it was a fully functioning religious sanctuary. I mean how much work was it to even get up there and what would it look like fully painted with a full complement of statuary all over? Yeah, I know, it was all probably just a ruse like most religions are (cynicism there...sorry) but it still must have been so incredible. It must have reflected the might and the wealth of Aegina. These things are emotional to think about.

The sculpture that used to be at the Temple, by the way, is now in Munich. Why? Well, other than the fact that it was stolen by the Germans.

30 minutes. That's what we had at Athena Aphaia. I think the time was the right amount. There's not a ton to see, and 30 minutes allowed for the proper reflection about the history of the place and how gorgeous the place is today. And I know I already bragged about the lack of other people while we were there but we did just miss a tour bus that just pulled into the parking area and dumped its human contents onto the Temple grounds right as we were leaving.

View of some of the inner structure of the Temple of Athena Aphaia.

True to his word, our cabbie got us five minutes at the Monastery of Agios Nectarios on the way back down the hill. I'm not much of a monastery guy but if we had any doubt about the importance of monasteries in the Middle Ages before we took this trip, our stops in Croatia and particularly Dubrovnik (where we saw at least three monasteries) erased all those doubts. Monastic life must have been some sort of sanctuary from a world where everything was a constant struggle. I'm not suggesting that life in a monastery in the middle of the second millennium C.E. must have been a cakewalk but I can appreciate the importance they occupied in life at that time and the dedication that it would have taken to leave your whole world behind to achieve some sort of inner peace.

The monastery on Aegina that we visited was not that. It was built in 1904 but it looks much older and seriously Byzantine. It's not. I guess it's worth a visit. It's impressive as a structure. I especially loved the medallion details over the colonnade on the front face. It was a nice throw in for free but our 30 minutes at the Temple blew away the five at the monastery.

On Aegina, Athena Aphaia was the thing.

The Monastery of Agios Nectarios.

Our trip over to Aegina took us about 75 minutes. I know I already mentioned that. Our trip back to Piraeus lasted a bit more than half that time. On our trip to the island, we noticed a much faster ferry catching and then passing us and we decided right there and then that we'd rather take that one back, even if there was a bit of an extra cost (there was...the ferry there cost 12 Euros each; we paid an extra 7 Euros each coming back). I have to say that the quick trip back was welcomed after a hot day roaming around some temples, particularly the Temple of Apollo in the early afternoon Greece sun.

But sometimes, it pays to take the slow route. I'm glad we didn't know about the high-speed ferry on the way out there because we probably would have taken it both ways. But here's the thing: you can stand on the outside decks on the slow boat; you can't on the high-speed boat. And sometimes standing outside on the deck of a boat gets you a little bonus (I know...I've already covered a bonus for this post but there were actually two). This may seem stupid but our (second) little bonus here involved a half-dozen or so gulls.

Gulls...if there were a type of bird I'd totally be up for skipping watching at all, it would be these birds. I see little value in these things, particularly the really, really common herring gull that seems to be virtually everywhere every time we spend any time at the ocean or sea. Not interested in checking these things out really at all.

Except on this ride to Aegina. We first noticed one or two of them vying for control of the top of the mast on the front of the boat. They must have wanted a free ride on a spot where they could see a lot. I don't know. Eventually, we noticed maybe six or seven more trailing alongside the boat and then dive all at once down to the water. So we looked overboard and noticed tiny little fish jumping out of the water in the frothy churn caused by our ferry and these gulls were diving down and plucking them out of the air. Not fishing. Just skimming the sea and gobbling up those fish that were unlucky enough to decide to exit the water.

I am sure this happens all the time. Probably every day. But we had never seen it. And we wouldn't have seen it at all without taking the slow boat. Sometimes it pays to take the slow boat.

Herring gulls fishing.

Say Feta

OK, so I didn't really plan on writing a blog post about the food in Greece. I know. I know. I've written plenty of food blog posts over the ten plus years I've been doing this so it's not like a food post is an unusual occurrence. Japan got one. England got one. New Zealand got one, for crying out loud. I've written about pizza in Italy and cheese in Paris and egg custard pastries in Portugal. Why can't Greece have one too? Well, it can. It's getting one. 

I start this post that way for two reasons. First, it's a get out of jail free card on the photos in this post. I didn't plan on writing a Greek food post so I didn't consciously take pictures to support a narrative. That's not a comment on our expectations for Greek food. I just didn't plan one. 

Second-ly, and way more importantly, the food in and around Athens was quite honestly amazing. Greece deserves a food post. When people ask me where I've traveled and have had the best food, I always say Japan. My answer may now be Greece. It was that good. No joke here. It was incredible. And way, way, way cheaper than Japan.

So before I continue and finish blogging about Greek temples...here goes a food post about Greece. With sub-par photographs.

Souvlaki, anyone?

So, a few big picture themes here: (1) lots of the best feta I have ever had in my life (and I already LOVED feta before this trip); (2) lots of olives (kalamatas, the BEST kind of olives); (3) lots of souvlaki; and (4) lots and lots of history and influences from other cultures that put Greek cuisine where it is today. Combine all of that with an awesome street food scene; low, low, low costs; and good and cheap Greek wine (I'm partial to the malagousia) and honestly, I could spend weeks roaming around Athens eating the food that the locals cook. Seriously impressive.

Now, for sure, we were serious about getting some good Greek grub before we arrived in country. I definitely had feta, pastries made from phyllo, souvlaki and baklava (I know...also made from phyllo) on my list along with a resolution to find the best I'd ever had of each of those foods. I also thought the food was important enough in this part of our Croatia and Greece trip to book a food tour on our arrival day in Athens. We've done this in a few places around the globe and have found they not only get us a good sampling of the local fare, but also get us a feel for neighborhoods around wherever we are traveling in addition to making connections locally and regionally through the history of what's eaten where we happen to be.

None of that makes any sense with my I-wasn't-planning-on-food-blogging statement but whatever. 

Our food tour idea (Greekality's Athens Street Food Tour, if you must know) totally worked as intended. It got us deep into the casual food and street food scene (and I really love some street food) around Syntagma and particularly Monastiraki Squares and gave us a place to head back for both lunch and dinner over the next couple of days. Our guide, Antonia, also gave us advice and tips for our next three days in town and also walked us through the history and some of the etymology of both the places we were visiting and the foods we were enjoying. She also below away some preconceived notions about food in Greece, particularly some things we get wrong over here in the USA.

Let me drop a couple of word origins here to get things going: any word with "aki" on the end is likely a diminutive of the original meaning (Monastiraki Square is a smaller version of an open space near the monastery in that part of town) and the addition of "pita" on the end of a word typically means a pie, particularly if it's a phyllo pie (spanakopita comes to mind here). Antonia also informed us about the dropping of the "s" on Acropolis and metropolis (it's pronounced Acropoli and metropoli in Greek) due to those two words being feminine in gender.

Our guide, Antonia, with some cheese (meaning feta, of course) pie.

So about that food. Let's start with dessert, shall we? I mean, why not. Dessert always comes last. Why not put it first for a change. 

If there was a dessert we had to have in Greece, it was baklava. Layers of phyllo sandwiched over and below layer after layer of finely chopped pale green pistachios and then the whole thing drenched in honey? Yes, please. Sad though it may sound, my measuring stick for baklava was a stall at London's Borough Market and I knew I was bound to get something better than that in Greece. So on the first night in Athens as the last dish of our food tour we were presented with a plate of baklava with orange cake and ice cream.

So was it a better version of the roll of baklava I had in London? No, it was not. And that's because it wasn't the same kind of baklava. The Greeks don't make their baklava with pistachios. They make it with walnuts. The Greeks also throw in a healthy dose of cinnamon when they are making their baklava. But honestly (and despite pistachios being superior to walnuts), it was really, really good. It was actually better than the stuff in London. By a lot. 

That's not to say that there isn't pistachio baklava out there that's better than the walnut variety that we had in Athens but this couple of bites was really good. We did actually find some pistachio baklava on the island of Aegina but that was not as good as the walnut and cinnamon stuff.

In case you were wondering, the Turks make the pistachio baklava. 

Baklava, orange cake and mastika ice cream.

Baklava was just one of four desserts we had on our first night food tour (I'm counting the orange cake and the ice cream as two separate desserts...). The ice cream that filled the left side of the baklava plate was made with mastika, a resin produced by the mastic tree on the Greek island of Chios. Apparently, despite the mastic tree existing in many places in the world, it only produces resin on the Chios just west of the coast of Turkey. I am betting we never find mastika ice cream in any other country in any of our future travels. The stuff you learn when you leave home...

The first dessert we had that night was the most disappointing...something called lukumades, which are deep fried balls of dough with honey topping (think donut holes but a bit larger). I found them too deep fried. They were crunchy when I expected soft and they left me with a greasy aftertaste in my mouth. But they came with a small dose of history: apparently they were served as prizes for the ancient Greek athletes at the first Olympic Games in 776 B.C., which I guess makes the Greeks the inventors of the donuts, at least until someone tells us about an earlier version.

A "single bite" in Arabic is lukma, by the way.

The Lukumades napkin. In many ways better than the actual food.

More food, anyone? With or without history? For sure! The sampling of spanakopita and just plain cheese (meaning feta) pie we started our tour with was the best phyllo with spinach and cheese or just cheese that I've ever had. I don't know how anyone could eat a whole portion of one of these pies but I guess people do. Way too rich and buttery but awesome in single bite form.

The best we had on our first night, though, was a peyrnirli. I know what you are thinking...a WHAT? It's essentially a Greek pizza shaped like a boat, but there's an awesome and sad historical backstory.

The peyrnirli is not Greek. It's Turkish. Shocker, I know. The Turks! Again!

Apparently in the late nineteen-teens and early 1920s the Greeks and the Turks got into a bit of a war. The Greeks started it when they invaded western Turkey in 1919 and the Turks ended it when they kicked the Greeks back to Greece three years later. The Greeks invaded because they claimed the Greek-speaking Orthodox Christian population living in western Turkey needed protection from the Turks. So when the war was over, the two countries agreed to swap parts of their population: the Turks sent 1.1 million Christians to Greece and the Greeks sent 400,000 Muslims the other way. When that happened, the peyrnirli made its way from Turkey to Greece. And in 2023, a couple of peyrnirli made their way from a table to my stomach.

I know it shouldn't shock me because it's happening still all over the world today, but what kind of leaders of nations want to send residents of their own countries away to an enemy and force people in their enemy's territory to uproot their lives and move to a new place? I guess maybe it would be welcomed if those people felt threatened where they lived but why would a nation allow that either? I know there are no good answers here. 

But that's apparently how the peyrnirli got to Athens. It's effectively a pizza in a different shape, right? Although (and I know you can't tell from the picture below) there's no tomato sauce. I love pizza, especially ones with pillowy soft crust that deflates gorgeously when you bite into them like these peyrnirli did. The olive ones were the best. Hey...we were in Greece.

Mushroom and truffle peyrnirli.

This post was never intended to be a blow by blow of our opening night food tour so while there's still time, let's make sure I don't do that.

We got amazing food pretty much everywhere we went in Greece. Whether it was street food or food in a restaurant or eaten outdoors or indoors, we generally loved everything we ate. Maybe not so much the koulouria, or Greek bagels (they were too dry, even when filled with cheese and bacon), but everything else hit the spot pretty much as soon as we bit into it.

It might be odd to reminisce about something as simple as a Greek salad but I'm telling you, the one we had in our four days in Greece was sublime. Tomatoes, cucumbers, feta, capers, red onions and fall-off-the-pit kalamata olives have never tasted so good in a bowl to me. It was so incredible that I ate all the cucumbers (which I do NOT like) without a care. Oh...and no lettuce. Get it right, America.

The best Greek salad ever. EVER.

But after all that, the food that will stick out as intimately tied to our experience in Greece was souvlaki. That's probably because we ate souvlaki four times in four days. It was the main course at dinner on our food tour and it was lunch, lunch and dinner the next three days. 

Let's start with the word, shall we. It ends in "aki" so if Antonia is to be believed, it's a diminutive of some other term. And sure enough, the Greek word for skewer is souvla. Souvlaki, therefore, is a mini skewer. Could be chicken, could be pork, could be beef and lamb mixture. If it's chicken or pork, sometimes it's cut off a rotating vertical spit and it might be called a gyro. If it's beef and lamb mixture, it's ground and cooked on a (small) skewer but it's never cut off the vertical spit and it's never called a gyro. Not in Greece. Not since a ban on beef importation in the late 1960s. No beef gyros in Athens.

If it's served as a sandwich, it's coming in a pita. If it's not, it's just on a plate with some sides. Rice and potatoes, maybe. Not rice OR potatoes. Rice AND potatoes. One starch ain't enough here. Throw in some tomatoes, some sauce (tzatziki) and some red onions and you got a meal. And yes, the sides come in the pita, too. Just not the rice. But for sure the potatoes in French fried form. And maybe a bit of paprika.

Souvlaki, anyone?

I don't think souvlaki was necessarily my favorite dish in Greece, but it certainly had me coming back again and again. There's nothing that's not good about this sandwich. It's quick, it's relatively healthy (ignore the fries) and it's super cheap. Our last meal of the trip was a couple of chicken souvlakis, a water and beer and it cost us less than $10. That's American dollars after conversion, not Euros. Less than $10!!!

If there are three memories from Greece about food, it's the feta, the olives and the availability and frequency of souvlaki meals. This is not complicated stuff. There's not a lot of advanced techniques required to make anything that we had to eat in Athens or in the area around the Greek capital. It's solid ingredients in the place where they are produced that have been paired together successfully over centuries. Other than the food tour, we made about zero effort to find the best Greek food around Athens and it was all fantastic. We've been eating kalamatas and feta every week for the month and a half we've been back from Greece. Can't get enough of this stuff. 

Better than Japan? Best food ever? Maybe. Our range was narrower than it was in Japan, if for no other reason than we spent 3-4 times as long in Japan. But next time someone asks me where is the best food I've ever had on our travels, it's at least Japan with a nod to Greece. 

One last Greek food tidbit. There are olive trees growing in downtown Athens. Greece leads the world in per capita consumption of olive oil. 17 liters per person per year. Serious stuff.

Last souvlaki in Greece. For this year, anyway.