Talking Greece

 I have four or five places in Europe that if you said the next month was free and I could just jump on a plane....spending a month at that location, I'd sign up immediately.  

Greece is on that list. 

I love Greece....mostly for history, some culture, and generally great food/drink.  I also have this firm belief in Greek hospitality always being way over expectations.  

I've been there three times in my life (Crete, Athens, and Corfu).  

The selling points of a trip to Greece?  I'd list five key things:

1.  There's virtually no crime.  Well...I can point out a neighborhood or two in Athens where heroin is readily sold, and you probably ought to avoid after dark.  But you could walk over Heraklion (capital of Crete) for eight hours and you might see just one single police car in that whole time.  

2.  It's just about impossible to get food poisoning in Greece.  That said....in an average day...you are consuming a minimum of one entire onion within all the foods you consume.  

3.  Greeks generally avoid massive structural projects or infrastructural situations....because once you start digging, it's a 99-percent chance you will dig up some ancient ruins and trigger a five-year archelogy dig.

4.  Generally, if the hotel guy tells you about such-and-such bus running into town on a schedule....he's right about 50-percent of the time.  So you get used to using the taxi service.

5.   Greeks are fairly religious folks, and there's only a certain amount of naughty business or perverse stuff that they accept.  A nude beach is ok, but topless dancing at some bar isn't.  

My three favorite stories over visits? 

First....on some point on a visit there....I asked the front-desk gal about a good walking path (I like an early morning walk), and she advised such-and-such route.  But she kinda noted....at some point, I'd pass by 'THE hospital'.  I (being from the south and rather naïve in understanding what 'THE' hospital meant) asked about this, and she laid out that this was a mental institute, with a real fence.  This started a conversation which is rather odd to grasp....but Greeks have a fair amount of paranoid schizophrenia, and they don't waste a lot of time with cousin Ajax, or Aunt Sofia.  If they are bad off....they get shipped over to a state-controlled situation.

Second...virtually every single major tourist area in Greece will tell you that they have a 'cave of Zeus'.  It's supposed to be where Zeus (the God) arrived upon.  Generally, for about four Euro....they'd like to show you the cave.  For seven Euro extra, you can ride a donkey down to the cave.  I had the deal put upon me, and I just responded that I didn't think I needed to see some Zeus cave.  My German wife was all hyped up, and I paid the fee for both the cave entry and donkey ride.  Me and the kid sat back at the tour center....finishing up an ice cream.  The wife arrived back an hour later, and just responded that there wasn't much to see except a cave that was big enough for a dozen people to stand in.  I was briefly told....not to ever bring up the Zeus cave story again.

Third....if you had expectations of modern airports...other than Athens, most everything else you fly into (within Greece) will have a coffee shop, and some Chinese-made gift shop.  Beyond that....it reminds you of a Tulsa Trailways bus-stop back in the 1970s.  They are simply just a runway, and a building with air conditioning to comfort you until the plane is ready to haul you home.