Sezane top
Zara jeans (similar)
J. Crew sandals (similar)
Sezane bag
RayBan sunglasses
Agape Studio necklace (c/o) (similar)
Vintage necklace (similar)
Linjer ring (c/o) (similar)
Agape Studio earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: 2 Ipatias – Athens, Greece
The feeling of landing in Athens again was a mixture of relief and disbelief that there is no real word to describe. Finally, we’d made it back.
Athens was our last big trip before everything changed in 2020. It was a place we already knew and loved, but going back that year confirmed the depth of our affection for the city. The trip felt like the start of something, but just as we were beginning to figure out what they meant, life stopped. In the two years that followed, I grieved for the life I’d loved and might never get back. I grieved, too, for what might have been in those two years that would never come to be. When we went to Paris last October, it was to be home again, to remember that the places we loved were still real even if we’d been kept away from them. And when we visited Rome this spring, it was to satisfy our sense of adventure, long since put on hold.
Coming back to Athens, finally, was to pick up where we left off – belatedly, but better late than never – and determine if life really could just go on. The city we found was just as we remembered it, but somehow better because it felt so unchanged despite the passage of nearly three years, two of them torpid. The ruins remain standing, their marble glittering in the still blinding late summer sun. The traffic is a cacophonous rush best avoided for personal safety but exhilarating to rush through in rare moments of daring. And the cafes waiters, as always, ready with a wry smile, quick to serve and deliver a receipt, slow to return to take payment.
Athens is a city that loves to hurry up just to wait, a city of lazy afternoons and late nights. It is equal parts renovated and rundown, magnificent not just in but because of its faded glory. God, I’d missed it.
Athens appears less great and more like a place that is loved, a place people want to keep trying for, generation after generation, century after century. And coming back, I understand it. There’s an indefinable magic in this city between the hills that captures the imagination. It’s a make-work project, something somewhere always crumbling and in need of repair. But the imperfection is part of the appeal. The city is proof that there will always be time to rebuild; that no matter how many empires fall, new ones will rise up and those of us who live in them will retain our humanity through it all.
They say you can never go back again, but in Athens that isn’t true. The city waits for you, no matter how long it takes, if you’re willing to return.
