Thursday May 29 was a mix of sun and cloud with a high of 26C.
We had dropped in at the Tourist Office on Syntagma Square on Monday and I decided to buy a This is Athens t-shirt. After all, the new speaker in Parliament said that Canada must be "Athens to America's Rome."
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| When in Athens--- goes with my Elbows Up t-shirt |
We stopped by the nearby Stavros Bakery to pick up some cookies for our plane trip on Friday. They have an incredible assortment, a number of which are non-dairy. Lots of varieties of cookies and breadsticks are found in nearly all Greek bakeries, except for the ones that do fancy pastries.
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| Entering the bakery |
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| Assortment of cookies |
Our destination for the afternoon was the National Gallery- Alexandros Soutzos Museum (named for the donations of a Athens lawyer and art lover), only about a 20 minute walk from our apartment. We passed an interesting sculpture in a small park across from the museum.
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Unfortunately the inscription was only in Greek. It looked like the work was done in 1955-59
and placed in the park in 2014. |
We noticed a private art gallery with some very colourful works inside. Sianti Gallery was hosting the first-ever solo painting show in Athens by American artist Peter Reginato (b. 1945- ). The show was entitled
Chroma and was a vibrant celebration of colour and rhythm. Reginato is known internationally for his bold and playful abstract sculptures. These paintings were a continuation of his sculptural language.
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| Poster for the show-- the colours really drew us in-- all the paintings were enamel on canvas. |
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| Green Card, 2023 |
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| Helena, 2023 and Mexican Beauty, 2022 |
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More Than Night, 2023
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| The park by the private art gallery and across from the National Gallery had a red Japanese torii gate. |
The park was across from the back of the Gallery. We walked around the building to the front and across from the front of the gallery on a traffic island was the statue Dromeas, also called The Runner, which is made of thousands of sharp, jagged individual pieces of glass stacked atop each other to take the blurred shape of a runner in motion. The sculptor is Costas Varotsos (1955- ), who began working on it in 1988 and didn't finish until 1994. It was originally erected at another Square, but was moved when people grew concerned that vibrations from the underground Metro would cause it to shatter.
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| Dromeas (The Runner) |
After being shut for eight years for renovations, the National Gallery reopened on March 24, 2021, a day before the 200th anniversary of the Greek War of Independence. The galleries are arranged chronologically and thematically consisting of predominately Greek painting from the Renaissance to the present. The 20th century collection is the strongest with a number of superb pieces.
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| Entrance to the National Gallery |
Dominating the foyer is a large section of Panayiotis Tetsis' (1925-2016) colour-drenched masterpiece Street Market (1982). The National Gallery was also featuring a temporary exhibit entitled: Panayiotis Tetsis, The Obsession of the Gaze, which marks the centenary of Tetsis's birth.
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| Street Market, one of Tetsis's most popular works, is based on the open-air market which took place every Friday outside his studio in Athens. The piece is a series of works with a total length of 58 metres. It took almost four years to complete. It depicts the market scene in vibrant colours with lots of action in the crowded market. |
We started our exploration of the Gallery on the top floor which featured works of the 20th and 21st century.
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| Nikos Kessanlis (1930-2004), Portrait of Dinos Georgoudis, 1976 |
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| Thanos Tsingos (1914-1965), New York, 1959 |
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| Panayiotis Tetsis (1925-2016), Aggelos Kotronis with Crimson Sweater, 1998-1999 |
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| Tetsis, Tables IV, 1985 |
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| Christos Karas (1930-2023), Genesis, 1979 |
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| Yannis Gaitis (1923-1984), Composition, 1975 |
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Tassos Missouras (1963- ), Balkans, 2015-2016
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Panos Charalambous (1956- ), Smokers, 1996 (done with tobacco leaves and mixed media).
Lots of names we recognized. |
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| Hatzikyriakos-Ghika, Memories of Hydra, 1948-1976 |
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| Ghika, The Green Studio, 1965 |
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| Ghika, Athenian Balcony, 1955 |
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| Ghika, Builder's Tools, 1975 |
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| Aglaia Papa (1904-1984), Self-Portrait, c. 1932 |
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| Polykleitos Regkos (1903-1984), Fifa Michelle, 1927 |
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| Yannis Moralis (1916-2009), The Artist with his Wife, 1943 |
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| Yannis Moralis (1916-2009), Figure, 1951 |
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| Yannis Moralis, Love Scene, 19892 |
The top floor and second floor contained the 20th and 21st century art. A number of the Greek artists in the Gallery also had works in the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation Museum, which we had visited earlier in the week.
The first floor had works from the 19th century and earlier. One standout was the painting by Domenicos Theotokopoulous (El Greco), 1541-1614, entitled
The Concert of the Angels, c. 1608-1614. El Greco was born in Venetian-occupied Candia, the present-day Heraklion in Crete.
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| El Greco, The Concert of the Angels, c.1608-1614. |
We then went to the lower level, to see the wonderful temporary exhibit entitled: Panayiotis Tetsis, The Obsession of the Gaze.
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| Poster for the exhibit |
There was a quote on the wall from Tetsis:
I seek to express my native land. This is where I was born, where I grew up. My eyes have always been filled with this light, which bathes the Greek landscape I've gazed upon all these years.
Tetsis was born on the island of Hydra in 1925. He studied in Athens (1944-49) and then went to Paris for additonal studies (1953-56). He returned to Athens in 1957 and established his studio on Xenokratous Street. Tetsis became a founding member of the Free Studio of Fine Arts (later renamed the Vakalo School), where he taught until 1976. He was then appointed as professor at the Athens School of Fine Arts where he taught until 1991. During his lifetime, he donated 224 artworks to the National Gallery, which had a.retrospective exhibition of his work in 1999. In 2007, he donated his family home and studio on Hydra to the National Historical Museum. He had numerous exhibits and honours throughout his lifetime. He died in Athens on March 5, 2016.
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| Another portion of Market Street, 1982 |
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| Hydra, 1999-2001 |
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Landscape on Hydra, 1952
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| Cape, Hydra, 1988 |
There were paintings from his time in Paris in 1953 where he was infuenced by the Neo-Impressionists and the Fauves and their intense colour palettes. Tetsis also painted many portraits over the course of his career.
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| Café, 1957 |
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| Portrait of M.P. (Marina II), 1985-1986. |
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| Portrait of K.H. 1954 |
After he settled in Athens in 1957, he focused on the surrounding area and the transformation of Athens where the neoclassical houses, with their terracotta-tiled roofs were demolished and replaced by blocks of flats.
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| Red Rooftops, 1970-1972 |
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| Blue Chairs II, 1975-1976 |
There was a beautiful painting entitled
Sunset, 1968-1969.
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| Sunset, 1968-1969 |
We had seen a picture entitled
Hydra, Sunset, 1998-2005 in the Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation Museum (see below). It was a great campanion piece to the earler 1968-69 picture of a sunset.
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| Hydra, Sunset, 1998-2005 (from Goulandris Foundation Museum). |
After our visit to the National Gallery, we stopped for a coffee at Roosters, a coffee shop and roaster with a very large patio across from the small park near the Gallery.
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| Allan had a flat white and I had a freddo espresso. We shared a vegan cookie. |
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| Great patio- busy in the late afternoon |
After a short rest at the apartment, we headed out for dinner at Mavro Provato (Black Sheep Grill House), where we had a wonderful meal in 2017. It was only a 12 minute walk from the apartment. It has lovely outside sitting, as well as two small indoor dining rooms. The food is excellent and reasonably priced. The restaurant specializes in grilled meats.
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| We had two glasses of raki and a lovely tomato dip with rusks as an on-the-house appetizer. |
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We had a delicious smoked egplant salad with green and red peppers and a mixed vegetable salad.
Both were very large portions. |
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| We also shared a main course of grilled pork tenderloin medallions with pleurotus mushrooms and a carafe of very nice house red wine. |
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| There is indoor seating as well |
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| Section we were in-- so nice to eat outside |
We walked back to the apartment and stopped for a scoop of non-dairy pistachio ice cream at Maraboo Ice Cream, a very popular take-out counter. The ice cream was excellent.
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| Getting our ice-cream |
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| Take-out counter |
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| Pistachio and non-dairy (hard to find)! Yum |
We went back to the apartment and finished packing. We head to the airport on Friday May 30 for our return flight to Toronto.
We had breakfast on the deck and then walked to the Metro. Our 1:40 p.m. KLM flight to Amsterdam was about 40 minutes late. Luckily, there were 39 people on our flight who were catching the connecting flight to Toronto. We all ran through Shiphol Airport and got to our gate just as boarding was ending. It was a very smooth flight and we arrived in Toronto about 10 minutes earlier than our 8:00 p.m. arrival time. We were through customs in minutes (we always fill out our customs declaration on the Arrive Can app the day before we leave). Our baggage arrived promptly; the TTC shuttle to Kipling Station was there as we got to the bus stop; and we were back home before 9:30 p.m.
We had a wonderful trip. Weather and food were fantastic and we lucked into some great Airbnbs in very good locations. The women hosts were the best--- being greeted with a freshly baked cake in Chania was a highlight. Our favourite island was Naxos where we spent six nights. Being able to visit fabulous sandy beaches and quiet, beautiful mountainous villages was fantastic. Crete has a fascinating history and the two archaeological museums in Chania and Heraklion were definitely highlights.
We would return to Greece in the future-- lots of islands to explore and a few days in Athens is always a treat. We really enjoyed the two art museums in Athens that have opened since our last visit in 2017. Our food tour was also a wonderful way to find hidden gems in a big city. We have lots of travel tips for Greece that we would be happy to pass on.
Thank you for following our 2025 Greek adventure!
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