Jay's Homepage >> Pictures from Greece - Introduction >> HyperNotes
Taverna - This is the English spelling for a Greek word that comes close to restaurant. Tavernas usually open around 8pm and will generally stay open until 1am. Greeks usually do not go out to eat dinner until after 9pm (if you get to a taverna between 8 and 9 you may have a long wait for your main course) and stay out much later than Americans. The type of food served can differ depending on what taverna you visit, but will always include such items as Greek salads, dolmades, tiropitta, fava, tzatziki, and various types of wine, which is the staple drink with dinner. As the owner of the Athens Center toasted us on our welcome dinner, "Here in Greece we have very strict drinking rules. All children over the age of six must drink wine with every meal."

Cab Ride - Like New York, Taxi's crowd the streets of Athens. The subway and bus lines can provide transportation, but the easiest (although not cheapest) way to get to or from the port or the airport is a cab. In addition to cabs, motorbikes and mopeds fill the spaces between cars, trucks, and busses on the streets. Traffic laws are regularly broken, and it is rumored that offenders are sometimes ticketed by the police, although I never actually saw this happen myself. You quickly learn to cross the street whenever there is a gap in traffic, whether the gap is caused by a traffic signal or not. The length of time a person has been navigating the streets of Athens can be accurately judged by the size of gap they deem necessary to safely cross. Athenian natives know that expensive cars are more likely to slow down when faced with the possibility of minor damage to their front ends and use this fact to their advantage.

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