A Goodbye to Athens

'I know I am getting fat,' she says, as she weaves, svelte and nimble, between the tables in the breakfast room. Her hair is drawn back tightly in a bun; our chairs are drawn in swiftly to let her pass. Balanced on her tray are a pot of coffee, some toast and olives - black olives, lustrous as her eyes that dart around the room, daring anyone to agree with her statement.
'When you have a moment, we'd like to pay and be on our way,' say the English couple behind me.
'Two seconds,' she shoots back, heels clicking efficiently to the kitchen to fetch more breakfast. 'Today I am the cook, the waitress, the receptionist - everything! Everything except the owner!'

I find her presiding - tall and magisterial - behind the reception desk when I, in turn, check out.
She is in a marginally better mood.
'So today where do you go?', she asks.
'Ah - today I return to Dubai. But not before a short walk around the Plaka, to say goodbye!'
'Dubai?'
'Yes - I work in Dubai.'
'What is there in Dubai - except sand and money?'
I am not sure about the money, but there is work in the Gulf - for now.
'Here in Greece, we have history - thousands of years of history! We have sun, we have food! And yet we suffer...'
I turn my mind to the riots, fresh in the news, although the area around the historic heart of Athens has thankfully been devoid of any evidence of unrest.
'They give banks money, but the young people they shoot,' a disgruntled student had been quoted in the press.
'This year will be a difficult one for us all...' I say, pensively.
'Come back to us when you come back to Athens,' she says, and I flit out into the winter sunshine.

Pottering around the Peloponnese

The dirt track peters out in the middle of an orange grove.
'Route recalculation. In 300m, turn sharp right and bear right.'
Thank you, sat nav.
All around me, in the fading light, are nothing but trees, save for a little shed to my left in which a little dog is slumbering, curled tightly against the cold.

It had been a pleasant drive all the way down to Corinth. Somewhere past the sprawling grey suburbs of Athens, just beyond Elefsina, the E94 hits the coast, and the Saronic Gulf appears, like an epiphany, shimmering under the bolts of sunlight that pierce the clouded sky. On the radio, a man with a harmonica sings a bluesy song. I catch the words 'καφές και τσιγάρα' (coffee and cigarettes), and attempt to hum along. I cross the Corinth canal without realising it (the half-smile and hesitant 'happy new year' of a bored toll collector still vaguely on my mind), and find the snow-dusted peaks of the Peloponnese surging to greet me.

I turn off the E94 just before Corinth and meander down a country road to Argos, before getting lost in the orange grove. I manage to reverse out and not run over an ancient man with a wattled neck, who was pootling along on an incongruously red scooter. He spoke no English, and did not remove his cigarette to give directions. It takes me a while to remember that 'ναι' (nay) means 'yes' in Greek.

I eventually enter Nafplio in triumph, and in time for dinner.