summer's over, we're a little older
why slow travel is my preferred way to see the world + my best athens recommendations
hello! hi! welcome to the first edition of the dinner party! I have a lot of thoughts, and this seems like a cool way to share them. I also wanted a more permanent way to share recommendations, and to decentralize my literal entire life from instagram.
as luck would have it, this is my last week in Greece. here’s the thing: i took a very long vacation in Greece. i learned how to say “hello” and “thank you” with a very convincing accent, made some cool friends, and fell in love with this spectacular country.
here’s the other thing: after two leisurely months getting to know two islands very well, I’ve been island-hopping a little bit. and it’s exhausting. there’s never time to settle into a place; you’re always packing, always trying to make some ferry or bus or train or flight at a certain time, and always trying to fit things in a car.
moving between places is the most exhausting, stressful and un-fun part of traveling. the ferry, wheeling your suitcase on european cobblestone streets, making sure you have all your tickets, getting transport to the airport or the train station, getting there on time, carrying your suitcase up tiny flights of steep stairs (e.g. everything in the country of Portugal) - the constant feeling of movement/flux is the most disorienting and stressful part of travel.
traveler/vacationer/eurosummer
there’s been some tiktok conversation about “traveler” vs “vacationer.” I think it’s a spectrum - I’m a vacationer now, but in my early and mid 20’s I was decidedly a traveler. travelers want to see as much as possible, they wake up at the ass crack of dawn to beat the crowds at the Acropolis (impossible, haha), and want to feel like they are making the most of their time in a place, etc. travelers feel a sense of pride at being able to call themselves that, but in all honesty this is how most people travel, unless you’re booking an all-inclusive or are on a beach resort.
I think the concept of the “eurosummer” (which sounds like a music festival or the title of an ABBA song) or traveling on a study abroad semester emphasizes this sense of “we’re already here, tickets were expensive, I want to see as much as possible.” most travelers want to make the most of their time by checking off sights, cities, and photo spots, and trying to see the big attractions of as much of the european continent as possible - a tiktok commenter mentions jokingly that she heard “a different language every three days.” the thing is, physically traveling, the act of moving from one place to another, is exhausting. i’ve traveled extensively and still find it exhausting. you’re discombobulated because airplane sleep or train sleep is not real sleep, and the first night in a new hostel/hotel/airbnb bed is also not real sleep. you’re always running around, always sleep-deprived because Ryanair flies at 6 a.m., and you spend days just sitting in airports and train stations. this is the kind of vacation where I return home and think, “I need a vacation from that vacation.”
while spending three months in a place is a privilege I don’t take for granted, I want instead to make the case for slow travel in whatever form possible - for staying in one place, one city, for a week, two weeks, or a month. I’m suggesting instead a way of traveling that prioritizes slowness, meaning, and imperfection.
“what’s the rush? you’re on vacation”
when I first got to Greece, every time I appeared harried or was rushing for something, the locals on Paros island would say “what’s the rush? you’re on vacation!” I don’t know how to explain to people that there’s nothing to do on a Greek island - it’s not like being in Paris, where there’s ten million things you must do or take a photo of or experience for all of twenty minutes before going on to the next thing. the whole point of a Greek island is to spend all day at the most beautiful beach of your life, then shower and get dressed and go to dinner. what makes a Greek island special is its slowness - the shared dinners with strangers, bumping into the same person all over the island and becoming friends, the weird little turn you take that helps you find your new favorite restaurant, the little moments of serendipity and alignment that turn a grocery store cashier into a new friend.
most of the friends I made this summer, I made by being a regular in places. I’d show up the first time, introduce myself, and come back again a few days later, and a few days later, each time making a small bit of conversation. this has led to some of the most rewarding conversations I’ve had in a long time, about Greece and wine and art and the economy. to me, this is the best part of travel.
once, I got lost in the random little nooks of Naxos’s venetian castle looking for a particular restaurant. a little weird wrong turn led me to a wine bar with the most insane views of the island, tasting flights of greek wine, and elevated food. i honestly liked it a lot better than the place I had originally meant to find. there’s no point trying to “find your way” via google maps in the main town of an island - it’s all tiny alleys and roads that make no sense. rather, they have to be explored, then intuitively learned and navigated. you have to be willing to get lost.
“it takes a lifetime to discover Greece, but only an instant to fall in love with her”
this is what I’ve been wrestling with for a while - if you spend two days in Rome, two days in Florence, two days in Venice, and one day in Milan, and then return home, can you truly make a judgement on a place? can you say a place has “the best coffee in Florence” if you’ve only tried maybe four places?
when you only have two or three days in a place, everything has to be perfect. it can’t rain, every meal has to be delicious and every restaurant rated above 4.5 stars, you have to move from place to place with sufficient speed, you have to navigate the metro or the roads perfectly. anything else tampers with the carefully-planned itinerary, where everything is arranged down to the minute.
the beautiful thing about spending a whole week’s vacation in Paris, for example, rather than three days in Paris, one traveling, and another three all the way down in Nice on the French Riviera - is that if it rains on one day, you can spend that day wandering a museum slowly, and then going to a coffee shop and reading, and then taking a long shower and going to dinner, and consider that a day well spent. and even if dinner that night isn’t the best meal you’ve ever had - there are other nights, and other non-instagram famous places where you can probably score a reservation for tomorrow.
I’m the furthest thing from an art nerd, but someone once told me that to do the Lourve properly, you’d need at least two days. budgeting more time in one place allows for more forgiveness, more imperfection, and most importantly, more space to find meaning in each of the activities you’re doing. if art is important to you, and you care about that kind of thing, it’s worth taking the time to find deeper meaning in a single museum. if you can’t do everything, pick the things that are important to you and you find the most meaning in, and do that.
I fully intend on spending another, and other summers, entirely in Greece. this goes against a lot of the way we understand travel today, which is that we should always be exploring new places and going somewhere new, somewhere we haven’t yet been. we should be moving gradually down our “bucket list” of experiences and cities. Greece is huge. i’ve heard creators on tiktok say “Greece doesn’t really have mountains and forests, just beaches” - which is actually extremely untrue if you know anything beyond the surface about Greece, or if just look at the geography needed for winemaking, or if you look at a topographical map of the region.
if your interest in travel is to count the number of countries you’ve visited, or check things off a list, maybe you’ll go from Greece to Italy and then to Malta and say you went to three countries this summer. you get to add to your country count and city count, which is deeply american eurosummer. but for me, it’s always richer and more meaningful to allow for the spontaneity of jumping into the Aegean sea in a random swimming hole off the Naxos port that has no name, just mountains in the distance and impossibly clear water.
meaning
the thing I’ve been noticing the most in all my travel this year is how much social media/tiktok/instagram recommendations and photos have changed travel forever. In Nusa Penida, a tiny island off the coast of Bali in Indonesia, local drivers have become experienced instagram photographers, carrying stepladders around to take the photo from the right angle, taking you to the exact location to get the right shot. lines and lines of crowds form to take the same picture. on the main island of Bali, there are “main” waterfalls with paved parking lots and entrance fees now, and they are rammed with tourists.
the most famous example, Oía in Santorini, is full of tourists standing in line to take the exact same picture in the exact same alleyways. every continent, country and city has their example of a thousand people doing the same thing, in the same places.
i’ve been finding it pretty exhausting. i told my brother, “none of us has had a single original thought in our lives” - we’re all looking for recommendations from the same best-of lists, the same guides, the same blogs and tiktoks. we’re all showing up to the same restaurants we found by googling “Paros Greece guide”. we’re all going to the places in Santorini that travel content creators recommend for the same instagram photo, and then complaining when the experience doesn’t match up or when we have to arrive 2 hours before sunset for a photo at Oía Castle.
the question i’ve been asking myself: what is the meaning in traveling? what is the meaning in this kind of travel?
in new york, several singaporean acquaintances visiting would say they had three days in the city, and when I asked what they wanted to see, would say “everything.”
my question then, is, do you want to say you’ve been to new york? you want to take a photo at the brooklyn bridge, but do you want to end up in chinatown or in dumbo? do you want to have a really good bunch of dinners at my favorite casual restaurants even though we probably won’t make it to any of the world’s best 50 bars? do you want to meet my friends when we’re probably just going to sit in the park and have a picnic and then go home? what matters to you? what are you making this trip for?
answering the question is crucial - and no, saying you’re doing it to “see the world” is not specific enough. what does “see the world” even mean? there are so many ways to “see” a city, and so many different intentions. what are you hoping to get out of a trip somewhere? the answer is different at every turn, and the answer should dictate where you go, and what you do and see.
for me, most of the meaning I get from travel comes from meeting new people, finding a new restaurant or wine bar, or stumbling upon an intensely local hole-in-the-wall where I have some of my most unusual memories of a place - i’ve never thought “oh, my favorite part of Rome was the Colosseum.” it comes from the conversations I have with people I’ve just met, it comes from being a regular in places for half a summer and trying the entire menu of a restaurant, and it comes from knowing a place really, really well. it comes from noticing how the wind makes the water on a beach choppier some days and calmer on others, and it comes from seeing the same sunset eighty-four days in a row, each time from a different vantage point. for me, it’s learning to choose depth over breadth. it’s learning, though it’s less glamorous, to choose the deep over the surface every time.
athens
before I tell you what places I loved, subscribe so you don’t miss my upcoming guides.
nothing is more exciting to me than someone saying Athens is “the Acropolis, the Temple of Olympian Zeus, the ruins, the museum, and that’s it” - usually they encourage me to take a 4-hour train ride each way to and from Meteora to take a picture of a monastery because “there’s nothing in Athens.” no shade to you if that’s your kind of thing, but here’s my thing: I love cities. when I hear someone say that, I get excited because it means that there’s more undiscovered Athens for me.
I think tourists always forget in the moment that cities are so much more than their sights/attractions/the big shiny monuments that you can check off. they are places people live, work, party, and cry in. beyond its history, Athens is a city - totally alive, full of hidden nooks and crannies, and full of coffee shops, restaurants, boutiques, bars, and alleyways waiting to be explored. everyone I know who’s from, or lives in, Athens is some kind of artist/musician/bartender/restaurateur. it’s home to so many young, creative people and their cool ideas.
since I don’t live here, I will never say I know Athens well - I’m just passing on places I found and loved, and a few places my Greek friends have passed along to me - in the hopes that you will see Athens as its own fully-fledged, alive, artistic city-destination that’s so much more than the Acropolis.
here are some places I love in Athens, as of august 2023.
for the cocktail connoisseurs
Baba Au Rum
if you’re one of those “world’s 50 best bars” obsessives, this place should be no stranger or surprise. this is the bar that kick-started the craft cocktail movement in Athens. if you love cocktails and are in town, this is the place. if you’re used to stuffy “world’s best” bars in asia or new york where you walk into an extravagant building or open a secret door in the back of a restaurant and pay an arm and a leg for a cocktail, this will surprise you.
Barro Negro
number 52 on the world’s best 50 bars, and Athens’s newest entry. if you love mezcal & tequila, you have to come here. the drinks are phenomenal, and it feels relaxed. it’s definitely a chill, sexy, grown-up kind of vibe that again, feels more casual than the stuffy craft cocktail bars I’m used to in other cities.
Spirtokouto Cocktail Bar (Koukaki)
good cocktails, reasonably priced, on a lively bar + restaurant street. the bar next door is a whole other vibe, and it’s worth checking out if you’re in the mood for cheap beers and a hanging-out-with-your-friends-in-lively-environs vibe. in general, Georgiou Olimpiou (where this bar is) is a really buzzing street of bars and restaurants in the neighborhood, and each has a slightly different energy.
The Bar In Front Of The Bar
they describe themselves as part of an “urban fine drinking” movement (you drink great cocktails sitting in the street), the phrasing of which tickles me immensely. it’s a solid bar - they’re one of the only bars in europe that changes their cocktail menu every day. it’s the kind of place you’d only find in an european city as young and creative as Athens.
Beauty Killed the Beast
in an old renovated mansion in an up-and-coming neighborhood sits one of the best brunches I had in the city, and one of the most atmospheric places to get a cocktail. you’re drinking creative drinks in a courtyard sheltered by trees, and the building’s interiors feel lush and opulent - if you somehow didn’t process that you’re in the city where europe begins, this will remind you that you’ve arrived.
for the wine snobs
Oinoscent
if you happen to, like me, be afflicted not only with wine snobbery but also a nose for eating well, this wine bar will offer you a michelin-level experience that feels accessible. the food is artistic and creative, the wine list is extensive, and the cellar is extremely impressive.
Materia Prima Wine Bistro (Pagrati & Koukaki)
a new chef friend from Athens recommended this, and it didn’t take me long to see why. both outlets of this wine bistro, in gentrified residential neighborhoods full of cool new bars and restaurants, are two of my favorite places in Athens. very varied wine selection (with international and Greek wines), classified by helpful tags like “LUSCIOUS” and “BOLD.” food is fantastic, artful, well-crafted, delicious. it’s a casual, hang out for a long time kind of place. come for the wine selection, stay for the food and the vibe.
heteroclito
another recommendation from my new chef friend. I wasn’t as impressed by this place as I was by the other two, but it’s still a solid choice, it’s really beautiful environs, and it’s very close to all the tourist things in the center of Athens. it’s right off the main shopping street with all the european brands (Ermou) - and so it’s a good option if you’re shopping/walking around and feeling a little peckish for wine and bites.
if you just want the best food the city has to offer
Feedέλ Urban Gastronomy
started by Greek celebrity chef (of masterchef fame) Leonidas Koutsopoulos, this is fine dining in a way that feels intimate and creative. set in a tiny garden off a main street of Athens, hidden behind a church, it’s Greek flavors and ingredients with a twist. every dish - from indulgent beef cheeks to humble fried potatoes - is thoughtful and full of interesting flavor combinations. they’re also a restaurant that uses cocktail/food pairings rather than wine. their cocktails are also things of beauty.
Dopios
I had such an amazing meal here. their pork belly and red mullet are dishes of beauty. I paired it with a classic - xinomavro rosé from Alpha estate.
360 Cocktailbar
this is the bougie, splashy, splurgy, “come for the Instagram photo” place. pre-dinner drinks, or dining, with an unmatched, unobstructed view right in front of the Acropolis. prepare to do it with bachelorette parties and everyone trying to get The vacation picture, but the food is good, and their signature cocktails are all named after popular islands, which feels like a nice touch. if you’re the kind of person who loves fancy rooftop bars right in front of the city’s main attraction, this is your Athens stop.
Cherchez La Femme
on the edge of Plaka, which is basically a neighborhood entirely full of souvenir shops and tourists post-Acropolis. their food is fantastic, i loved their wine list, and they gave me mastiha both times I visited. their pork belly, fried potatoes, and eggplant stuffed with lamb are standouts. everyone who works there is so friendly and kind.
if you’re on a budget
Elvis
i will always be grateful to the hostel receptionist who told me about this place 7 years ago. it’s a deeply local hole-in-the-wall, and a neighborhood institution. Elvis is great souvlaki, reminds me of the best places for a new york dollar slice, and was the beginning of my love affair with Greece.
Lolos
very fresh seafood cooked simply, at good prices. think: giant plate of mussels for 6 euros. this is not the kind of place with wine lists and fancy gastronomy - its fresh, simple, delicious, unpretentious.
for the cool kids
Me_kolonaki
apparently this is where the trendy Athens influencer girlies brunch. it’s trendy, in an upscale neighborhood where even the corner stores sell organic produce, and everyone eating here is chic. excellent veg options, food lives up to the hype.
Hotel Chelsea
this reminds me of some of my favorite new york bars of my early 20’s (Niagara and Happyfun circa 2018) dive bar-esque, tiny, everyone’s friendly and spilling out onto the street, total neighborhood bar. you can bring in the souvlaki from the Elvis outpost across the street. it’s fun, crowded, mostly unpretentious, and a good time.
BIOS Cultural Center
i’m spilling the secret now: this arts and cultural center has the best rooftop bar in Athens. much more laid back, affordable, unpretentious than the places in Monastiraki, and way cooler. they regularly screen films on the roof, too, so you might get lucky.
Fahrenheit 451 Books & Coffee
solid tiktok recommendation in a residential suburb of Athens. very local, very good coffee, very interesting selection of books (mostly in greek) - it’s just a really good place to chill and study/bang out some emails.
Lexikopoleio
my favorite bookstore in Athens! great english selection, extensive collection of mythology, friendly staff.
:)
Τυφλόμυγα - Καφενείο (Tyflómyga - Kafeneío)
7 years ago, a hostel receptionist told me about this place. I took the metro to Metaxourgeio and walked here, and when I walked in, everyone was surprised that a foreigner was in the restaurant. people kept asking, “how did you find this place?”
Athens is a very different city now, and this neighborhood has become more popular with foreigners, but this remains one of my favorite local spots. it’s cheap, good, traditional, and the first place I had raki. it’s the first place that helped me see what makes Greece such a special place. this was when I really fell in love with a way of life so different than anything I’d been brought up or exposed to. somewhere between the live music and the multiple shots of raki, I knew I’d make it back here and return again and again.
Asylo
I shouldn’t even be telling you about this place - it’s a cult Athens spot that so deeply reminds me of my early 20’s. it’s the underground afterparty, the cheap screwdrivers, the 2am when you’re drunk/rolling, when you just want to dance until the sun comes up and be amidst other bodies. everyone is young and hot and alt. I’ve aged out of this kind of party, but at one point, this was home to a really memorable night. I’m passing the secret on to you now. go forth.