From Sea to Shining Sea, Part 1: Get Me To The Greeks
It’s About Family
It was standing on the train platform, wondering whether we’d just missed our train into town, sweating into clothes I’d been wearing for almost 24 hours straight, that I realized five things simultaneously:
The Greek alphabet is still very much in use in Greece.
The Greek alphabet is very different from the Latin alphabet.
I can’t read the Greek alphabet.
Train information is all in Greek.
I fucked up because I really should have learned even a little Greek before we got here.
Maybe we need to back up. Because this story isn’t actually about Greece. Or rather, this story isn’t just about Greece. But it is, like all of the Fast and Furious films, very much about family.
Family means many things to many people, but I’ve always been a big proponent of the idea that family isn’t just assigned at birth, but chosen as you realize what kind of life you’re choosing to build. (Weird how that works out, isn’t it?) It can be the relatives you see once a year, the nuclear family you see every day, and the people you have chosen to bring into your world, all at once.
For Beth and I, family has a special meaning as well. For her, because she grew up in a military family, and has remained “group chat with her sisters” close because of how often they would move to new parts of the world, knowing only each other. For me, because my mother was adopted and my father’s very Italian side of the family became the singular default for family gatherings and holiday get togethers. And for both of us, we’ve found and tricked some very lovely, wonderful, interesting, intelligent, and creative people into letting us spend time with them, letting their kids call us “Auntie Bef and Unca Bear” (at least until verbal pronunciation became somewhat more … defined), and letting us call and consider them more than just friends, but family.
So it was that we found ourselves exploring several different ideas of family almost simultaneously, and on almost opposite sides of the world, with two main commonalities:
We were next to a big body of water.
It was really fucking hot.
Yeah, that feels like the right context to start with. Let’s get into it.
Like the rest of the post-covid (ha - as if!) world, Beth and I have a “to-travel” list that’s outpacing our ability to actually check destinations off of that list. Part of the reason there is that we’re naturally curious and tend not to revisit locations, even when we love them. The allure of discovery and of finding somewhere new is just too appealing. Inspiration can come from a lot of places: tiktoks, friends, food blogs, or even just a photo we saw somewhere that made us spend the rest of the evening talking ourselves into it. The process is as follows:
Start thinking about this new place we’ve never been
Open fifty three new tabs of research about this place
Add it to the list
The list gets longer
Pick somewhere off of that list to visit the next year
Make sure to follow this process at a roughly three-to-one ratio of “adding” to “checking off”
We’re like, so great at travel, y’all. Totally worth listening to (or reading our overly long travelogues.)
But this year we didn’t do that. This year, two different parts of our family offered up two destinations for us to join them at. Both were to celebrate special occasions, and both were places that weren’t actually on the list to begin with. Which certainly didn’t help shrink the list, but it did offer a multitude of surprises. And most importantly, both offered up the joyous opportunity to be with family and celebrate something wonderful.
The first was Greece. We’d never really considered visiting until Beth’s parents decided they wanted to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary on a very specific Grecian cruise. Their request was that they be joined by the whole family - meaning the parentals, Beth and I, Beth’s youngest sister Meg and her husband Cory, and the middle sister Katy along with Katy’s husband Brad and their two kids, Spencer and Blake. Ten of us total. On a boat cruising around the Greek islands.
Right around the time we were agreeing to this, part of our LA Found Family (heretofore referred to as “B2D2” for reasons that I could explain, but will instead choose not to) decided that we’d talked about all of us going down to Colombia long enough and it was time to turn talk into action. To be fair, we’d talked about traveling lots of places together, but in this specific instance it was Maria’s 50th birthday, she happens to be from Colombia, she’s said for years that she wanted to be able to show us Colombia, and we’ve said for years that we wanted her to do the same. So we decided to celebrate her birthday all together in Cartagena, Colombia.
Neither was somewhere we chose off of our own list, but both were going to be a good time, surrounded by good people that we loved and loved spending time with. And it worked out that they would be separated by about six days - just enough to land at LAX, get home, decompress, do laundry, and head back to LAX.
[Editor’s note: the world would be a much better place if there were direct flights into Burbank from all manner of international locales, but alas, we must survive even the gods’ most unmentionable trials…by which I mean “LAX.”]
Greece was scheduled first. And if I’m being honest, between the two of them Greece was the one I was most trepidatious about.
On Cruises
I’m not a cruise guy. I conceptually understand why some people like them - it’s the same reason people like all-inclusive resorts. There’s a simplicity and a luxury to being taken care of that I intellectually grasp. But it’s never been my thing. Beyond not feeling super comfortable with being “served upon” in that “we’re here only to cater to you” way that many “luxury” experiences offer, seeking simplicity or luxury just isn’t how I travel, and it’s not what I gravitate towards for my vacations.
Now I’ll be clear that I’m sure some people think the way I prefer to travel is frankly exhausting, and not at all what they’re looking for in a vacation either. Especially as so much of our vacation days are only decided in the moment and can be disrupted with the same. But I’ve always leaned into the exploration and integration aspects (as you’ll note from my stories about Scotland and Italy) which require so much more than just a quick and targeted trip ashore. Be there. Take your time. Be a part of that space. Get lost. Marinate in it for several days.
Admittedly, that also means Beth and I often choose to make our travel harder that it needs to be. For as much as we revel in airport lounge access and business/first class flights (and oh god we do), we also eschew luxury hotels, drivers, and other elements of deliberate physical or cultural separation once we’ve arrived. We’d much rather get an Airbnb in town and take the metro, than check into a Grand Hyatt with a hired driver, if you get my drift.
If I had to explain it, it comes back to that interest in exploring the day to day life of places we visit, rather than viewing it from afar. We want to be in the mix, not swinging by from time to time. For all the historical elements of why something is what it is today, especially on a trip like this one that’s so steeped in history, I still have a fascination with what it’s like for the every day person to live here, now.
Cruises always felt too structured for me. Too much “you will enjoy this place here, for this amount of time, and then we will move on to a different scheduled fun.” And again, I’m sure that’s part of the appeal for a lot of people: “I don’t have to think about this or schedule it or deal with any of the logistics - it’s all taken care of for me.” Meanwhile Beth will frequently talk about walking through a large foreign city with me, turning around for three nanoseconds, and notice that I’m just gone; having moments earlier taken a random “what’s over here?” left and … left.
So I’ve always been a little snooty about those huge boats that park off shore of an island, herd thousands of people ashore to take over a town for a few hours, and then leave before the sun sets. It just didn’t feel like travel to me - or at least it didn’t feel like the way I wanted to travel. It’s a philosophy that’s accidentally led to the subconscious idea that if I find myself around too many tourists, I feel like I’m doing things wrong. Which is not only elitist and inaccurate, but fails to acknowledge the reality that sometimes lots of people want to go do something because that thing is objectively awesome.
The Louvre? Awesome. The Duomo in Florence? Awesome. Haggis and Scotch? Awesome squared (the math checks out, promise.)
So when Beth’s parents announced that their 50th wedding anniversary would be taking place on a cruise ship, I (internally) groaned, just a little. There was a zero percent chance I wouldn’t come along, or celebrate, or that I would even object in the slightest, because this was their celebration and their call. But I was, let’s say, rather cautious about the whole idea.
So with all that said, the locale of the cruise and the style of it was, I had to admit, excellent. Peggy and Jim had discovered this company a few years back that partnered with the Smithsonian to show off more interesting destinations than your typical Princess or Carnival cruise goes to. This cruise was set to highlight the history of Greece, and visit some of the more archeologically interesting islands, while having historians and archeologists on board to educate and guide us around. And while small is a relative term, as far as cruise ships go, this boat was tiny. (Just under 100 cabins - which, to be perfectly clear, is still a huge fucking boat. But a 180 passenger capacity is much different than the 3000 or 5000 passenger boats that I think of when I think “cruise line.”)
So with all that laid out for (unnecessary) context, let’s get to Greece.
All Roads Lead To Athens
From the beginning, we’d planned our air travel around the central premise of “don’t miss the fucking boat you idiots.” Which meant our flights landed almost 72 hours before embarkation (which is “boat” for “check into the floating hotel.”) This was to allow for 1) general exploration of Athens, and 2) general travel fuckery buffer (GTFB™). That said, our flights were pretty easy overall: LA to Chicago, a couple hours in O’Hare, and then Chicago to Athens. So we landed in Athens on Monday, sometime in the late morning, just in time to start adapting to the absolute fucking chaos that is every part of Athens all the time.
Once we made it though immigration and set foot on actual Greek soil, our trip began by navigating our way out of the airport and catching a train from the airport to the metro stop closest to our AirBnb. Or rather, our trip began by waiting an hour for the train that comes every 20 minutes while asking ourselves whether that other train that actually did come much closer to every 20 minutes was actually the one we needed to be on. Beth was certain we were in the right place and waiting for the right train. I was not.
I’ll admit two things here: 1) I had a little bit of a stress out when we had to find our train. We were the first of the family to hit Athens, so we were the eyes and ears (and written directions dropped into WhatsApp) from the airport to the train station for everyone else. Once we found the train station at the airport, there were two tracks, with two very different trains, and distinguishing which was ours wasn’t immediately clear. So as we watched one leave, and as Beth assured me that it was fine, ours would be here soon … and then as this mythical “correct” train very stubbornly continued to not be here, I was starting to think that maybe we’d missed our train and I needed to make an executive decision to board whatever train was leaving the station next.
Now, Beth is … many lovely and wonderful things. But none of them are “good with directions.” We have an unofficial (but actually very officially acknowledged) rule that I am allowed to ignore her entirely when she’s providing driving directions if I so choose, because that’s often the correct navigational decision to make. And as we stood there on the platform, continuing to not board the trains which continued to arrive and depart without us, I started thinking more and more that maybe the Athenian rail iteration of “any port in a storm” was “any train in a heat wave.”
Oh right. Remember the European Heat Dome from July 2023? The one where people were passing out inside of exhibits and actually fucking dying all over Greece and Italy? Yeah. That was happening right now too. We were there. We’ll get back to that later.
But the second thing I’ll admit here is as follows: Beth was right. We didn’t miss our train; our train eventually arrived - 45 minutes late and also ten minutes early, somehow. And then sat there for twenty minutes after everyone boarded just to ensure maximum scheduling chaos. That’s when we learned the trains in Greece very simply run how everything else does in Greece: haphazardly, with semi-reckless abandon, and frequently not at all.
This is gonna be a theme, folks.
[Note: After reading this before publishing - because I let her approve any joke or story that involves her - Beth wanted to clarify that navigating public transportation is “logistics, not directions” and she is “excellent at logistics” - to which I will heartily agree, and not just because she read the prior couple paragraphs, laughed, and then let me publish it.]
Because the rest of the family was also following the “Don’t miss the fucking boat, you idiots” plan, everyone was getting in within an hour or two of each other. So Beth had the brilliant idea (I actually mean brilliant, not “brilliant”) to rent an AirBnB in the city where we’d have exclusive access to the entire building, and we could all stay together and explore the city together. But as we checked the group chat upon landing, we found out that we were the only ones not delayed by up to half a day, so our original plan to hang out and all ride in together was changed to “go on without us; we’ll never forget you.”
So we rode the train into town just the two of us, and exited in one of the main squares. It was a gorgeous little square with dozens of vendors selling items to tourists and locals alike, rimmed with shops and gelaterias and a small church near one of the various streets that bicycle-spoked out to restaurants and hat shops and leather goods stores and pharmacies and everything else. And if you looked out over the top of all of them, you’d see the Acropolis standing tall and proud on its hill above the city.
But don’t. Don’t look up. Because if you do, you’ll fucking die. Because Athens is chaos. Absolute fucking chaos.
In the first three minutes we were standing in Athens, we were nearly hit by both a car and a scooter. “But Barrett,” I hear you ask, “didn’t you say you were standing in a cute little European square? And aren’t they separated from the streets by actual physical barriers?” Yes, yes we were. And yes, yes they are. But in Greece, you see, all vehicles are All Terrain Vehicles (no matter their actual make or model) and all surfaces are drivable if you are persistent enough. And all traffic laws are a suggestion, so far as I can discern.
The journey to our AirBnB was about a mile. And we spent that mile dodging cars, scooters, motorcycles, delivery vans, and busses as we dragged our suitcases up and down streets, avenues, corridors, alleys, and sidewalks. Everywhere we went in Athens - and I want to stress the word “everywhere” - was considered a drivable surface unless it was an actual historical monument. Sidewalks? Sure. That’s where motorcycles go to get away from the cars. Pedestrian-only streets full of cute little cafes? Well, ten minutes in, I watched a whole block of diners sigh, put down their drinks and cigarettes, and scooch their chairs in so a van could slide by them all with inches - sorry, centimeters - to spare. Hell, you weren’t even safe indoors, as more than once we’d be inside a building and have to move to the side to let a scooter, motorcycle, or mid-sized sedan go by. It was later explained to me that “cars and scooters aren’t allowed to drive through this part of the city unless they really want to” which makes about as much sense as any other thing in Greece.
Which is all to say that the journey from the train stop to our AirBnB was about a mile, and I nearly died seventy three times.
Once we got there, we were shown the entire building by our host. It was some combination of an apartment building and a multi bedroom home, but also both and neither. We didn’t realize it yet, but it was an apt metaphor for much of Greece. Every room had its own key, every room had a different layout and decor, and only some of the rooms were haunted. There was also a lovely rooftop patio and air conditioning in most of the bedrooms, which was unexpectedly clutch.
So, sweaty, tired, and full of the kind of adrenaline that comes from multiple near death experiences, we picked our room and laid our bags down - only to discover that at some point in the transit Beth’s had been broken in a way where once it was was opened, it would never close again. Which was inconvenient, but since we’d passed at least six luggage stores already today, it wouldn’t be a difficult issue to solve before it became critical. So we changed out of the very sweaty clothes we’d been wearing since we boarded in LA, splashed water on our faces, and set out to wander about, grab lunch, and follow the jet lag rule.
I’ve spoken before about the jet lag rule, but in short: if you’re going to Europe from the West Coast, get into Europe early, stay up late, and the next day you’ll feel mostly fine and be mostly adjusted to local time. Or you’ll be a zombie for a week. 50% of the time, it works every time. (Really it’s closer to 80% of the time, but the alternative is worse…)
So while it felt like we were heading out to grab a late dinner, it was really just a little bit after noon. And after three laps around our neighborhood and realizing we had reached that specific point of hangry where none of the thirty restaurants within immediate sight would look perfect, we decided upon this little cafe that was actually a very big restaurant with three stories of patios, and whose owner used to live in Topanga. Yes, within minutes of leaving our AirBnB, we had accidentally found someone who used to live in LA, and reminisced with us about just how fucking weird Topanga is.
My memory says the food was pretty solid. My brain knows that pretty much anything would have been acceptable at that point. But up on the top patio there was a breeze, and there was a lot of ice in the Sangria, so it was also kind of exactly what we needed right then. We ate a long lunch while looking out across the rooftops of Athens, and as the breeze blew through Beth’s hair and my beard, and as we silently looked out over the city below, we finally felt like we were no longer in transit, but solidified within a place and a time. We were here, now.
Later that day, Beth’s family arrived in fits and spurts, and we found and guided them all back home to the AirBnB to ensure none of us became a news story. (“American family found dead in Athens: locals baffled, say cars were dented already.”) Dinner that night was a place recommended to us by our host as “the best seafood in the city” which was a lofty recommendation, but better than nothing, so we made our way there. The layout was incongruous to me, but it was something we’d encounter several more times. The short version is that sometimes in Greece, restaurants are sort of separated and spread out and split amongst several buildings. And those buildings may or may not be immediately next to each other. And they’re probably not the whole building, or the only business in that building. In this case, the restaurant was part of one space, part of another space across the alley, and then part of a third space further up the street - all served by a single kitchen.
To its credit, the seafood was excellent. The manner by which it came out was … variable. Despite the kitchen being just next to us, some folks got their meal immediately and others got to wait until well after everyone else had eaten their entrees before receiving their first course. Reminders were acknowledged and immediately forgotten with the kind of disdain that comes from unnecessary information hawked at you by street-corner preachers. Greece, we would find out, operates on “island time” regardless of your locale. But for a first family meal together, things went off mostly without a hitch and we all went back to the house tired, satiated, and ready for the next day’s events.
Katy Steve’s Guide To Athens
Tuesday was Katy’s time to shine. Katy has earned a reputation for, shall we say, operating her vacations with … precision. Her activities schedule will be fine tuned and may or may not be laid out in fifteen minute increments. Done. Seen. Moving on. And while we may occasionally tease her about it, it’s actually the product of a remarkable amount of logistical planning and forethought.
So Tuesday morning, Katy had planned out a walking tour of Athens covering many of the larger attractions, pulling from a Rick Steves guidebook. Our path was planned in order to maximize our limited time in Athens, and make sure we could see as many of the historical attractions as possible. And you know what? Sometimes a destination built on chaos needs a little precision to navigate.
We picked up early, and started out into the growing heat, ticking off marble column after marble column, all while Katy elucidated and explained from the guidebook. Even lunch was planned out for a very specific Souvlaki restaurant that Brad or Katy had read about somewhere. And 15,000 steps (and three lunchtime beers) later, we genuinely hit almost all of the big archeological and historical locations in Athens in a single day, from Anafiotika to the Parthenon and everything in between.
Our final destination of the tour was the Acropolis, which we climbed and viewed with approximately the entire population of Western Europe. In hundred plus degree heat (Fahrenheit, not Celsius.) That said, I can see why the historical Athenians chose that spot upon which to build a monument to the gods - there’s something majestic about the way it sits above the city, visible to everyone, with the whole of civilization stretched out below until it impacts the sea.
(As an aside, it was also the day before Acropolis shut down for just under a week because of that heat - apparently people the next day were passing out from heat exhaustion along the path, so Greece made the decision to shut down many of the publicly accessible historical locations across Athens.)
I’m sure there’s been a remarkable amount of restoration work done, there’s still something almost magical about standing in the shadow of a building like The Parthenon, and knowing that twenty five hundred years ago, someone stood in this very space and imagined a building fit for a god. Did they know it would outlive their civilization, their government, their gods? Did they intend to build something that humanity could marvel at for millennia to come, or was that a byproduct of building techniques and circumstance? Could they imagine creating something almost infinite, that bridges languages, cultures, and worlds across time?
It’s humbling to think about. As someone who considers themself an artist, I’ve never been able to picture my words living on beyond me. I know some artists do - the idea of writing something that impacts the world for years to come is paramount in many author’s minds. But I usually have a specific reader in mind; if not a singular person, than a type of person. But it’s always someone very similar to myself, in space, time, intellect, and interest. I can’t imagine sitting down to write something and having to consider “What will people twenty five centuries from now think about my frank and unapologetic abuse of commas?”
Afterwards, some of the group decided to head out to the Acropolis museum. The rest of us decided to replenish the several liters of water we’d lost due to dehydration. Our methodology here was somewhat less precise than our early tour, but equally satisfying: so let me tell you the tale of Alpha beer.
Alpha is one of the two big Greek beers we saw everywhere, the other being Mythos. Both are brewed specifically for the kind of hot, humid weather we experienced. Or at least that’s what I’m assuming, because both were monumentally refreshing in the late afternoon or early evening heat. Crisp, easy drinking, and best when ice-fucking-cold, they were both exactly what we wanted. And both come in half liter sizes, which is the appropriate amount of each round when you’ve walked 20,000 steps in hundred degree heat and humidity. So an early dinner (fried anchovies and beer), gelato, a craft beer find near our AirBnB, and an early night capped out our second day.
All(most) Aboard
Wednesday we boarded the boat, but that wasn’t scheduled until the early evening. And we had a bus picking us up at 3pm to take us there from our AirBnB. Which left room for one more activity: a food tour of Athens. This was a leisurely walk around some of the restaurants and markets, sampling authentic Greek foods, and giving us the history of how and why Greek food is the way it is today. Or so we assumed. What this tour actually consisted of was a speed run of every possible meal a single person could eat in one day in Greece - in two and a half hours. We hit up three different restaurants, a dozen food stalls, and three separate markets - if you told me we’d eaten 4000 calories by noon, I would have called your assertion an underestimate. Our guide stuffed us like thanksgiving turkeys.
It started at 9am with coffee and pastries, where we learned how Greek coffee differs from what Americans are used to (if you’ve ever had Turkish coffee, it’s very similar - and if you know history or geography, that’s not surprising) and got to sample four different traditional Greek breakfast pastries. This was good knowledge for later, when we bought many traditional Greek breakfast pastries throughout the islands. Next, we delved into the various forms of Spanakopita, focusing on two primary interpretations: spinach and chicken. Then, a “light” charcuterie board consisting of two cheeses, five meats, three wines, and Greek grappa. This led to a walk through the central market, which was hopping with all manner of meats and fish inside, and rimmed with a hundred different fruit, vegetable, and spice vendors outside.
We’re now just over an hour in, and feeling quite full, so it’s time for a three hour lunch crammed into 45 minutes. No joke, there had to be fifteen dishes that were rolled out by the kitchen. At some point I think we had all surpassed the ability to taste, and were just eating to not be rude - as each new thing came out and was presented, we space on the table and then all locked eyes in silent agreement to power through.
By the time we got to the final destination serving greek donuts with ice cream (a short fifty year hike through the hundred degree heat) I was somewhat concerned about the cornucopia of food currently sitting in my stomach deciding to propel itself skyward, so I tasted one of each and them promptly excused myself to silently die in a corner. I’m told they were stuffed with honey, Nutella, and powdered sugar, and each accompanied with ice cream. I will trust this was the case.
Having thus eaten for the week, I labored off to complete one of my weird personal quests that I find myself on from time to time: obtaining the forbidden sunscreen.
Okay, I have to explain myself a little bit here. I’d read an article some time ago about how European sunscreens are so much better than the ones we can buy in America - mostly to do with having approved a number of new ingredients and formulas throughout the past forty years while the US hasn’t approved a new sunscreen formula since the 80s. So European sunscreens are both more effective at blocking a wider array of damaging light, but also better for your skin while they do so. The article focused on the illicit sunscreen sales trade stemming from these objectively better options, but having a familial history of skin cancer and the same approximate skin tone as all purpose flour, one little factoid stuck in my brain: European sunscreen awesome; America’s sunscreen shit.
So when we decided to go to Greece, I told Beth I was going to stock up on “the good sunscreen.” It became an obsession. This required research. A lot of research. And I got to the country with a list of nine acceptable options - one of which I picked up that first day when it was just Beth and I. But let’s just say that if you get the right brand but wrong style because you can’t read Greek, you’ll pick up something that makes you look like The Ghost of Sparta.
Not wanting to spend the rest of the vacation looking like I was an actual marble stature come to life, I took advantage of this short break on Wednesday to pick up something better while Beth picked up a new suitcase. I was weirdly determined - sunscreen became my white whale. We went into a half dozen shops, and I would turn my nose up at their offerings and walk out. It got to the point where Cory and Meg were well beyond confused at what I was getting on about with this fucking sunscreen. But in time, my efforts were justified, because let me tell you - the stuff I found is the sunscreen of the gods. Waterproof to a ridiculous degree, doesn’t get into your eyes, moisturizes, and disappears instantly - I may have to go back just to pick more up once it’s gone. God bless the French, ironically enough.
The bus came to pick us up at 3pm. And by “bus” I mean it - it seated 40, and somehow made its way down the alleyways and motorcycle paths that led to our apartment. But when I tell you that we threaded our way through Athens within millimeters of buildings, motorcycles, pedestrians, and the occasional historical artifact - I mean exactly that. The Nephews refused to look out the windows after a bit because despite having the self-preservation instincts of moths at night, even they were filled with anxiety every time we got microns close to a motorcycle. But we made it, in time.
And on the other side of the ferry terminal was the reason we were all here in the first place: Le Jacques-Cartier. A very small big boat. With a very French crew. Who stole our passports and might have promised to give them back. Or not. It was hard to tell. Because I don’t speak French.
Which is where we’ll take our break. Tomorrow: we’ll spend way too much time talking about water.
