Piraeus (Terry)

Athens’ port is not a good looking city.  It is gritty, dirty and very utilitarian.  Athens itself is little better.  In the daytime, it is busy and bustling with a huge number of shops and restaurants serving shoppers and workers.

Night time is different.  This is when Piraeus is at its most attractive.  It is not the architecture or the streetscapes that make Piraeus, it is the people.  In the night, the citizens emerge to stroll on their nightly Perpata, sit in the bars and cafes, eat in the restaurants, wander along the marina walls and into the mega-yacht row.  Children learn to ride bicycles, older ones learn tricks on the sidewalks, and older people keep each other’s company as they have done for a half century or more.

It is a very inclusive society – all you need do is exactly what they are doing and you feel part of it.  The majority of restaurants are outdoor, or at least with a garden.  Our favourite, Posidonis Café, is on a hill and you are either uphill of your dining companions or on an angle yourself.  It is an unremarkable café from a cuisine viewpoint, but it is special for its quality – everyday Greek dishes done superbly, with tomatoes that are fresh, firm and sharp, chicken and pork that has real flavour, beer that is crisply cold and wine that is rich and cool.  To top it all off, it’s cheap.  Our other favourite is high on the hill to the west of the marina, overlooking the bay and Athens’ suburbs.  On a night with a moon, you can see the odd megayacht anchored out, the lights of Athens twinkling away in the distance and hundreds of people walking along the streets.

By day, you get stuff done – lots of chandlers, skilled tradesmen and shops where you can get anything you want.  By night, you let Piraeus engage you in civil society, as it has been doing for two thousand years.

We visited the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus.  They have a room with some large bronzes, Apollo being the biggest.  These statues were found in a storeroom on the corner of Naxos and some other street.  So someone put them there in 86BC and nobody opened the room for 2,000 years!  They were hidden when Sulla, the Roman General, was besieging Piraeus. I wonder what’s in here?  A statue of Apollo?  Oh, and a few more as well. You wonder how much else is hidden away in a city that’s 3,000 years old.

 

I needed two 8x40 flathead Inox screws to secure a new line clutch and was told to go to Theodosiadis’ place over in the old port area.  I was told that if they didn’t have them, they weren’t in Greece!  I have never seen a shop like it – everything you could ever want in Stainless Steel, including garden tools!  There is a carpet entrance from the street across a patio leading into the shop.  There are anchors in there that cost €5,000+.  I gave the guy behind the counter the part number I wanted – DIN 97 8x40 and he immediately said, sorry don’t have 8x40s but I have 8x50s.  Amazing.  He knows all his stock down to two 50mm screws?

We walked back to the marina through the bustling streets of Piraeus and were entertained for the hour or more it took.

Like Cadiz and not Seville,  like Syracuse and not Ortigia, Piraeus has working charm and not tourist views.

Except at night, looking over the marina and the bay, of course.