Anyone living in the UK during winter will know the feeling. The strange feeling of, in the middle of London’s pouring rain and dull, grey cityscapes, packing your bag and including a pair of shorts. It’s a strange feeling; one which my mind at the very least struggles to comprehend.
For a few, this isn’t abnormal, I suppose. Those lucky enough to be able to jet off to the exotic beaches of Mexico or the Caribbean will doubtless be all too familiar with it, the shine and distinct weirdness fading with every year that passes as they find their island paradise or seek out world-renowned sites such as Chichen Itza.
“Athens is hardly off the beaten track. It’s not quite the usual fodder of a website such as this one”
As much as I envy these people, I am not one of them.
It was an unfamiliar feeling, one that seemed entirely illogical to me as I laid my shorts and t-shirt down on my bed in my East London flat, ready to be packed into the smallest backpack I could find. A backpack small enough to fit within the tight restrictions imposed by European budget airlines.
In general, my conceptions of anywhere in Europe during early February were that it wouldn’t exactly be warm. This was more than partly justified by a January trip to Rome a few years back where, again, I was optimistic about the conditions I’d encounter. My primary regret from that trip was that I didn’t have a hat and gloves as temperatures teetered on freezing.
Still, I wasn’t one to be once bitten, twice shy and, this time round, I wasn’t bound for Italy. Instead, I nervously waited in the queue for a flight to Athens, desperately hoping to avoid a bag check for my bulging backpack.
Now, Athens is hardly off the beaten track. It’s not quite the usual fodder of a website such as this one – there will be no tales of minibuses on their last legs having done the distance to the moon and back. No experiences involving dodgy border crossings and long drop toilets in Central Asia.
Then again, the idea of elsewhere can be as much about time as location. I would be the first to concede that Greece is generally a hotbed of tourism during the summer months, frankly to the extent that I wouldn’t dream of visiting. The question I wanted to answer was, quite simply, is it any better during winter?
Can the Athenian tourist crowds that block streets, fill the best restaurants and bars and ensure that tickets to the most famous attractions are worth their weight in gold, be avoided? Then, if they can be avoided, is there a reason why they don’t visit in February?
I boarded the plane alongside my dad, not knowing quite what to expect when I landed.
I must admit that the initial signs weren’t exactly positive. Deposited in the city centre, close by the Acropolis Museum, the horrendously antisocial flight schedules of Wizz Air meant that we arrived just after midnight.
The city was shuttered and seemingly devoid of life. The only hope of a meal at this time lay somewhere between McDonald’s and a 24-hour Greek restaurant thankfully placed a five-minute walk from our Airbnb, just off a large main road and surrounded by car rental outlets and shops probably better suited to Amsterdam than Athens. Still, I didn’t want my first taste of the famed Greek cuisine to be at a McDonald’s.
This was a worrying sign. Though it was past midnight, we had landed on a Friday night. I would have expected there to be at least some sign of life, perhaps in the form of a bar or two. This was a culture which was well known for its late nights so that the heat of the day could be avoided. Instead, everyone had gone to sleep, leaving the streets without any of the buzz that may have been expected of a Southern European capital city.
Still, if you can beat them then you may as well join them. Sleep it was.
The next morning, I woke to the sun gently shining through the translucent, white curtains of the apartment. Rolling out of bed, I peeked out over the street below, only to be met with radiant blue skies and the signs of a city waking up from its slumber.
Other residents could be seen eating their breakfast on the leafy balconies of the apartment blocks over the street, with the peace of the scene only occasionally punctured by a moped zipping along the street below. This was undoubtedly a bit more like it, though I didn’t care much at that point.
“It was something of a goldilocks zone for a city as well-known and well-travelled”
I was much more concerned with the sky above the apartments. Without a cloud in sight, it was a stark and extremely welcome difference to the overcast skies of the UK. I bathed for a moment in the sunlight streaming onto my face.
Keenly throwing on the shorts I had packed so optimistically the afternoon before, I strode out the door with my dad to a completely different city from the night before.
We were staying in Plaka, an area close to the Acropolis which was packed full of shops. Though they catered in large part to the tourist market, selling anything which could possibly have an evil eye added to it, the open storefronts gave the streets some colour and vibrancy which I was concerned that they would be lacking at this time of year.
In general, I need not have been concerned on that front. The streets were busy without being impassable due to excessive crowds; restaurants and bars were largely busy without being fully booked and it was possible to organise tickets at the last minute into all the attractions. It was something of a goldilocks zone for a city as well-known and well-travelled as Athens.
This was, in many ways, a truer demonstration of everyday Greek life than any tourist could dream of seeing in the summer months. During a food tour which wove its way around the city’s narrow streets, we were able to sample excellent food, including spanakopita, souvlaki and cheeses and yogurt without feeling rushed or having to fight our way to places. The tour, usually for a larger group, was private simply because nobody else had booked.
After a couple of days, all semblance of doubt or scepticism about visiting the city during February had melted away under the warming yet pleasant sun. If anything, I was confused as to why nobody else was visiting at this time, particularly from cold and rainy Britain. That said, I was glad to be able to experience a version of Athens which could, just possibly, be considered un-touristy. It was great.
Of course, it wasn’t entirely empty. Especially when climbing the hill to the Acropolis to view the jewel in the Athenian crown, the Parthenon, there were some crowds. Usually, these comprised large groups of schoolchildren, with their teachers doubtless making use of the cheap flight prices to cut the costs of the trip to keep parents on side.
Even at the foot of the Parthenon, though, the city didn’t feel overcrowded. There was space to move as I hopped between the rocks and gullies which made up much of the ground around the ancient temple, simultaneously admiring the multitude of ancient wonders and the panoramic views over the city and Aegean Sea.
All the while, I could feel the sun shining down on my back, healing a winter of gloomy darkness back in London. As much as I am aware that the British have a national obsession with weather, this transformed my time in Greece – being able to wear shorts, dine outside in the evenings and wear sunglasses was as surreal as it was glorious at the beginning of February.
It goes without saying that Greece (or at least certainly Athens and the Greek islands) cannot be considered “elsewhere” when it comes to tourism. The advent of budget airlines, combined with great food and the beauty of places like Santorini have swept aside that veil long ago. This is not a far-off land unknown to Westerners. It is quite the opposite and very much sits as part of that very world.
However, the charm of Athens was the time of year during which I chose to visit it. This was a time without the pressures of enormous crowds or oven-like heat. It was a time when most people would simply dismiss travelling to Europe on holiday as a whole and search for warmer climates and more exotic locations.
Those people are missing out. The idea of elsewhere is as much about time as it is location – in the case of Athens, I wouldn’t dream of returning during summer. In February, though? Why not?
Into The Elsewhere 