The Florida couple sitting next to me though they had it all sorted out. They couldn’t stop themselves from gushing to the British Airways flight attendant about how much they loved their vacation on Paros, a Greek island.
“We only spent a day in Athens,” they non-enthused. “You don’t really need to spend more.”
“Yes, it’s rather ugly isn’t it?” the trolley dolly chirped back.
There was no way I’d be drawn into that conversation, especially not at 7:15AM on a Monday. But it is a debate: there’s a thing on TikTok now where spoiled brats with selfie sticks traipse around non-touristic neighborhoods of Athens like Omonoia faking surprise at the fact that not every street corner in a teeming city of four million people is drop dead gorgeous.
The truth is somewhere in the middle: Athens is no beauty queen, but then neither was Athena. Aphrodite won that contest a long time ago. Athens offers many other things, from ruins to restaurants, and a whole aesthetic.
Paros and its island cousins have the beaches and resorts and the capacity to delude you that that’s the real Greece: and it is, but only a tiny fraction of it.
Athens, with the possible exception of a chunk of August, is where the power is and where the action is.
And, on occasion, where the fireworks are too.
