An American in Athens (Well, TWO Americans in Athens - Maybe More!)

Our hotel for the first night was the Electra Palace Hotel, located in the Plaka area of Athens. The Plaka is the central, tourist-y area of Athens.  This hotel is one of the nicest in the Plaka, rated at 5 stars on Trip Advisor, and ranked #12 of 289 in Athens on that same site.

Here's a map showing the location of the hotel in relation to the Acropolis and other Athens landmarks:

The hotel is at point "A".  To the West, you can see the Acropolis.  To the South, the Temple of Zeus, and to the far Southeast, the Olympic Stadium.  We will visit these tomorrow.

The hotel was lovely, with an American-style king bed, a balcony (overlooking a courtyard - nothing to write home about), and a large bathroom and closet.  Our room was right next to the elevator - very convenient.  There were also beautiful marble stairs next to the elevators, which we preferred when we weren't toting luggage.

We unpacked and freshened up quickly, then visited the front desk staff (they didn't have a concierge, at least not that we saw) for help with a few items: dinner recommendation, a place to buy toothpaste (which we had forgotten), a place to buy a cell phone, and they helped us break our large bill Euros into more manageable ones.

A side note about money in Greece.  We all know about Greece's economic troubles.  We have also heard about how, in March of this year, the government of Cyprus seized up to 40% of money held in private bank accounts in their country.  Because Cyprus is geographically so close to Greece, and Greece is experiencing similar economic troubles, business owners in Greece are a bit leery about the banks.  And it is currently taking 60+ days to collect customer credit card charges from the banks.  For this reason, we found that most tavernas, shops, and restaurants would not take any credit cards, even if they advertised that they did. They were pretty blunt about saying "we don't trust the banks."  It was not a huge hassle for us, as we took our budgeted amount for food, groceries and souvenirs in cash, but it's good to know if you plan to travel to Greece any time in the near future.

We were hungry!  It was after 8:30pm by this time, so we ventured in the general direction in which the wonderful staff at the hotel had directed us. Many of the roads in Athens do not have names.  So the directions go something like this: go out of the hotel.  Take a right.  Then walk "a good bit" and pass two streets then take another right.  Walk "a little more" and look for "some steps on the left".  Go up the stairs and find ____ _____ (a bunch of Greek words that we didn't understand or know now to spell, using either the Greek or the English alphabet!). So yeah, you could say we just winged it, and looked for "some steps on the left".

If you scroll back up to my map above, and pretend you're walking West from the hotel, you'll see that there is soon a "Y" in the road.  Our wonderful desk staff (and yes, they were wonderful - on par with Four Seasons or Ritz) had left that part out.  The Y.  So we had no idea what to do and just took a risk.

The walk was lovely.  The weather was nice and the sights were uniquely Athenian.  It was exhilarating to both of us being in ATHENS of all places! So we held hands and enjoyed the walk.

Eventually, we found "the steps on the left".  It must have been the right place, because, although there were plenty of steps in the Plaka, and in fact, plenty  of "steps on the left", we found the steps with lots of tavernas on either side of them.  It was really beautiful.  Here is a daylight photo from the next day, as I don't have one from that evening:

I couldn't even count the number of tavernas and cafes on either side, and they went wayyyy up a hill there.  Many of them had both tables and pillows (where you could sit directly on the steps) outside, and most of them had inside areas also, but they were not air-conditioned.

Something else we learned on the trip.  In Greece, there are three main types of eateries, and it helps to know what to expect at each one:
- Cafes are basically coffee shops.  You can get coffee, tea, water, juice and soft drinks.  Food offerings are typically pastries and club sandwiches.
- Tavernas are classic Greek diners.  They are usually owner-operated and serve classic Greek fare (Greek salad - AKA "Country salad", calimari, fresh fish with head-on, shrimp dishes, some pasta, etc.)
- Restaurants are much like American restaurants, with full menus and a large variety.  

Also, for what it's worth, don't bother asking for hummus. I guess I'm an idiot, because I thought I was going to eat a lot of hummus in Greece.  We asked at our first couple of tavernas, and got "the look".  I am not sure what "the look" is, but it means "we don't have hummus lady, are you nuts?"  That's ok, because it didn't take me long to discover that spicy cheese dip with warm pita wedges is wayyy  better than hummus.

So, we looked for the name of the taverna our hotel staff had directed us to, but we couldn't read the Greek alphabet and couldn't tell if anything looked anything like what we were looking for.  So naturally, we did what (apparently) every American in Athens does, and walked to the last taverna at the very top of the steps.  We were escorted to the roof and told to sit where we want to.  We picked a nice table along the front side of the roof garden, overlooking "the steps on the left", which were now no longer on the left, but I digress.  We chose to both sit on one side of the table.  I'll show you why.

This was our view of the roof garden taverna:

Neat, huh?  But that's not why we sat where we did.

This was why:

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Acropolis!!  We were amazed that we were having dinner just below it.

I also took a picture of the city of Athens from the rooftop, but it's not as impressive as the Acropolis side.

You can tell the sun was still setting.  My camera wasn't set for night shots, and it is not as foggy as it appears here.  Athens really sprawls out very widely.  It is a huge city.

I mentioned before that apparently every American in Athens chooses this restaurant.  It was not crowded, but we did notice that the people at every table around us spoke English with American accents.  I had fun playing a little "guess where they're from" game in my head.  The table to our right was four businessmen who I had pegged for either Californian or mid-Atlantic.  Turns out they were from Seattle, Oregon and central Florida. 

The couple to our right was a little easier.  We pegged them as being from Jersey, which they were.  We did the American thing and took pictures of them together under the Acropolis. Told a few stories, had a few laughs, and then asked the waiter to cork up our wine bottle to take with us.

We took our wine back to our room, knowing that the rest of the trip was by bus and boat, so we could save this wine and drink it later.

(P.S. I don't think we ever finished it.)

And it's off to sleep after a long two days of travel and a nice meal with a beautiful view.  Our first night couldn't have been better!