Profile: Greece

Meet Greece

Rambling Impressions: Only fair to remark on the Greek islands separately than Athens as these are the only places I experienced as once I reached the mainland I only felt compelled to stay totaling one week.

Athens is a massive sprawling city where the recent hard times show prominently in more than the graffiti tagged walls (street sleepers, daytime shouting matches). Despite the array of ancient ruins, or perhaps because of it and the horde of tourists it brings (yes, even in early April), there is little charm.

The islands are gorgeous and at least the two smaller ones I visited were reasonably untouched. Small towns hosted the tourists while getting out of town took only 5 minutes by foot. Even the roads, mostly gravel tracks, offered astounding hikes with short green trees and sheep.

Cuisine: Each Greek salad had a full brick of feta on it - ridiculous! Otherwise the dishes are limited to stuffed peppers and tomatoes, pitas with tzatziki and tomatoes, spanikopita, or more baked cheese. Asking for moussaka without meat, a fairly common dish in Canada, was met with good natured guffaws. Every damn beer was identical - light Hellenistic lager - fine but boring. An interesting dessert I was offered was essentially an orange or similar fruit that had been soaked in sweet sauce such that even the peel was soft and sweet.

Sidewalk Safety: Reasonable actually as Athens is such a modern city that it's inhabitants tend to abide by laws and lights. Just watch out for the motorbikes that always sneak to the front of the red light lawn and are off like a crack when green illuminates. The islands are so sparsely populated sidewalks hardly exist but there's so little traffic it is hardly a concern.

Stray Dog Rating (out of 5): Cats scurried around at dinner to a 2 on the scale on one of the islands but otherwise I can hardly recall noticing others. Wracking my brain to avoid passing out my first 0 but all the dogs I remember were obvious pets.