Driving in Athens - A Story

Special edition Greece cover of our book of travels

An excerpt from Today I Ate Cow Stomach:

Let me just say right now that driving in Athens (and as you all know if you've been reading along, I have never driven in Athens, but being in the front passenger seat is still pretty darn close) is an experience like no other. It has its similarities to Rome, but like a comparison between the two countries, Athens driving seems a little rougher around the edges, a bit more frenetic, maybe even a bit more dangerous. But not really. Somehow it all works itself out, everyone seems to take care of each other, and no one gets too worked up about things. Unless you don't anticipate a green light, then all hell breaks loose.

There are no pretenses in Greek driving. If you need to get somewhere, you go. If someone needs to get across three lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic, well, they must have a pretty good reason, so you let them squeeze through.

There are very few overhead signs letting you know what the major routes are, and street sign placement is not an organized science. Many (very small) signs are stuck on the side of a building at a street corner. No building on that corner? Wait until the next one, maybe you'll get lucky. And when you do find one, it may not include English lettering along with the Greek. And if it does, it may not be spelled the same as on your map. It's like code-breaking at fifty kilometres an hour in a confined space with no coffee break, and your chief code-breaker is bemoaning the fact that they have no idea where you are, where you have been, or where you're going. Or he's shouting, "Turn here!" without mentioning which direction here is.

On the freeway heading into the city, Laura tried to pass an army truck that had a full load of army guys in the open back. Some joker in the fast lane doing one fifty came flying out of nowhere to give Laura a blast of his horn. Our car leaped back into our lane right behind the army truck, and all the army guys had big grins on their faces, and they all seemed to be looking at me. My return glare told them that if I had half as many weapons of mass destruction strapped to my body as they did, we'd already be where we were trying to get to.

This is not driving in Athens, this is fun, easy-going driving just outside of Patras, our first comfortable and enjoyable moments of being in Greece. Look at that sky.

Once actually in the city of Athens, it was now incumbent upon us to return our rental car to the Europcar office ASAP so we could get to our apartment rental on time. A nearby gas station attendant showed us on our map how to get there. We stood in the middle of his lot still staring at the map for a few minutes, turning it around more than once. He came back and said, "Okay, forget map. You go this way, turn right and then go until..." He then went back to work, kneeling down and filling a large gas can and was almost run over by some kid in a fancy car. He gave us a look of relief, and we figured it best to leave him be so that he could focus on staying alive. A few blocks later, I got out and asked a newsstand guy where Syngrou Avenue was. He pointed, and not a vague, towards-the-moon kind of point but a very direct point. "One block," he said. Brilliant.

Everyone in every one of those apartments has a car or two that all seem to be out and about on the streets of Athens.

Once on Sygrou, the car, of its own accord I'm certain, proceeded to fly right by the Europcar office, turned at the next block, and stopped when confronted with a dead end. I ran back to the Europcar office where office guy told me I could park the car anywhere on the street. I eyed the street suspiciously as there was no room out front but that was a minor detail for the moment. Back in the car, we pulled out on to Syngrou only to find that a u-turn is not allowed. We obeyed the law for about a kilometre (we are Canadians, after all), then relented and pulled a u-ey. Emboldened, we went the wrong way down a one-way street, circled the block once more for good measure, then parked on top of a crosswalk right beside the Europcar office.

Finally, we were in Athens.

Our hostess was waiting patiently at the front door of the apartment building. I apologized profusely for being late, but she waved that all away with a smile. She brought us up to the apartment to show us around. It was fantastic. Bright, clean, full kitchen, balcony, bathtub. When I saw the washing machine, I pretended a bug flew in my eye.

    - end

Living room of our apartment

The apartment was right on the corner of Eftichidou and Spirou Mirkouri, with Ciao Italia right beside us, which served up great pizza.

A version of this story can also be found in Today I Ate Cow Stomach

Today I Ate Cow Stomach, the stories of our travels through Italy, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, available here. It's chock full of hundreds of full colour photographs and original artworks.

Driving in Athens available here, or from me if you act quickly! This is the mostly picture-free black and white text edition of our travels, from Italy to Thailand, nine months of family travel. If you're not a fan of photos getting in the way of your reading, this is the edition for you.

All Those Books

It has come to the attention of my agents and entourage that my many books and book titles are confusing people. While I enjoy a good practical joke every now and then, it was not my intention to have people buying more books than necessary.

So here is a primer on all the books available from 275Days.

We'll start with the most recent…actually, no, that's probably going to be more confusing and not very helpful. Let's start at the beginning, maybe that will clear things up. The real beginning, for me. For this story, at least.

A bunch of years ago now, we had a super cool opportunity, and out of that, we took some time off to travel around the world with our two kids for nine months. Before we left home, I was thinking about how to keep family and friends informed of what we were doing, and a blog was the best I could come up with. Nine months is pretty close to 275 days, so that's where the name of the blog came from. (Actually, if you subtract our departure day and our return day, we were gone for 275 days.) What I did know was that I would take lots of pictures in lots of cool places, and people would probably be interested in that. This was 2007, so youtubing while travelling was not really a big thing, and I didn't want to be spending the trip videoing everything and then being glued to a computer during all of our down time. 

I won't get into the details of the trip here, but the low down is this:

One month in Italy

Five weeks in Greece

Four weeks in Turkey

About two weeks each in 

Syria

Jordan

Egypt

Eleven weeks in India

And the final two months for a rush job of 

Thailand

Cambodia

Vietnam

and Laos

I started writing before we got to Rome, the first place on our itinerary, and did not let up until we left the airport in Incheon, Korea, on our way back home. 

I ended up with a couple hundred posts, with more than thousand pictures on the blog. That's just a guess. I never actually counted how many pictures I included, but it was a fraction of the twenty thousand I took. And those two hundred-plus posts clocked in at over 150,000 words. Yikes, what a mouthful.

I spent a couple years preparing for an art show in 2010, and then had more time to think about the value of all those words and photos. It seemed a shame to just have it sit on the computer in our house, only to be seen on anniversary dates of being here or there, or when we (I) were feeling particularly nostalgic. But as I reread the blog, two things were clear: there were a lot of great stories lingering in that mass of words, and; it deserved a far better fate than to simply disappear in an electronic recycling depot. A book seemed like the logical answer. After a bit of editing and a lot of designing, I came up with a book so massive that it required two volumes. The online printing service, Blurb, had a page limit and I was well over. At this point, two more things were clear: it would need considerably more editing, and: it was beautiful. This could work.

Chios Island, Greece

Chios is one of those places that you'd probably never think of when it comes to Greek Islands. And why would you? There's Santorini of course, which everyone has to go to because every book about Greek islands will probably begin with a chapter on Santorini.  Mykonos. Naxos. Paros. Crete. All beautiful islands to be sure.
One of the reasons we chose Chios was its proximity to Turkey. Another was its simplicity. And as budget backpackers, cost.
By the time we got to Chios we were in week nine of a forty week trip. We wanted a place to relax, restore, and hang out, without breaking the bank. And when we were done, it was a half hour ferry ride to Turkey. The house on Chios was one of the few things we booked before we left on our trip at the end of July. I'm not entirely sure why I was comfortable booking some other places in Italy and Greece while on the road, and not on a Greek Island. Probably because I knew we were going to be there for two weeks, so I'd better get it right.

In the water at Limnos

Limnos Beach

At any rate, we showed up in mid-September, which turned out to be perfect timing. Apparently no Greeks or any travellers are interested in going to the beach and dipping their toes in water that for a prairie Canadian was practically at tropical temperature.
The first thing we noticed about Chios was that it looked like it never rained here. Later, we found out that that was almost true. It had been a year. The next thing we noticed was that once the sun came up, Chios looked a lot like other Greek islands: no clouds in searing blue skies, and a lot of water nearby.
So what does Chios have to offer?
Chios Town, where the ferries dock, has pretty much everything you need, from car rentals to big grocery stores, and a decent beach down at Karfas, but we didn't really do much in the way of exploring around town. Our home was on the opposite (west) side of island, about an hour's drive away. Up one side of the mountain and down the next (with lots of ups and downs in between).

Our house in the bottom right, all of the Aegean at the top.

The house was just a couple kilometres outside of Volissos, a pretty small town with maybe four hundred in habitants. In town you can get most things you need at a basic little market, and a nearby baker that is about as basic as it gets but makes the most mouthwateringly good bread. Over the course of our eighteen days here, we probably walked to town ten times just to get bread in the morning. And I didn't take even one photo, of the bread or the bakery. What a shame.
There is a demolished fort above the town that has some attractive views of the surrounding area.

Views from the hill over Volissos

Chios is a big island with a some fascinating small towns, of which we visited Mesta, Pyrgi, and Olympi.

Friendly cat at a restaurant in Mesta.

Mesta is an extraordinary place that would be worth a visit no matter what island it was on. Known for its labyrinthine alleys and numerous arches, it was a centre of mastic production, important in the early days of gum production. As in chewing gum.

Emporios Beach at the south end of Chios, after visiting Olympi.

One place we didn't go to and I'm forever kicking myself over was Anavatos, a ghost town from medieval times. This isn't the best drone video ever, but it makes me think that if I am ever back on Chios, I will not miss this again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgitUCBWXc4
The main reason for coming to Chios was to relax, and we did plenty of that on Limnos Beach, just a couple hundred metres from our house. If we weren't eating, or walking to town for some more bread, we probably spent eighty percent of our free time on this beach or in this water. We saw one other family, only twice, on this beach the whole time we were on the island. It doesn't get much more relaxing than that.

These are all from Chios, except for the far left, and the pillars. Note the blue skies.

Breakfast on our patio.

Walking to Volissos, the town in the background.

Every evening looked like this.