Athens is one of the sketchiest places I’ve been to, which is saying a lot considering I write international crime fiction and have traversed the world of sketchy places to fill my realistic fiction. Last time I was in Athens in 2008, I a) encountered a screaming young blonde with backpack who had just been jumped and robbed by a gang of youths a few seconds earlier. She was yelling “Why me?!” This was right near the Parthenon, b) was accosted by a man who literally emerged from the bushes near a major museum and tried to convince me to traffic contraband into the USA, c) was consistently harassed by the Arab host of an international youth hostel for “being American”; d) deliberately received the wrong change at the first shop I went to in Syntagma Square — had to insist on the correct amount. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, not including all the weird stuff I encountered in Mykonos. Anyway, this time around I was determined to avoid Athens and go straight to the islands, but Fate had a different algorithm in store for me. My Lufthansa connecting flight from Frankfurt, once a perfect connection time of 2:30, to Crete was changed to depart 7 hrs before I arrived, at 5:10am. I eventually got my money back but I had to book a different itinerary with Delta. This time I flew directly to Athens but had to wait there for 9.5 hours, during which time I took a day trip to the hip neighborhood of Kolonaki and went to the Benaki museum. Turns out it was a fine experience, the museum was okay but the mocha and pasta I had at a random coffee shop was sweet and the people watching, Greek style, was exquisite . Not even to change my total opinion of Athens, but nothing bad happened anyway! #travel #greece #athens #foodblogger #travelblogger
3 min readApr 30, 2024
