I think that's what travelling does to you, it fills you up with so many emotions and leaves you spellbound. Honestly, this blog isn't about "Top 10 things to do when in Greece", I think there are many travel guides and blogs that can help you out with that. In this blog I want to write about the 'feeling' and also encourage you, the reader to do so. Just for sometime, suspend yourself from the To-Do list, Places-to-visit list, things-to-pack list and focus of the heart beat, the deep heavy breaths when you think about a place, a city you loved staying in. Isn't it wonderful? Sadly, we usually do this when we are back home, sitting at our workstations, pushing the deadlines and procrastinating.
As an architecture enthusiast, apart from spending hours after hours in a building, breathing in the details, being awestruck by profound spaces and capturing 256879 pictures, I completely love the part which I just mentioned above; feeling the essence of a city or the surrounding and being alive in that moment and I think once in a while we must allow ourselves to savor the luxury of travelling alone, giving some time to just ourselves and be in sync with our inner selves.
When you walk through the streets we have never walked, dance your heart out to the song whose lyrics you don’t understand, listen to a language you don’t understand, use a currency whose value you don’t comprehend (trust me Greece left me broke at the end haha), all this has a magic. You tend to forget that old ‘I’ along with everything else, and discover a new ‘I’, and maybe this thing, this specific thing which travelling does to us makes me want to travel more and more.
Well before writing this blog I have tried more than 100 times to pen down my Greece - Santorini trip in my journal and every time I sat down to write I failed. Because it was my first ever trip out of India, you can imagine the emotions attached to it. I was out of touch with my family for 15 days, and for a family-person like me, it is really a hard thing to do. But like all the other trips I have done till now, Greece - Santorini transformed me the most and although I am a loner, but those 15 days taught me to appreciate solitude to the utmost and I took that opportunity to dig deeper and know myself more and guys, the most amazing thing you could gift yourself is a solo trip. I think all of us deserve at least one solo trip in our lives and once that is done, I am sure one can't stop doing that over and over again.
The unconventional things
Before you dive deeper into this blog, I would like to mention that you are about to find the unconventional things which people usually don't write and post but they share those things with their close friends. So yes! This blog post is dedicated to all the empaths, hopeless romantics like me, to the emotional artists who feel too much; I think this world needs more people who feel. Hasn't 'feeling' become the most precious thing on this Earth over the years?
Athens
, Athens, Athens. How should I start writing about this city? Whenever I think about this city, I find myself ruminating about that one moment over and over again. It was the last day of Design Morphine Workshop, I usually pair up my trips with some Architectural workshop, lecture series and exhibitions because I think it is so important to always keep exploring, learning new things and connecting with new people of your work background and workshops are a very nice way to do so. I have met some amazing humans who are so passionate about their work, constantly pushing their boundaries and also the love of my life, so you never can tell you know! (lol).
Coming back to the last day, after getting done with the final presentations our whole batch went out partying and while searching for a club where we all could fit in, we landed up on this one narrow street. Do you also think that streets make such a romantic space, especially when narrow? It was night time and at some point, someone from our group exclaimed "Look! Parthenon!"
I froze for sometime and being a hopeless romantic, a picture I recently saw of Parthenon shot brilliantly by photographer Elias Chasiotis, struck my mind and I quickly made a mental picture of lighting, the whole view I was anticipating and I turned around. There it was, perfectly framed by the street and it's surrounding, floating high above the hill top, beautifully lit with warm yellow lights and I was reminded of the caricature Peter Trummer showed in this lecture at SAC, Frankfurt (check out this link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JccYFjBSjFw)
A well orchestrated piece of varied layers can make a photograph and sometimes a building so profound that it can displace us from the mundane. Athens was about eating Greek souvlaki with tzatziki sauce almost everyday (I got so obsessed about them), pretzels and sun-seed sticks with iced-coffee for the late afternoons. Although most of the day was spent in the workshop, I tried to savor the city as much as I could. Being an architect, what took my breath away were these two buildings:
1. New Acropolis Museum by Bernard Tschumi
2. Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre / Renzo Piano Building Workshop
Santorini
Does this place even need a description? Although it is known as the "most favorite honey-moon destination" for perhaps all the couples around the world, the then-single me thought : How about honeymooning self? and also, you fly oceans across and land up in Greece and go back home without paying any heed to the most beautiful island on this earth? I think I wasn't up to make that blunder.
The journey from Rafina port to Thira port by sea is for 5-6 hours, although you are surrounded by the Indigo Aegean Sea most of the times but being a sincere lover of sea I spent most of the time looking out of the cruise and contemplating over the nebula water which turned white when our cruise hit it, such lovely tones of blue to fall for! Since it was a short trip, I planned to visit Fira, Akrotiri and Oia. Apart from the breathing views of houses topped with blue roofs, Santorini reminds me of a stranger I met on my way to Oia, she was a Spanish actress and we became friends in 3 minutes after introducing ourselves. It is so strange sometimes that you meet a person and just know that you'll make great friends. I learnt that she was travelling alone too and we ended up spending the whole day together, watching the sunset over Aegean, couples kissing and we both feeling blah about it (honestly we both made a sad puppy face). Our day ended with a nice candle light dinner at the famous Strogili restaurant in Oia. After ordering the same dishes followed by the same desire of having mint tea, I learnt that she was a Sagittarian too and her birthday was a day before mine. Although it was a little thing but finding a stranger far away from my home who shares the same interest in travelling, soaking in different cultures and savoring local delicacies and mint tea (voila!) was enough to make me happy. Santorini being a super romantic place with it's narrow streets and love birds strolling around, I think I found my joy in spending that day with a lovely stranger.
Meteora
I found about this place while randomly skimming through Lonely Planet's Travel Guide for Greece and I think just that picture in the book did all the magic and Meteora joined my Places-to-visit list in a second. Meteora is a place which has pinnacle like mountains and isn't that enough to feel wow about? I think I chose this place because of some other reason too. In my childhood days I remember watching this favorite cartoon of mine called "Heidi" with my mom, I was hardly 2 years old then and the picture I saw reminded me of that cartoon and that was it. Guess what these few sentences made me do? I watched two episodes of Heidi and all the childhood nostalgia came swooping in! (here's the link for the kid in you : Heidi on youtube )
The monasteries at Meteora are to die for and I booked a morning Meteora hiking tour. After spending the morning jumping from monasteries to monasteries followed by a lovely lunch I went for a long walk in the evening around the foot hills to feel immense size and strength of the huge pillar like mountains. I remember I video called my mom showing her around, I think I was trying to live that childhood moment again. Imagine strolling in a small country side village surrounded by pinnacle like hills, all the houses in sync, having the same terracotta roofs, kids playing and church bells ringing. I think I will go and watch another episode of Heidi again.
Until next time!
Breath and feel!
More snippets:
It's written with so much personal touch that I felt like I could picturize it. Lovely 😍
I must be honest, I have not read it all. But, I can understand what it is like to be there. It is a destination not many choose. Amazing Architecture, food and people.
I will surely come back to experience it through your blog.