Savoring Souvlaki and Sipping Cappuccinos: Navigating Nomadic Life in Greece
It’s exciting to be in Greece, especially as we ushered in 2023. It’s less fun that I’m battling a pesky cold for the last ten days. We’re here out of season, so it’s not surprising that it’s gloomy some days, and today it’s drizzling. It’s reasonable under the circumstances that we haven’t been exploring every nook and cranny Athens has to offer us.
We finally scheduled some tours for later this week, but in the meantime we’ve scarfed up souvlaki at O Thanasis and gobbled juicy gyros at Tylixto Greek Wrap—twice! We savored pancakes piled with egg, meat, and cheese from Enoteka, imbibed frozen Aperol Spritz from Barrus, munched more French fries than we have eaten in the last six months (they’re in everything here!) including from 33 Adrianou and Juicy Grill, devoured scrumptious eggs Benedict at Pit Espresso Ristorante Bar, and tolerated a very average full English breakfast in Syntagma square at The Greco’s Project—the impracticality of a tasty full English in Greece is not lost on us.
Let’s agree to never discuss the dense, dry peanut butter and forest fruit pancakes from Barrus.
The home we’re in this month has a Nespresso machine and we pop over to a shop where we stock up on Lungo coffee pods that we can make ourselves. Today’s dismal weather begs for something frothy and nurturing outside of our Airbnb, so we wander to Hopper’s—watch out for that stair that will trip you if you’re not careful!
As we sip our cappuccinos, I fret over whether we are doing enough with our time on the road. We’re in this incredible city steeped in history, but my time sneezing and sniffling seems to be better spent under a cozy blanket than exploring Ancient Greece. Nomadic life did not suddenly turn me into an extrovert, either. I put internal pressure on myself that there’s a “right” way to spend this precious experience. It’s taken me 58 years, but I am finally starting to get it into my head that there is no right way.
I know many things about this new phase of our lives may not be what people expect. It’s not a vacation, so every day may not be a grand adventure. We still have laundry and grocery shopping and cook many of our meals. We edit videos and write blog posts (like this one!). Planning where we’ll be next month and the month after that and so on takes a lot of work, and we have to budget more carefully. We need to work harder to stay connected with family and friends since we can’t just visit at the drop of a hat and have to be mindful of time zones before calling. We may be in exotic places, but we balance the magical with the mundane.
We don’t take for granted that we are being exposed daily to new cultures and new foods and bump into incredible people as part of our everyday life. At dinner our first night in Athens we bumped into a sweet couple who have been nomads for over a year—primarily living in an RV and traveling full time. Lisa and her husband Nick, who is Greek and has local family, are in town for six months and shared some fascinating experiences and wisdom while we bonded over souvlaki. You can check them out on Instagram at “The Adventurous Sightseers.”
And on days like this when we’re cold to our bones and fighting minor sicknesses, we pinch ourselves that we get to have these experiences in glorious freaking Greece.
