Amalia Discovers Athens and the Grande Bretagne

 Amalia had only two days at the end of her trip to Greece to enjoy Athens, but staying at the Grande Bretagne Hotel, (friends call it “the GB”) put her right in the heart of the city with a balcony overlooking Constitution Square…

… and a perfect view of the tourists gathering to photograph the Evzone soldiers stationed in front of the Parliament building.

Amalia was greeted with “Welcome” gifts from the GB, including flowers and this arrangement of chocolates.  Even the lady caryatid, who looks like the columns holding up the Erectheum on the Acropolis, was made out of white chocolate, but she was too pretty to eat.

Breakfast at the GB happens on the roof, and with your Herald Tribune and fresh squeezed orange juice,....

 you get this view of the Parthenon.

 Amalia’s first priority was to check out the  pool, also atop the building. (There’s also an Olympic-sized pool in the spa in the basement.)

 Bathing suit, check.  Sunglasses, check.  Nemo water wings, check.  Dora the Explorer hat, check.  Amalia was ready to hit the pool.

She tried to get Papou to go into the pool with her, but he had meetings scheduled.

Amalia decided she didn’t want to go any further than the first step down…

…despite Mommy’s efforts to coax her into the water.  (In the distance you can see Mount Lycabettos, with the Church of St. George on top.)

When she spied the fountains in the corner, Amalia decided that was much more her idea of water play.   

Later Mommy took Amalia in her stroller to explore the National Gardens nearby, which were originally the Royal Gardens for Amalia, the first queen of modern Greece.  But now they’re for everyone, including her small namesake.

The animal cages were empty--no doubt one more result of Greece’s economic crisis—but there was a pond full of turtles,

Some baby turtles rode on their Mommy’s back.

There were pieces of ancient columns to pose on

And swings to share with Yiayia Nenny

And a sandbox where this boy had some really cool sand toys and a dump truck he was filling with sand…

…But a bigger boy named Socrates took away the dump truck and the little boy cried and Socrates’ Mommy gave him a lecture, while Amalia was riveted by the drama.

Walking back to the hotel, Amalia wanted a close-up view of the Evzones doing their  goose-stepping dance in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.  Barricades had been put up to protect the Parliament building from the  anti-austerity demonstrations which often take place here, but the pigeons and the tourists managed to get in easily.

Mommy pushed the stroller so Amalia got a really close view.

As the sun began to set, everyone gathered on our balcony to enjoy the “Welcome” bottle of wine  and watch the sunset.

The last dinner, on the roof of the hotel, included lobster and another dramatic view of the Acropolis, but by now Amalia was sound asleep, gathering her strength for the ten-hour plane trip to New York’s JFK airport, during which she would watch two movies, eat a lot, explore the airplane from one end to another and drive her Mommy and her Yiayia Joanie to distraction.

Is Greece Safe for Tourists?

I spent most of July in different parts of Greece. While there, I kept hearing from friends: “Are you scared? Is Greece safe?” 

After I got back, on Aug. 7, the New York Times Sunday Magazine published a photo essay, “The Mean Streets of Athens”, which, with photos of heroin addicts, riot police and a burning mosque, made Athens look worse than Manhattan in the seventies.

The NYT photo essay had only one paragraph of text which read in part: “Recent images from Athens have mostly shown violent protests in response to the austerity program Greece has adopted to solve its debt crisis.  Less public is the city’s skyrocketing violent crime rate. According to police statistics, robberies almost doubled from 2008 to 2010, homicides are steadily increasing and illegal immigrants continue to arrive.”

In Athens, we usually stay at the Grande Bretagne on Constitution (Syntagma)  Square, but this year, when we first arrived, we borrowed a friend’s apartment near the Hilton, away from the center, because we had read about the riots in the Square in front of the Parliament building, during which the police used tear gas on the crowds and considerable damage was done to the luxury hotels around it.

The angry dissidents pitched tents and occupied that square, where we always used to sit in the cafés and watch the sun set over the Acropolis while boys on skateboards sailed down the marble steps and evening commuters emerged from the underground subway station(which is as  grand as the entrance to a museum, lined with the antiquities uncovered during its construction, displayed behind glass).

This July, I walked through Constitution Square, snapping photos of the occupying dissidents, who seemed peaceful and busy in the daytime tending to housekeeping chores in their groups’ campsites.  The cafes were deserted now and port-a-potties lined the sides where they used to be.  The McDonalds at the bottom of the square, which had been set on fire during the riots, appeared as good as new.  The Grande Bretagne was repairing some damage to its marble steps. (The GB has iron riot gates, which can drop down to barricade the entrance.) The King George Hotel, however, seemed to be both damaged and closed.

A few days later, we moved into a suite in the Grande Bretagne, overlooking the square.  A taxi strike had begun a few days earlier, and we had to drag our suitcases on and off the subway to get there.

Around 1 p.m. I saw that a demonstration was beginning in front of Parliament, with a fleet of striking taxis at the head. Many people were streaming out of the subway and the tents in the square toward the Parliament building where the  Evzones, in their pleated skirts, stand guard in front of the Tomb of the Unknown soldier twenty-four hours a day.  (The two Evzones are relieved by another pair every hour on the hour.  The big, formal changing of the guard, carried out by the entire regiment of Evzones, happens every  Sunday at 11 a.m.)

I wanted to open the door to our balcony to take photos, but learned that it was locked—no doubt to prevent injury to onlookers.  As soon as the demonstration began, a line of riot police positioned themselves between the demonstrators and the Evzones. There was shouting and singing and much honking of horns, but the demonstration petered out without violence and everyone eventually went back to their afternoon activities.

At the end of July, when I left for the airport, the taxi strike was still on, but the ride to the airport was fairly easy on the air-conditioned subway, and it only cost 8 Euros (compared to 35 Euros—the set price to and from the airport in a taxi.)

After I left, the taxi strike continued, some roadways were blocked, and the squatters remained in Constitutions Square until August 6.  According to the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, “Employees of the City of Athens, in cooperation with the police, early Saturday cleared dozens of tents from Syntagma Square - the remnants of two months of protests by self-proclaimed indignant protesters.

The process was completed without any major resistance by the campers, though eight people - four Greeks, two French nationals, a German and a Romanian - were briefly detained.”

Which brings us back to the original question: Is it safe for tourists in Greece?

The answer is yes.  The minute you travel outside of Athens, as we did, visiting Crete, Corfu, Ioannina in Northern Greece and the fabulous new ecological resort of Costa Navarino near Messinia, the Greek hospitality was as warm as it ever was.   (The Greek word for hospitality – “philoxenia”—literally means “love of strangers”, and Greeks throughout history have felt it their duty to welcome strangers, even if it means serving them food meant for their own family.)

Visiting Athens is another matter.   It’s not dangerous—I have never felt threatened by demonstrators, nor have I encountered anti-American feeling in Greece in the last two decades.  (Back in the seventies and eighties was another matter.)

The main problem with Athens right now is that it’s inconvenient -- due to the strikes and demonstrations in the wake of the country’s economic problems.  The Greek newspaper Kathimerini, in an editorial, pointed out, during the taxi strike, that tourism is one of the only ways that Greece can hope to improve its economic future, and scaring tourists away is basically cutting off your nose to spite your face.

Throughout Greece this summer I saw very few Americans, except for some Greek- Americans.  In the expensive ecological resort complex of Costa Navarino, and in most luxury resorts, the guests were primarily Russians as well as wealthy Greeks.

Greece has always been the dream destination for tourists, thanks to its beaches, islands, museums, music, food, and the warmth of its people.  All this is still true today, although its economic agonies and the influx of desperate immigrants has changed Athens for the worse.  In the city, walls are now covered with graffiti. Formerly chic shopping areas are filled with empty stores for rent.  But once you get outside of the city, the islands, the hospitality, the food and the  beaches and sunsets are as amazing as ever.

Hopefully by next summer many of Greece’s economic woes will be on the mend, but in the meantime, it’s wise (and increasingly economical) to fly into Athens airport (which is outside the city) and hop on a plane to one of the islands (or rent an car and drive to destinations like Meteora or Metsovo in the north—all now much easier to reach thanks to the new cross-country Egnatia Highway in the north.)

Outside of Athens, Greece still is as alluring and hospitable to the traveler as it was when it enchanted tourists like Lord Byron and, in the last century, visitors like Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell, who wrote, “You should see the landscape of Greece. It would break your heart.”  

Eating My Way through Greece

I always say that on our annual summer vacation in Greece, as soon as I get off the plane and take a deep breath of the air, I instantly put on five pounds.

Eating is just better in this country—a Greek tomato is a thousand times tastier than an American one, and I’d be happy eating nothing but Greek salad as long as I can sop up the olive oil from the bottom of the bowl with crusty Greek bread.

I’ve been four days in Athens eating at some world-class restaurants.

As soon as we arrived at the Grande Bretagne, our favorite hotel, which overlooks Constitution Square and the Parliament building, with its skirted Evzone soldiers in their pleated skirts doing their hourly dance in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Solider, we found in our hotel room a bottle of wine, a bowl of fruit and a white-chocolate figure of one of the Acropolis’s caryatids overlooking a half dozen handmade chocolates. (In my photo you can’t see the chocolates because somebody ate them!)


Lunch was often shared lobster risotto from a restaurant called Passajes in the courtyard of the shopping mall behind the GB Hotel. (Below is the view from the BG roof where we ate breakfast)



One night we walked to a nearby restaurant called Epta Thalassas (Seven Seas) nearby. The tabletops there are made of river stones and the ceiling lights are enclosed by woven fish traps. They feature exotic dishes like fresh sea urchin eggs (Aristotle Onassis used to send his sailors over the side of his yacht to harvest them by the light of the full moon. ) Also on the menu are “smoked eel sautéed with white wine and mustard”, “grilled Santorini sprat stuffed with tomato and coriander “, “hard roe from Mesolongi with blinis and fig pie”, and cockles. I had the “Dogtooth grouper filet cooked in the oven according to a Mt .Athos recipe.”



Thursday night we were invited by a friend to Spondi—probably the finest restaurant in Greece and the only one (he said) with two Michelin Stars. The peculiar thing about Spondi was that nothing you ate looked anything like what it was. For example, the chef sent, as an amuse-gueule, the tray of appetizers below: the round things on a stick like lollipops were foie gras rolled in popcorn crumbs (that’s what the waiter said). The cone-shaped things had a sliver of cheese in some savory cream sauce inside a pastry cone, and the cubes on the bottom are made from fruit with a Jello-like consistency.



I ordered sea bass which came topped with what looked like black caviar but was really some kind of grilled toast topped with black squid ink. Then, after the main dish came another surprise—meant to cleanse the palate before desert. It was a cool drink in a martini-shaped two-part glass containing a delicate a liquid of tomato and fruit juice (I think) with green sherbet in it, and underneath the goblet part of the glass, in a hollow stem, was dry ice (not meant for consumption) so the whole thing seemed to be smoking. For dessert I ordered the famous chocolate sablé mousse. If you look carefully, you’ll see the cigarette-shaped cookie (for want of a better name) has gold leaf on one end.



I knew that gold is edible if it’s pure –so I ate it. I first encountered eible gold at another Athens restaurant called Boschetto’s (now closed for renovation) when a black risotto made with squid ink arrived with a square of gold on top. Divine decadence!


Dinner Friday night on the roof of the Grande Bretagne, with a fabulous view of the Acropolis, was a lobster linguine. Saturday night at Alatsi, behind the Hilton hotel, we had Cretan food, including a traditional wedding dish featuring both chicken and lamb in a risotto, followed by three ice creams—rose, sage, and yogurt with honey and walnuts.

Now you see why I put on weight every time I get off the plane at the Athens airport.

But today, after getting up early, lugging my bags to the flying catamaran, and inhaling a cup of coffee (which basically saved my life), we arrived in Hydra.


But just plain Greek food is better than any haute cuisine covered with gold leaf. For lunch in Hydra’s harbor we had the classic, simple, and perfect Greek meal, which is best when eaten at an outdoor taverna near the water: Greek horiotiko salad with heavenly tomatoes, feta cheese and lots of olive oil for dipping, pan-fried red mullet fish (barbounia), and ice-cold local white wine from the barrel. We threw the fish heads to a half dozen happy taverna cats (who may be featured in my next Greek cat book) and then took a stroll around the harbor.