Greece – Smoking in Restaurants

Okay, we are now going to talk about the touchy subject of the Greek dining experience. Several things can ruin a restaurant experience for us. It just takes a few on the following list:

• smoking (unlike Italy, smoking is allowed in restaurants in Greece as of writing)
• disinterested or overly formal or bad service
• the TV on full blast
• bad food
• ridiculously high prices

In Greece, the first two items on the list were common: smoking and overly formal service to the point of being cold, let's say 'sooty and snooty'. Once in awhile we were treated to the TV on as well. One night, we saw the hostess running around bumming cigarettes from diners. Another night in a restaurant in Nafplion some singers came in, one of which had two packs of cigarettes. By the time we got up to leave he had already sucked down one pack. 

What to do?  Here are some suggestions:

• eat outdoors as weather permits (hard for us during our February visit)
• eat at a café which tends to be bigger, more spread out, and typically has lots of outdoor seating with heating, but limited, and less interesting menus.
• eat lunch on the run (like take-away souvlaki) and avoid dinner 
• sit near the door
• go to dinner early in the evening (e.g., the tourist schedule of eating early)
• eat quick and leave
• go to restaurants that only deal with tourist groups, boring but less likely to have smokers.
• just deal with it and air your clothes out later on the balcony of your hotel
• write a letter to the EU 

Okay, none of these suggestions sound that great, but it’s the price you pay to see the country. And to be honest, we ate wherever we thought we would get a good honest meal. Smoke be damned. Oh, and while smoky, the service in the two restaurants we tried on the island of Hydra was totally charismatic and vivacious.

Update 2021

Since this was originally written, the 2010 smoking ban went into effect into Greece, which improves matters significantly.  Also, we just got back from 12 days in Crete and we have to say we largely had positive restaurant experiences. Smoking was not a problem. Good service. Very few TVs. Good food. Low prices. Maybe the situation has changed, or we have changed, or islands are different and there is a great deal of variation in experience depending on where you go.

Staying in Delphi

We were a little worried about the trip to Delphi and spending two full days there. We figured one day to visit the archaeological site and one day for a hike. And that’s largely what we did. In all honesty, we probably could have spent a third day exploring some towns and/or taking another hike.

The modern town of Delphi is within 5 minutes walking distance from the archaeological site so it is a logical place to stay. Every guidebook rags on Delphi because it is modern and without “charm”. To tell you the truth I’ve seen older towns that looked worse, more modern and with less charm, so I think people over-emphasize this point. It’s a good base especially if you don’t want to drive. We basically parked the car for the two days. If you want to spend time exploring a town and all its charm, choose the village of Aráhova 11km to the east on the main road.

The only map I could find of the region in local stores is the one shown above. It’s relatively decent if not strangely hard to read. The colors are all funky.

Delphi – Hotel Orfeas

For our three nights in Delphi we stayed at Hotel Orfeas. It was reasonably priced (I think we paid less for all three nights then we did for one meal in Athens), but then again it was fairly no frills. Oh, and there wasn’t very many hotels open it seemed.

We had a good view looking south down to the coast, but, we were the only people in the hotel, so maybe it wasn’t so hard to snag? We reviewed five rooms before we chose the room - something we never do, but for some reason we did it there – we were really scoping out the best beds. 

They never came in to change towels, or make beds. In a way, for three days, we didn’t care. We sleep in sheets and use towels longer than three days. The fact they didn’t change them may indicate that they are used to folks just staying for one night. Delphi is really listed in all guidebooks as a “one-nighter” which I think is a bit unfair. When we checked into our hotel, the guy seemed incredulous that we would stay THREE nights. He kept asking us: "Three nights?" 

The breakfast was okay and attention from the owner Demetrius(?) was nice. He may offer an afternoon Greek coffee and if he doesn’t, ask. One morning, Demetrius was gone and his mother or mother in-law stepped out of a small doorway as I was making my way to the breakfast table. I jumped in surprise (not hard for me to get startled). She laughed and laughed and then tried to explain something to both of us (but concentrating on me since I obviously knew more Greek!?) for 10 minutes and we didn’t understand a damn thing. We left her and a friend sorting lentils and we thought, boy, they must be saying to each other: “what dummies, i tried to talk to them but they are clueless.”

Nafplion Restaurants

There is no shortage of restaurants in Nafplion. On the weekend, even in winter, the more popular ones can get quite busy as Athenians take a break from the city and relax in Nafplion – only a few hours’ drive away. In general, we didn’t have bad food, but we didn’t have really good food either. Okay, we are coming from Italy where there is lots of information about all types of restaurants and you can find guides that best fit your tastes. This was not the case here in Greece for us, at least during this trip. We didn't have much luck searching online and found that suggestions from our guidebooks (Rough, National Geographic, Eyewitness) were not that helpful. (Ed. this was 2008 after all!)

 

Omortho Taverna Okay food and service which was annoyingly polite. Maybe we don’t fit the average tourist profile, but we don’t need English spoken all the time to us. Also, we are paying a lot of money for food and experience, so the wait staff can at least understand their role in this experience.

1986 Kakanapakis An Italian-esque restaurant. Good service, nice plate presentations, good flavors, nice atmosphere.


Taverna Byzantio Adequate Greek food – most typical dishes served. Not super-inspired. Singing on selected nights.


Taverna Chriso Vareli (link) This is a family-run, small restaurant in the “upper part” of town – up the hill from the port. The part of town near the water tends to have the more hip restaurants. This taverna was one of the friendlier places we had been. Again, a fairly standard menu. A funny thing is that this is the first place that actually had baklava on the menu (go figure) and I ordered it. They had to go down the street to get it at a pastry shop.


Taverna Vassilis Firfilionis (link) This restaurant was packed on Saturday night, but empty the next night. We probably liked this restaurant the best food-wise, but again service average. By the way, the only place I saw my favorite Greek dish, avgolemono soup, was at the airport when we were leaving Greece. Odd.

Mycenae

Mycenae is an incredible site. The ruins are great, the setting is spectacular, and the museum was excellent. A single ticket gets you into everything including the treasury of Atreus which is down the road just a little bit (you can walk or drive). We spent just under 3 hours seeing everything.

Don’t miss the opportunity to walk into all three tholos tombs:
- tomb of Aegisthus (lost its top)
- tomb of Clytemnestra (intact)
- tomb of the Lions (lost its top)
- treasury of Atreus (intact; at the connected site down the road)

Near the cistern in the main site, there are steps that bring you down to what was a secret well, created by the Mycenae to help withstand a long siege. 99 steps descend through the 'Cyclops' wall. It’s pitch black, so bring a flashlight. Also, there are at least two metal supports holding up the ceiling located dead center of the stairs, so be careful. We made it all the way down and it ends in a dry floor. Perhaps they covered it over for safety.

Acrocorinth and Ancient Corinth

 

Left: Acrocorinth. Right: Corinth Apollo temple.

The Acrocorinth was a pleasant surprise to us. We stopped there first because it was first site you come to driving from Nafplion. We spent a few hours exploring and then headed down to Ancient Corinth which is further north and lower in the valley. Seeing both sites in one day is a complete day. Plan to spend 2+ hours at each site, plus travel time between them. 

Acrocorinth is the acropolis of Ancient Corinth. Ancient Corinth is a few kilometers southeast of the modern city of Corinth.

Ancient Corinth is similar to several of the sites we had seen already: an archaeological site and associated museum (another nice one here). Usually, you pay to get in. Acrocorinth, however, is a different beast. It’s free to get in, but there isn’t any signage to provide context on what you are looking at and the site is quite large and hilly. However, if the weather is nice and you want to just wander around puzzling out what this was or that was, plus, get some great views, then this is the place for you. We found some pottery shards which later we could confirm were from about 1100 A.D. (We left them in place.)

Shards observed at Acrocorinth.

Amfitriti Hotel and Pension

We stayed at Amfitriti (αμφιτρίτη) during our five nights in Nafplion. Παραδοσιακός ξενώνας – means Paradosiakos Zenonas – which means (going out on a limb here) – a welcoming place for travelers. Zenonas is a traveller. Enough of this picky language stuff - the hotel was great. The owners (2 sisters we think) were helpful and gracious. The breakfast was wonderful and the afternoon coffee and snack very welcome. There is the hotel Amfitriti and the pension Amfitriti nearby. We stayed in the hotel which a few more flights of stairs up the side of the mountain. Regardless of where you stay, climb to the terrace on top of the hotel for a nice view. (The hotel, by the way, is all blue on the outside, you can’t miss it.) I took a look at the rooms in the pension (which were empty for a week of renovations) and they looked nice.

I think the hotel is named after Amphitrite, a sea-goddess. Check out their TripAdvisor profile.

Ancient Epidaurus

We took the 11:00am catamaran (Hellenic Seaways) from Hydra to Hermioni. It took about 20 minutes. We picked up our rental car at Pops Rental (we were very satisfied with this rental agency) and headed to Epidaurus.

Epidaurus was a celebrated healing center in Classical times. The demigod Asklepios, the son of Apollo, is closely associated to Epidaurus. An asclepieion is a healing temple. The theater at Epidaurus is one of the best preserved. Usually old theaters disappear as generations pilfer material to build other things. We’ve heard different reasons why the theater of Epidaurus was not pilfered like it was completely buried so no one could get to it and that it was too far away for anyone want to go and get materials from. Who knows? The theater is also known for its spectacular acoustics which of course we had to try.

Overall, we spent about 3 hours. Don’t miss the museum on site as well. (As a rule, you should go to the museum first before seeing a site. It’s better for context when later viewing the ruins. We learned this later.)