Sojama Road: Greece

A while ago, I decided to go to Greece. Now that I am here, it feels like a strange decision. Greece is really, really far away -- 6160 miles. Last year, a yoga teacher mentioned that she ran a retreat on a remote Greek island. Without any investigation I decided I should go. Earlier this year, I signed up for the retreat then realized that Greece is almost more middle east than western Europe.

I used to make a lot of my life decisions this way but my impulsive ways have been tempered by the reality of children. I tend to think through my decisions more as they effect many people.

So I am here and it is great but it also feels like I am living someone else's life.

I am traveling with a friend from my SU days. We decided to leave from Vancouver Canada as the flight was much cheaper even if we factored a night in a hotel in Vancouver. We stayed at the coolest airport hotel in the US.. it actually won an award. It's the Fairmont at Vancouver International Airport.

This is the view from our room! a runway. Plus you walk outside the hotel and you are in the airport. It would be exciting for the kids.

we ordered room service because we got to the hotel pretty late

We were delayed MANY hours in the Montreal Airport. I saw this Nintendo display and thought of Jack.

We finally boarded our plane and flew for 9 hours.

Our first full day, we took a mythology tour. We visited many ancient Greek historical sites including the Acropolis

Parthenon - dedicated to Athena

Every day, 25,000 people visit the Acropolis.

Temple of Zeus

Temple of Hephaestus

It was very hot on our first day -- 100 degrees. So we spent a couple of hours at our AirBnB before leaving again for the Acropolis museum. It has many original piece of the Acropolis and a lot of the history. We were pretty tired though. My only picture is the LEGO replica of the Acropolis.

On our second day, we took an excellent tour called Culinary Back Streets of Athens. It was a 7 hour food tour. We learned so much about Greek culture, history and food. They have great food here.

31 million people visit Greece which has a population of 10 million. To put that in perspective, in 2014, 75 million people visited the US. To have the proportional amount of tourists, we would need 1 billion people to visit the US every year. The central core of Athens which has existed for at least 2000 years seems to exist for tourists. I barely felt like a foreigner. There are a lot of English speakers, all the restaurants have English language menus. There are also a lot of people from other countries -- I heard lots of Spanish and Italian speakers. The center of Athens is very cool but it reminds me of the center of Florence or Amsterdam. It doesn't seem to be a place where people live. It's a place people visit.

Half of the Greek population lives in Athens -- It is a sprawling city with only one tall building (20 stories). We ventured outside the center looking for authentic Greek yogurt (made from sheep's milk -- I was not a fan) the city became much louder, grittier, and chaotic... like any big city.

Back to our tour: we ate all day. It was great fun.