It's got a groove, it's got a meaning

Grease is the time, is the place, is the motion

Grease is the way we are feeling

What better way to start chronicling another adventure than a 45-year-old Bee Gee lyric.

Smack in the middle of Athens for three days as the first step of this journey, I expected "ancient", which I got. But I was delightfully surprised by Greece's groove, time, place, motion and the way that it had me feeling.

North, south, east and west of the Parthenon are different sections of Athens, each with distinctive groove and dominated by the presence of youth in the neighborhood squares. At all hours, Greece's teenagers and young adults could be seen enjoying a weekend at the dozens of outdoor restaurants, bars, gelato parlors and moving in and out of metro stations. I felt out of place at the same time I felt safe, comfortable and alive.

It was a good feeling to contrast with ancient Athens, which is crumbling marble in all shapes, sizes and degree of decay, much of which is surrounded by scaffolding as the decades old attempt to renovate large buildings constructed 7,000 years ago continues.

If you haven't been here, you must. On my four-hour walking tour of the Acropolis, our wonderful guide Kali, put context into everything we saw by retelling many of the stories of Greek mythology, adding in history and spicing up her presentation with passion for the Greek culture that has cultivated by 70 centuries of her ancestors.

Every landmark has a story that connects to the rest: The Temple of the Olympian Zeus, Hadrian's Gate, the Acropolis with the Parthenon, Temple of Erechtheion, the Nike Temple, Theater of Dionysus, The Odeon of Herodes Atticus, the Ancient Agora and the Roman Agora and the Panathenaic Stadium (site of the original Olympics and first modern Olympics in 1896).

The best section in the city is Plaka, which is adjacent to the Acropolis. The winding streets with houses, shops and restaurants is a perfect place to recover from jet lag.

But the place with the time and the motion is Monastiráki Square. It's where the youth hangs out till all hours. And where there are many rooftop bars where you can sip a drink and gaze high up at well-lit Acropolis keeping alive the groove and the feeling that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon and, most of all, Athena are still there.