The cicadas are in full swing again this evening, but I've stopped noticing them, which is probably the first sign that this city has gotten under my skin. Today is my last full day in Athens before I head north to Metsovo, and I spent the morning doing something I've been putting off all week: I finally went back to the Varvakios market, not for the tourist spectacle, but to buy figs and peaches for the train ride, because stone fruit is at its peak right now and I've learned that a Greek August tastes like dripping peach juice and honeyed figs.
I bought a kilo of figs from a vendor who barely looked at me, the way locals do, and then a small bag of peaches, and the whole transaction cost me about four euros, which is less than a single coffee at some of the specialty places around Exarchia. I mention the price because it struck me as one of those small miracles of Athens: the same city where rent has climbed ten percent in a year and a modest one-bedroom now runs you somewhere between six-fifty and nine hundred a month can still feed you like a king for pocket change. That gap between the headline numbers and the everyday reality is something I keep tripping over here.
After the market I walked up through Monastiraki, dodging the last of the day-trippers, and let myself wander into the Ancient Agora, which I'd only ever passed before. The full ticket for the Acropolis is around thirty euros in summer, but the Agora is about half that, and honestly, it felt more real to me. You're standing in the place where democracy was actually argued into existence, under the shade of the Stoa of Attalos, and the city noise fades to a hum. I sat on a stone step and watched a cat clean its paw for a good ten minutes, and I thought about how many centuries have passed through that same patch of dust.
By late afternoon the overcast sky that had been threatening all day finally did nothing, just sat there grey and heavy, which kept the temperature down around thirty-four degrees instead of the usual thirty-six. I took that as a gift and walked up to Filopappou Hill, the green lung right beside the Acropolis that I've come to think of as my neighbourhood backyard. From the top you get the whole city laid out in front of you: the Parthenon on one side, the sea shimmering on the other, and the sound of the cicadas so loud it feels like the hill itself is buzzing. I sat there for a while and realised I was doing something I haven't done all week: just sitting, not planning, not checking my phone, not thinking about the next leg.
The next leg, though, is never far away. I'm taking a bus north tomorrow, up into the Pindos mountains, to Metsovo, where the altitude should knock a good ten degrees off this heat, and where the August crowds thin out to almost nothing. I've been carrying a list of things to sort before I go: a September flat back here in Athens, a ferry ticket from Igoumenitsa for the Ionian islands in October, and whether I should try to catch the full moon at Sounion on the twenty-eighth. The flat hunt has been the thorny one. I looked at places in Exarchia and Pangrati this week, and the rents are real: six-fifty to nine hundred for a modest one-bedroom in the central districts, which eats about seventy percent of an average salary, and that's the kind of stat that goes from being a headline to being a knot in your stomach once you're actually trying to find a place.
But tonight I made a decision about all of that, and the decision was: not tonight. Tonight is for saying goodbye to Athens properly, which in Greece means eating and drinking well, and preferably in the company of good music. I'd been tipped off that Psyrri is the place for a last supper, so I made my way down through the evening streets, past the street art and the rebetiko tavernas, and found a table at Karamanlidika, a spot I'd heard about from a friend of a friend, a place that does meze and cured meats the way they do them in the north, which felt like a fitting bridge between the city and the mountains I'm heading to.
I ordered a spread of small plates: spicy feta, grilled octopus, a plate of sausage that came with a story about the owner's village, and a carafe of the house wine, because nothing about a Greek table is rushed. The bill for the whole meal came to about twenty-two euros, which I'm told is about average for a proper sit-down dinner in central Athens, and for that you get an evening that feels like it's worth three times the price. I sat there for two hours, watching the street fill up with people out for the evening, and I thought about how Athens lives outdoors at night in August, when the heat finally lets go and the whole city exhales.
After dinner I walked up to the Herodeion, the ancient theatre on the slopes of the Acropolis, because the Odeon of Herodes Atticus is in the middle of its farewell season before closing for years of restoration, and this summer's Athens-Epidaurus Festival programme is the last chance to see anything on that stage. I didn't have a ticket tonight, and I wasn't trying to sneak in; I just wanted to stand outside and hear the faint drift of music and applause coming over the stones, the way you can hear the city's cultural life leaking out into the night air. It was a small moment, but it felt like the right way to mark the end of an era, even if I only got to witness its final summer from the pavement.
From there I walked back down into Plaka, which is touristy and postcard-perfect and smells of jasmine and grilled meat, and I let myself take the long way home through Anafiotika, that tiny Cycladic-style enclave tucked under the Acropolis walls. The lanes are so narrow you can touch both sides, and the whitewashed houses feel like they've been plucked from an island and dropped into the middle of the city. I stopped at a small open-air cinema on the way, one of those summer institutions that Athens does better than anywhere else, and I checked the board for tonight's film. It was a French classic, and the seats were filling up with people who looked like they'd done this a hundred times before, which they probably have.
I didn't stay for the film. I had one more thing I wanted to do, which was to walk up to the Acropolis itself, not to go in, but just to stand at the base and look up at the floodlit Parthenon one last time. I know it's the most clichéd sight in Greece, and I know everyone has seen a thousand photos of it, but standing there in the warm night air, with the cicadas singing and the city lights spread out below, I understood something that I think I'll be unpacking for the rest of the year: Athens isn't a museum. It's a living city that happens to have the greatest ruins on earth in its backyard, and the two things coexist in a way that's messy and loud and utterly alive.
On the way back to my flat in Koukaki, I stopped at a corner kiosk and bought a freddo espresso for the walk, which set me back three and a half euros, give or take, and I sat on a bench in a small square and just watched the night go by. A group of teenagers was kicking a football against a wall, an old man was walking his dog, and a couple was arguing softly over what sounded like a disagreement about where to eat. Normal life, happening against the backdrop of one of the most storied landscapes on earth. That's the Athens I'm leaving behind tonight, and it's the Athens I'll be looking for when I come back in September to find a place of my own.
I've been here one week. I've sorted my tax number, opened a bank account, bought a SIM card, and walked enough miles that my feet have started to feel like they belong here. I've eaten my weight in olives and feta, I've watched the sun set from a hill that's been watched from for two and a half thousand years, and I've learned that a metro ticket costs one euro twenty, a day pass four ten, and that the only way to really understand this city is to let it unfold at its own pace, which is slower than you think and faster than you could ever keep up with.
Tomorrow I'll take the bus north, and the mountain air will be a shock, and the rhythm of the trip will change. But tonight, Athens is still mine for a few more hours, and I'm going to sit on my balcony with a glass of ouzo and watch the lights of the Acropolis until they go out, or until I do. Yassou, Athens. I'll be back before you know it.
If you're planning a trip here, or thinking about making the move, the numbers I've been throwing around should give you a rough map: a gyros will set you back three to four and a half euros, a coffee around the same, a sit-down dinner fifteen to twenty-five, and the Acropolis itself is thirty euros, which is steep but worth it once. The best advice I can give you is the advice I gave myself this week: don't try to see it all. Pick a neighbourhood, make it your own, and let the city come to you. That's the only way Athens really works, and it's the only way to fall in love with it.
This is Nikos Pappas, and I'm going to go find my ouzo. Thanks for listening, and I'll talk to you from the mountains.