The Beatles visit Greece • Day 2

[…] On the Monday George and Paul decided to have a quiet day. They stayed behind and played guitars while the rest of the party went into the shopping centre. John wanted to buy the local equivalent of a guitar. A huge crowd of fans and sightseeing tourists gathered round the instrument shop we tramped into. To our surprise the shop was stocked with a wide range of modern electric equipment — Vox amplifiers and the lot! “It’s just like going into Sound City in London” observed John as we looked around. But he found the instrument he wanted in the store’s antique department!

CUNNING RINGO

Ringo devised a cunning way of by-passing the crowds. He’d wait until John and the rest of us went into one shop, then he’d sneak quietly away into the one next door while the crowds gathered round John. His scheme came unstuck when he spent a bit too long choosing a pair of sandals. Forty photographers and umpteen Americans descended upon him (“Say, isn’t that crazy? We travel all the way from Chicago and find Ringo Starr in a Greek shoe shop!”)

All the shopkeepers of Athens expect you to argue about the price of everything. The boys got pretty good at this bartering game and managed to pick up a load of bargains from the tiny rows of antique shops in the old part of the city. But whether we wanted to buy or not the shopkeepers urged us in very broken English to “just come in and look around so we can tell people Beatles was here!”

All the time we were in Greece we had wonderful food. One evening we stopped for dinner in a small village and sat down at tables under the trees in the square. Paul, Ringo and Jane decided to test the local cooks by asking for an English meal just for a change. They had one of the best egg and chip meals they’d ever tasted — garnished (like every Greek dish) with tomatoes in olive oil and lashings of cheese. The rest of us had delicious kebabs —skewered chunks of lamb beautifully cooked.

All the while quiet Greek music was pouring out of a little loudspeaker in the tree above our tables. Suddenly they changed the record AND PUT ON “A HARD DAY’S NIGHT” BY THE BEATLES. The owner of the cafe stood at the top of the steps beaming brightly and we all had a good laugh before signing some autographs and heading for home!

From The Beatles Monthly Book, September 1967