Greece is on its own path. It lives off the distant past, the era of about 200 years when Greeks led the world in science, philosophy, medicine, architecture, literature, mathematics, and sculpture. Athens today is all about fencing off anything that contains fragments of buildings from that era, and charging 20 euros to visit it. Tourists can easily spend 100 euros per person checking them off their lists. Such tourism is the number two money-earner in Greece. The country has adopted English and changed its dining habits to accommodate them.

The Acropolis	Hadrian's Arch, with Acropolis

The Metro system got us from the airport right to where we were staying for just nine euros, and we got five-trip Metro passes (Athinacards) for use within the city and Piraeus, its port city. Piraeus has the tallest building in Greece, right across the street from the ferry docks. It is 23 stories tall, which begins to tell you that Athens, and Greece, have issues.

The ferries go to most of the populated islands among the 2000 islands Greece holds, some with fast boats and some real leisurely runs of 7-9 hours. We went to Hydra, that Leonard Cohen visited for lunch in the sixties (and stayed for ten years). No cars are allowed on Hydra, but you see men leading or riding files of donkeys and small horses everywhere. They are great for hauling goods up the steep, cobblestone hillsides and along the paths that connect everyone and everything on the island. It was only about an hour and a quarter to get there, so well worth a daytrip. We used ferryhopper.com, which can show you all the times and schedules for all the ferry services, and handles cancellations and refunds with ease. When we went, Nancy’s first choice, Santorini was being rocked by continuous tremors, and thousands had abandoned the island. So we tried Sifnos instead. But Sifnos was only served by one ferry service the weekend we booked, and they cancelled all their ferries, leaving us stuck on shore, and others stuck on the island – for two weeks. There is risk in island trips.

Hydra wide shot	Entering Hydra

Hydra is a poster child for Greek islands. Lots of restaurants and bars in the town, lots of quiet outside it. Everything is sparkling clean and well kept. There are no construction cranes or taxis, no graffiti and no trash piled up anywhere. Just a lot retail employees welcoming tourists all day every day. They give Hydra a restaurant scene far in excess of what its population would normally merit. It is definitely worth the side trip, though unlike Leonard Cohen, I can’t imagine spending a decade there (though Nancy could).

Horses and donkeys, Hydra	Islands beyond Hydra

We also took a day trip up to Delphi, where we learned the scam of the Oracle of Delphi. Basically, the oracle was high, and gave out cryptic predictions as answers to questions after staffers collected handsome fees. The oracle was not particularly accessible. Layers of gatekeepers, all wanting gifts, separated the oracle from answer seekers. That wealth also attracted all other kinds of scammers, and a whole village of enterprising people created an entire economy around the oracle. There are temples galore, as gifts from royalty and the rich: those temples as well as remote gifts like entire buildings, just paying to play without waiting in line. It was glorious and glamorous while it lasted. Today, it is fenced off, and tickets are required. What struck us most was the magnificent scenery: stunning bare rock cliffs and mountains, and lush valleys of olive groves, with Delphi in between. A couple of miles away, the first village you pass through is an expensive ski resort today, leveraging both the oracle and global skiers, as history repeats itself.

Delphi wall in Lesbos-style stonework	Footrace stadium

In Athens, of course, the Acropolis is the star, visible from just about anywhere in the city. It is one of three hills, climbable and providing a spectacular 360 view of Athens. We did two of the three. Like Delphi, all the sites are surrounded by tourist traps: shopping districts and less than memorable restaurants. There are street hustlers and buskers and tourists by the busload.

After shipbuilding, tourism is the most important industry, and it helps keep Athens out of the abyss. Because Athens, and Greece do not have the healthiest of economies. The city doesn’t have the money to paint over or erase all the graffiti, and there are districts absolutely covered in it (as well as the #2 metro line which is unfortunately mostly above ground). It is bad, old style American graffiti, indecipherable, meaningless, uninspired and degrading to the self respect due a 4000 year old city.

Overlooking endess olive groves	Sphinx from atop a column	Plate from 600 BC

We were daily disappointed with the food. Restaurants were unmemorable, and only one was worth going back to – and it was Thai, only has 20 seats, and is only open after five. Similarly, the bakeries, of which there are more than I have ever seen in any city, offer uniformly dull baked goods. The sheer variety of breads available was inspiring, but they all tasted pretty much the same – dull.

We lived in a great district of cafes and restaurants, and tried all kinds of stuff. But nothing lived up to expectations. Our apartment was on the sixth floor, with a view of the Acropolis and all the rooftops with their solar hot water heaters glinting in the sunlight. We had a lovely covered balcony the width of the apartment (a good 25 feet). We got to know the merchants in our area (Koukaki), all of whom were open, helpful and friendly. Most of them had no difficulty with English, and some are just as at ease in French and Italian, too. They took time for us and made us feel welcome rather than tourists on daytrips.

Greeks complain about the lack of speech freedoms, low wages, high taxes, low standard of living, and the derailment of a passenger train 2023, for which no report has ever been issued. This led to a bombing we clearly heard and felt outside the rail offices, about six blocks from our apartment, on the 11th of April 2025. The city is not swarming with police, which is nice, but Syntagma Square always has a couple of huge police vans and riot police staffed and ready for any protests.

Seating up the steps	Socrates' Prison

For the average Athenian, none of this matters. Life goes on. Small cars and small trucks circulate in the neighborhoods, offering contracting services through a loudspeaker the driver rigs outside the vehicle. There are also apartment gardeners, who fill their pickup trucks with bags of earth and fertilizer, and anyone can stop them by yelling down from their balcony, and get their “garden” reinvigorated right then and there. And there are really involved lush balcony gardens everywhere.

Another nice thing is street signs. Athens posts the name of every street on almost every corner of every intersection, both in Greek and in English lettering of the Greek name. This is enormously helpful when streets are this short and so crooked. The Metro and its stations are spotlessly clean, easy to navigate and inexpensive.

We also discovered that Athens doesn’t bother much with zoning. Dentists operate out of their apartments, and a grocery store can apparently be anywhere in any block, it seems. Oddly, perhaps, considering the climate, Athens does not have a bicycle culture, not even e-bike rentals. This might be because the hillsides are so steep. But there is a huge motorcycle culture. We have never seen so many motorcycle dealers, decorators, repairers and accessories shops. They are just everywhere. They seem to dominate retail outside the ancient Greece areas and their overtourism. But unlike Bangkok, they do not pick up riders for a fee. And one last notable is cats. The place is overrun with cats. People buy and leave them food, helping keep their numbers far too high. They give them blankets and set up cardboard boxes for them to call home. Dogs, however, are indoor pets, always on leashes when out.

Overtourism to the Acropolis	Every street in Athens	Rooftop bubble tables	Top-selling unappealing ice cream

We were very comfortable in Greece. There’s a lot to enjoy. Any café society like this is comfortable. It is authentically different, even unique thanks to its history and its iconoclastic habits. And the islands are different: different architecture, different economies, and different histories. Which means we need to go back. Greece is variety, writ large.