I stepped out into a rather brilliant blue-white afternoon as I exited the Athens airport. Even in autumn it had a warm, liquid feel to it. Rather like honey - soft and sweet. Why was I here? You go to Greece for either its sepia history or its blue seas. That’s the principal touristic wisdom anyways. But you don’t have to necessarily choose between the two. In its ancient capital you can get both. I was here as part of my periodic itch to run away from everything back home.

There’s more to this country of beautiful, smiling people than its living past full of handsome gods, getting burnt in the golden sun, in the pursuit of glory and its uncertain future troubling its present generation - it’s the present. But it’s a present where the past and future co-exist rather nicely, I noticed. The ancient and the modern blend seamlessly here. Like the efficient public transport system of trains and buses taking people wherever it is they go, often just a few feet along formidable historic sites that dot Athens every few kilometres.

Taking the train to the heart of the city from the airport, I thought of Lahore struggling to strike a similar balance between its heroic past and an impatient present, dreaming of running an orange train alongside the slumbering Shalamar.

History breathes through the pores of Athens. Because it dates back 11 millennia before the Gregorian calendar began, it is one of the oldest cities on the planet. It is principally this draw -- alongside the fact that this city has better facilities than most European cities at around a third less of the cost -- no wonder Greece is the only country in the world that averages double its population in terms of tourists every year (barring mini countries like Luxembourg, where I was only a week earlier, Cyprus and Malta whose populations number less than a million each).

Athens with its Mediterranean characteristics is also officially the sunniest capital in Europe. It is also, incredibly enough, where more than 40 per cent of all Greeks live in the country!

In a brief chat with my hotel manager, I asked her how the economy was holding up after the recent political turmoil that has seen the country bailed out of bankruptcy by the EU through massive loans that demand biting austerity measures in return. She said while "life was certainly better a few years ago," tourism is "keeping things bearable".

It transpires that the more than 20 million annual tourists account for nearly a quarter of the country’s GDP, which is, amazingly enough, the highest for any industrialised nation in the world. The dark side, however, is that paradoxically, Greece has currently the highest unemployment rate in Europe at over 26 per cent. Which explained the large number of people playing accordion or the guitar on street corners for food, as well as hawkers selling cheap paintings, postage stamps and paprika.

So, what animates most visitors’ fancy in Athens when it comes to history? Visible from most vantage points in this sprawling city with a near-permanent sunny shimmer over it making the sky bluer than blue is the magnificent Acropolis, which symbolises this country’s every day link to the past. This is a sprawling rocky outcrop -- the highest point in the city -- that is actually a citadel comprising an architecturally and historically significant complex of striking, imposing buildings, including the breathtaking Parthenon, the Propylaia, the Erechtheion and the Temple of Athena. On all four sides, the city of Athens is spread out beautifully, a sight to behold in itself. A theatre that staged debates and shows thousands of years ago now serves as a functional concert stage.

My favourite Greek composers, Vangelis (who composed the theme for Bladerunner film) and Yanni (whose ‘Live at Acropolis’ from the dying years of the last century remains one of the highest selling orchestral music record), have performed here many times.

The Parthenon is the star in the Acropolis. It was built in dedication to goddess Athena, the patron saint of Athens, about 2,500 years ago. Its decorative sculptures and columns are considered the zenith in all of Greek art. It is also considered one of the world’s greatest cultural monuments and an enduring symbol of civilisation having birthed the earliest concepts of democracy. It was briefly also converted into a mosque by invading Ottomans.

Seeing it bathed in glorious secular sunlight I rather hoped the sun would not set on democracy anywhere. Pakistan more so.

The Propylaia is the weather-beaten but still gloriously stubborn gateway to the Acropolis complex. Its eternally magnificent façade is much copied and admired in the shape of the iconic Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Champs-Elysees in Paris and the US Supreme Court building in Washington.

The Erechtheion is the temple dedicated to both Athena and Poseidon. Athena was a deity to die for -- in Greek mythology she was the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilisation, law, mathematics, strength and arts. Athens is named after her in recognition of her heroic endeavours. Poseidon was the ‘God of the Oceans’, an ‘Earth-shaker’, who could cause earthquakes and a ‘tamer of horses’ who built armies. There is a Homeric hymn to Poseidon glorifying his services in the protection of many Hellenic cities. He, however, lost the battle for Athens to Athena and loathed her. Which makes it intriguing that fierce god-opponents are honoured by way of a joint monument.

The Temple of Athena is the first complete temple of the complex and dedicated to ‘Nike’, which is Greek for victory. It celebrated Athena’s victories in war and her wisdom during peace, particularly her defeat of the Spartans on land and in the sea.

After spending a good half of the day, I had a big fat Greek lunch -- a big fat Greek wedding being out of the question (even though Greeks are the most sexually active nation in the world having sex on an average 164 times a year according to a recent survey -- fertility is an enduring theme in their historic and modern art). The lunch was heavy on sumptuous Greek staples -- feta cheese, Greek yogurt, sea sponges, marble and, of course, lots of olives.

I noticed most of the folks having lunch were women. As were passengers in buses and in shops. I later learnt that women make up 55 per cent of the country’s population and 65 per cent of the students in all its universities are women. Women rule in Greece!

It  was time to go to the other star ‘history-category’ attraction of Athens -- the Olympia. Here -- the largest non-commercial square smack in the city’s centre -- are the remains of the legendary Temple of Zeus, the ‘god of gods’ and the Arch of Hadrian -- commemorating one of the ancient city’s oldest and best benefactors. Olympia was sacred ground in ancient Greece. Here the gods conversed and conspired. In ancient texts the Temple of Zeus was a magnificent, imposing building that awed even the gods and their worthy adversaries. It is a forlorn, heartbreaking place now albeit still magnificent. Only skeletal pillars remain, eaten away by time and the eternal wind, an architectural translation of Percy Shelley’s legendary poem on mortality of the gods. I did not see the poem inscribed anywhere but it should have been. Or at least these words from it:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

The story of stories, then. The start of time and the end of time. The history of Greece and of a significant part of human history lay right there sunlit and almost blasphemously easily captured in my camera. One of the pillars lay crumbled on the ground, even its massive strewn pieces a signature to faded glories. A nod to transience. My heart sunk for a while. Nothing remains, I thought. In the end everything ends. I had read about all these glories in books at school all those decade ago, and now I was here, much wiser and conscious of the ends that must devour, in slow motion, all our starts.

The shadows were growing long. It was time to go back to the hotel and rest up for the "sea", the other plentiful Hellenic gift for foreigners, for the next morning, before the ends come for the sea. There is no Poseidon riding the waves anymore.