Street Life of Athens

Having spent 2.5 days wandering all over central Athens, a few things stand out as unusual.  Post offices, for example, are rather few and far between.  I just wrote and sent a bunch of post cards but it took quite a while to find someplace to buy stamps and send them  We eventually found one, but they're not out in the open.  Same goes for mailboxes -- although after kvetching about the post office situation and then accusing the Greeks of not even having mailboxes, I then found that there's one right outside our hotel.  Ah well.  It's still the only one we've seen.

On the plus side, unlike practically every other major European and Asian city we've been to, there is a decided lack of US-based restaurants.  There's a McDonald's in Syntagma square (where the parliament building is), and we did just see a Starbucks north of the Acropolis, but other than that, all of the coffee shops and restaurants are Greek-based -- not even European, they seem to be primarily locally-grown.  It's quite refreshing after, say, a trip to Shanghai which felt like the entire place was just a generic large city with a number (but by no means a dominant majority) of signs in Chinese.  Here in Athens, English is certainly welcome -- we've had no problem getting around and people don't even seem to begrudge the non-Greek speakers -- but you can definitely tell you're in Greece.  We're both having a lot of fun trying to learn to read the signs in Greek directly.  In many cases you can figure out what the shop is if you can just figure out what the sign says.  Pharmacy, for example, is a rather easy one, and I was also able to figure out a place that sells orthopedic inserts -- all you have to do is know your roots (note to nephews and nieces: studying hard in English class of your Greek roots does pay off!)

Although the tourist areas around the Acropolis have all your standard kitsch, the vendors are (mostly) friendly and not even all that pushy.  There are a few exceptions -- jewelry stores in particular seem to station people outside to accost window shoppers, which is a bit unnerving, but if you say you're not interested or shake your head no, they move on.  All in all, quite pleasant.