europe – Ania Heasley

“Odysseus, the king of Ithaca, left his home many years ago and has not returned. This is his story.”

This is the opening line of my debut book, The Odyssey, which I wrote at the age of 7.

It was inspired by the TV series of the same title, which was showing in Poland at the time. I loved the storyline, and started writing long before the brave Trojan War hero returned to the shores of his kingdom.

I felt I was onto something special, and hoped that nobody else would have the same idea and that I would be the only one who put it onto paper. When, two months later my parents told me that some guy called Homer had beaten me to it 28 centuries before, I sulked for a week.

Amelia and I stayed in Kefalonia for ten days earlier this month. Ithaca is a stone’s throw from Kefalonia, 45 minutes by ferry to be precise, so we knew it had to be done. We booked ourselves on a day trip to the tiny island and it was lovely.

Ithaca has no tourist resorts or sandy beaches to speak of, but it still attracts large number of visitors, mainly day-trippers like us, brought here on the strong winds of cultural, literary and historical snobbery.

Ithaca’s entire PR effort is geared towards Odysseus and Homer. The statues are everywhere. The port of Sami, where ferries to Ithaca depart from, features Odysseus Theme Park.

Our guide, Vanna, spoke pretty much non-stop. If I had a Euro for each time she described something as ‘gorgeous’, I could have probably paid for the pork souvlaki and Greek salad lunch for everybody on the coach. To be fair to Vanna, Ithaca is gorgeous.

Our first stop was Vathy, the island’s capital. Amelia and I took a long walk around the bay, snapping happy as we went.

After that, it was a hairpin bend ascent to the Kathara Monastery, which offered us, yes, you guessed it, gorgeous views of the coastline.

Next stop was Kioni, for an unrushed lunch break. Kioni, like every other village in Ithaca, was a quaint little place, busy with sailboats coming and going at a steady pace.

Our final stop was Stavros, hailed as the Odysseus birthplace, but I had a strong suspicion we stopped there mainly so that Vanna was able to earn her commission from a local cafe. She herded us inside and gently nudged us towards the ‘local delicacy’, a rice and honey sweet called Rovani. It was an okay tasting rice pudding, which Amelia polished off happily.

This post is based on my trip to Athens in September 2023. I wrote it, saved it in the drafts folder and promptly forgot it. Publishing now, because I think it can be quite useful for any good people debating whether to check out Athens or head straight to the islands.

“Athens is not a graceful city. It looks terrible from just about every approach, its air pollution is dire, and its traffic and postwar architecture are a disaster.”

Greece, The Rough Guide

Athens has such bad rep among travel books writers, it sounds almost personal. Having visited Athens earlier this month, I would like to say that the reputation is unfair and undeserved.

My daughter Amelia and I spent three days in Athens.

First half day was dutifully taken up by the Acropolis.

September is meant to be the month when the tourist traffic begins to calm down, but it was still pretty heaving on the uphill paths.

Despite every website telling us to, we did not pre-book, and spent about half an hour queuing up for the Acropolis tickets. There was one, ONE digital ticket machine available.

Tip: Acropolis, as well as every other piece of antiquity in Athens, is free of charge for under-25 EU citizens, the photo on the phone is sufficient to prove your European provenance.

The Acropolis hill was everything we were hoping for. It was beautiful, humbling, moving, fascinating, amazing, ancient, awe-inspiring, thought provoking and full of cats.

When we got our fill of the Parthenon, Theatre of Dionysus, and the rest of it, we walked down to the Roman Agora, followed by the Ancient Agora, where we feasted our eyes on the Temple of Hephaestus, the Stoa of Attalos, and more cats. It was so beautiful and peaceful, we stayed until closing time.

The Acropolis done, we could relax and spent the next day walking around the city. We set off from our accommodation, Kolonaki Nest (a masterpiece of Booking.com creative photography, but it served the purpose of giving us a bed in Athens), stopped for breakfast at Syntagma Square, and headed towards Panathenaic Stadium, followed by the Temple of Olympian Zeus, and ended up near the Acropolis again, loitered around tourist shops and restaurants in Plaka and took the Metro back to Syntagma, and took the funicular to the top of Lycabettus Hill (Lykavitos) for the most stunning views of Athens and beyond. Highly recommended, if a little bit out of the way.

After Lycabettus, we went back to Syntagma Square, which was a great find. It is the main square in Athens, the Greek Parliament building stands to the side of it, and it also turns into the roadman capital of Athens by night.

In the true Heasley sightseeing style, we clocked up well over 25,000 steps that day. We would have done even more, but were frequently slowed down by cats. Amelia is physically incapable of walking past a cat without stopping to stroke them, and take several carefully composed photos of them. And there are a lot of cats in Athens.

The third and last day in Athens, we took a bus to Cape Sounion and the dramatically placed Temple of Poseidon, which was just under two hours drive along the coast. We spent the whole day hanging about Cape Sounion, waiting for the sunset, when Amelia took hundreds of photos, and we took the last bus back to Athens.

Champagne sunset trips to Cape Sounion are being sold to cruise ship loads of Americans daily, and, unbelievable as it sounds, they really do sip the bubbly from elegant champagne flutes, perched on the rocks around the temple, by their thousands.

And finally.

Do not listen to disparaging guidebook opinions, and go to Athens! It is a great place to spend a few days. Amelia and I had the best time there.

The only word of advice, you would be wise to skip the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The best thing about it is its name. Other than that, it’s just two tall columns and a lot of scaffolding, on the side of a football stadium size load of burnt grass and rubble. Still, you will probably ignore my advice and head to the Temple of Zeus on your second day in Athens, like we did, because he is Zeus, the big guy.