Athens Survival Guide

"Please make the most of it by doing as little as possible. Walk a little. Get lost a bit. Eat. Catch a breakfast buzz. Have a nap. Try and have sex if you can, just not with a mime. Eat again. Lounge around drinking coffee. Maybe read a book. Drink some wine. Walk around a bit more. Eat. Repeat. See? It's easy." - Anthony Bourdain

How to enjoy yourself in Athens. After walking around here for just one day, it's easy to feel overwhelmed, overheated, overstimulated, claustrophobic, agoraphobic and xenophobic, but there are ways to conquer this. As Anthony Bourdain would say, "like a lot of other really great cities, it's entirely possible to have a bad time. Please don't do that". This crowded and sprawling metropolis, after all, still has a lot to offer. Before anything else, it's ancient. It's seen a lot more than most other cities. You wouldn't blame a world-weary old woman for being a tad ornery, would you? Athens shows her age, but she has a lot of stories to tell and jewels of wisdom to impart. You just have to know how to sweet-talk her into showing them to you.

First - and this is crucial to getting the most out of any city - be prepared to take your time. Nothing moves quickly in Greece, be it traffic, service in a restaurant or just walking down the street behind three eighty-year-olds shuffling abreast. Rushing is futile and will only make you more flustered. Greeks put enjoyment before obligation ("I can't go to work until I've finished my frappe"), and you should, too.

Walk everywhere. It's faster and easier than driving, which will only ramp up your stress level. Wear a hat and make frequent stops to rest in the shade. The sun is stronger than you might think and it's easy to get heatstroke. I stopped mid-shopping trip in Mattonella Gelateria yesterday and had the best sundae I've ever eaten while I sat on the steps people-watching. "It has angel hair," the man behind the counter told me when I asked what was in the sundae. "You know what is angel hair?"

"Oh," I said, "kataifi?" It was a honey-saturated pastry as traditional and ubiquitous in Greece as baklava, fine threads of spun dough like shredded wheat, only SO much better.

"Yes," the server blinked, taken aback. "I thought you said you just got here."

"Well technically I just got back."

Monastiraki flea market and the Plaka district are the best places for shopping. Don't forget to barter. Vendors almost always overcharge by about five euros, expecting you to get the price down at least three. It helps to feign interest and then turn to leave, as though you really like what you see but it's just too expensive (I figured this out honestly). Be sure to shop around. What a shop owner promises is a "very good price" might be ten euros more than the same thing somewhere else. I bought a dress for thirty euros yesterday that was fifty in almost every other shop.

Beware of scammers. They're everywhere. The sweet old woman selling linens on the street will let you choose one and then swap it out so you end up with a tablecloth the size of a dish towel. And the Africans who stop you in the square to show you a magic trick with handmade bracelets? You'll walk away from them with your watch missing. These people can be pushy, even going so far as to chase you down the street yelling, "Please! Please, just a moment!" Don't be swayed, and don't be intimidated. Don't even make eye-contact. Just keep walking. This afternoon I was approached by a barefoot gypsy who asked me for money to buy shoes. When I apologized and explained that I wasn't travelling with much money and had nothing to give, the word 'pula' followed me down the street from her lips. I'd been here long enough to know what 'pula' means in Romanian, and this bothered me for far too long.

Walking with the earbuds of your iPod in helps, even if you aren't listening to anything. That way you can ignore street vendors and shop owners pestering you to come inside and buy something without feeling rude. The same works when looking for a restaurant. This one took me a while to figure out and I'm glad I did. For budget travellers especially, every meal counts. You only have so many chances to eat good food and you want to be choosy. But how to do that when, every time you stop to look at a menu (sometimes you don't even get that far), waiters interrupt and wave you in and insist you sit down and eat, unknowingly pushing you away? The iPod trick is a good way to pretend you don't hear them, and carrying a take-out container or doggy-bag, even if you ate the contents the day before, will communicate that you've already eaten and are just browsing casually for another day. If you tell them this, they will (usually) leave you to peruse in peace.

Where to eat is another matter. 99% of Athenian restaurants are overpriced tourist traps with frozen food. It's worth doing your research to find local, family-run tavernas serving authentic homemade dishes. They are better quality and usually better-priced. It's a good sign if you are taken back into the kitchen and shown what they are making fresh that day, as I was at Attalos Taverna near the Kerameikos Museum. Avoid places with big menus in multiple languages, central locations, too-good-to-be-true views and throngs of tourists chowing down on club sandwiches and french fries. Chances are that daiquiri they're drinking was made from a mix and costs about twelve bucks.

A picnic on Areopagus Hill is a good option. Not only will take-out or deli sandwiches be easy on your wallet, but you'll have a far better ambiance than the loud and packed market streets, not to mention an unbeatable view. You can take your pick from the ancient rock perches facing the Acropolis, the Philopappou Monument surrounded by pastoral olive and cypress forest, or overlooking the city below. Up here, the chaos falls away and Athens actually looks peaceful. Like an old woman, she's beautiful from a distance. When you're through with your meal, you can hike the quiet, wooded hills around the Acropolis. They're a good place to regain sanity and faith in mankind.

Accommodations are expensive, but it's worth paying a few extra dollars a night for a mattress that isn't teeming with bedbugs or a room that isn't in a sketchy neighbourhood. Trust me. Don't expect all hotels to have elevators, and make sure you ask about a hot water switch for the shower. Most places have one and you may think you are condemned to only cold showers during your stay simply because you didn't know. Almost no showers in Greece have mounts for the shower head. Make sure you are holding onto it when you turn on the water; otherwise the pressure will cause it to fly off its perch and snake around like a charmer's rogue cobra, soaking you and the entire bathroom in whatever temperature water the pipes are in the mood for (usually cold).

Water temperature is another issue. Faucets in Greece can be temperamental. If your shower suddenly turns into an ice bath, don't assume it's because the hot water has run out. Wait a few seconds. In all likelihood you are about to be scalded with water near boiling-point. It's best not to be washing anything vital when this happens. When using the hand-held shower head, face outward with your back to the wall or a corner. That way the spray won't stray over your shoulder and drench the floor, your towel (God forbid) or your clothes. Too avoid flooding, never flush toilet paper, even if there is no warning sign not to. The pipes are too small and they will get clogged. Toilet paper goes in the garbage.

Most Athenians have a very it's-not-my-problem attitude. I don't want you to get the impression that I haven't met some very nice and genuinely helpful people here, but generally speaking I wouldn't rely on the kindness of strangers to get by. It's an unfortunate byproduct of living in a city of five million (eight, unofficially, according to Antonio). Most of them will pass you by without a backward glance. The rampant homeless laying in boxes or under tarps in the streets - not all of whom I'm certain were alive - are a prime illustration of this. Be prepared to help yourself if you get into trouble. I can't tell you how many times I struggled to access the Wi-Fi at a coffee shop and the proprietor simply shrugged and walked away instead of helping me. First-world problems perhaps, but it does lead me to another point: just because an establishment advertises free Wi-Fi doesn't mean they have it.

As sad and shallow as it sounds, I've found it's easier to get attention and solicit friendly interaction if you're wearing makeup. I've done experiments. When I go out without it, I have about a nine out of ten chance of being ignored. This falls to three or four out of ten if I take the time to make my eyelashes a little longer.

Or maybe you want to be ignored. I'll be the first to admit it's best not to draw attention to yourself walking the streets alone. I hold my breath each time I step out the front door of my hostel until I clear the dicey alleyways I'm surrounded by and merge into the crowds and brightness of the city centre. Sometimes, if the sun is going down, I run. I put on my bad-ass face, a sunglass-shaded, smile-less expression that clearly sends the message, 'Don't mess with me'.

All of this is not to say I regret coming here alone. Travelling with a companion, you come away never knowing how you would have fared on your own. You're less capable than you are by yourself, because you don't have to be. Cities like Athens have a way of hardening you to the world. I hope I will not leave a jaded cynic. Athens, after all, like the experience of travelling solo, is balanced in a yin-yang suspension. There is dark but there is also light. There is depressing but there is also awe-inspiring. Travel writer, Susan Spano sums it up: "Travel intensifies the elements of a person's nature - both fine and toxic - making them stand out more starkly than they ever do in the safe, regulated environment of home. When I travel alone, I can give the whole mixed bag full rein... It is as if the stage clears, the background music fades, and I come forward."

The city reveals itself in startling and vivid detail when explored without the filter of someone else's viewpoint, as does my perception of myself. Along with its challenges, Athens has given me a valuable gift. As it says in the introduction of A Woman Alone: Travel Tales from Around the Globe, "We come to rely on ourselves, and this greater self-confidence fuels us as we tackle each day. Through the sometimes hilarious process of trial-and-error, we learn a great deal about ourselves along the way. Perhaps most important of all, we learn to be good and reliable companions to ourselves."