Destination: Greece : Nouveau Athens : Chic and oh so Soho-like, Kolonaki offers the sights, sounds and shops of a gathering place not found in most guidebooks

“Watch out for those rich Kolonaki boys,” warned the Greek grandma sitting across the aisle on the plane. Ten years ago, I might have cocked an eyebrow. But I was younger, more svelte and more impressionable then. Besides, my tall, not-so-dark but rather handsome husband, who hasn’t been pumping iron all these years for nothing, was along for the ride.

Not that I’ve needed someone to run interference in the land of Zeus and Apollo. With rare exceptions, I’ve found Greek men to be unfailingly reticent, unlike Italians who whisper shocking familiarities as they pass, or Turks who undress you with a glance and are not above a surreptitious pinch.

Bill and I were traveling in mid-October. Fall is the best time to be in Athens, though a Greek might argue that Easter is more festive. The skies are clear, the air is cool--it’s usually in the 70s and 80s as opposed to high 90s in smoggy July and August--natives have returned from their island holidays, and there is a frisson of anticipation over the new season.

Just as we were bypassing the more conventional--and touristy--time, we also avoided popular addresses in Syntagma Square and the Plaka, both near the Parthenon. Instead, we were going to set up camp at the Hotel St. George Lycabettus in fashionable Kolonaki on the southern slope of Mt. Lykavittos. With its 19th-Century chapel up top and its 360-degree view of the city, distant mountains and the sea, Athens’ tallest hill is the main guidebook attraction in the neighborhood.

A 10-minute walk from central Athens, Kolonaki spirals off a perpetual jam of traffic, cafes and people known as Place Kolonaki or Kolonaki Square (a single ancient column, or kolonaki, gives its name to the area). It is Soho and Melrose Place rolled into one, chic and sexy, a little bit gritty. After three visits, I’ve decided that if I were suddenly plunked down in Athens, Kolonaki is where I would live, preferably on a block with crooked sidewalks snaking up Lykavittos.

It isn’t just the shops or the cafes--prime spots for people watching--or the two exquisite art museums. In a city so very old, here is modern life: the boys on their Harleys (yes, the rich Kolonaki boys who look like Greek statues come to life, albeit in designer duds, not fig leaves); the girls with swinging hair, hip huggers and platform loafers; dowagers in pearls and white gloves; businessmen in well-tailored pin-stripes; stylish eccentrics sipping coffee frappes and nibbling baklava. The day to day goes on apart from the garrulous Acropolis guides, the Plaka hawkers, the bus tours and foreign hordes across town.

Ambling aimlessly around Kolonaki, we saw housekeepers beating the dust from intricate rugs flung over balconies, mothers pushing high-tech strollers and bearded priests out for a meditative turn. Old money and new coexists here. Cabinet ministers, models, Greek yuppies. Some of the architecture is boxy and banal, newish low-rise apartments--tract housing Greek style--relieved by louvered wood shutters and terra-cotta planters. Here and there one will find examples of ‘20s neoclassical (such as the Stathatos mansion on boulevard Vasilissis Sofias) and ‘30s Bauhaus.

Strolling just about anywhere here is good for the quadriceps. Sidewalks often give way to steps. One morning, looking for a hardware store, we got so winded we had to stop at a cafe for a restorative Greek coffee, bracing and bitter, the local answer to espresso.

A nonchalance permeates life, even at the busy front desk of the St. George. It might be irksome to a Type A in the middle of a merger, but we found it charming. Plus it was an exercise in international relations. We learned how to push the right buttons. Casual requests are easily brushed off with a shrug, but dogged American persistence gets results--a telephone call, a name, an address.

Though considered a luxury hotel, the St. George is somewhat less luxurious than old venerables such as the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Syntagma Square, or the newer Athens Hilton, across from the National Gallery. But it’s less expensive and has more personality. On a foothill of Mt. Lykavittos, flanked by trees, it also is blissfully quiet--unusual in this noisy city and surprising, since Kolonaki’s most enticing shopping streets, Tsakalof, Pindarou and Iraklitou are a couple blocks away.

Here are galleries of modern art (keep an eye out for opening soirees), as well as boutiques with more prosaic goods: Italian-style journals, slick modern housewares and furniture, antiques, crystal and trendy clothing, knockoffs of the latest from Paris and Milan.

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Closer to Kolonaki Square are chain stores such as the Body Shop and Harley Davidson, shrine to those Kolonaki boys. Athens has an active, upscale Harley culture, much of it evident in the square where cycles are queued up and bikers preen as all of Kolonaki watches.

I am idly surveying the scene when a Kolonaki “boy”--who had just stepped out of a flashy black BMW--remarks on the gold cross hanging from my neck. He is tanned, curly haired and blue-eyed, wearing Armani with Bass boat shoes, and speaks English quite fluently.

Would I care to swap my cross? Sure, for the BMW. How about a coffee? What about meeting later at a disco? Do I like R.E.M.? We banter back and forth for a few minutes. I am impressed by his savvy and his persistence, but I make my excuses and slip away.

Through it all, Bill has been camped out at Kolonaki Tops, penning postcards and drinking ouzo. The Tops is probably our favorite of the cafes in Kolonaki Square for its name alone. I tell him about my encounter. He says I should have gone for coffee--for research purposes. It’s 2 p.m. and I’m really more in the mood for lunch, so I drop my bags, ease into a chair and we order. Bill, as usual, insists on fried lamb’s liver, earthy and delicious with bits of roast lamb tossed into the heap. Best of all, it comes with pilaf and French fries, an odd but not uncommon combination in Greece.

Clustered at the northwestern end of the square, most of the cafes are round-the-clock affairs, and the long rows of tables and chairs are almost always filled. Unlike Paris, one sees few solitary souls. Groups of twos, threes and fours chat animatedly. Alone, I might skip lunch altogether, and head down the square to Ellinikon, a patisserie-cafe where sweets are arrayed like jewels in glass cases, for a small white bag of chocolate-pistachio cookies.

We usually make a pilgrimage to the Benaki Museum and the Goulandris Museum of Cycladic and Ancient Greek Art. On the fringes of Kolonaki, each is small enough to do in an hour or two. The Benaki, once the mansion home of Antoine Benaki, is crammed like a secondhand shop with clothes, utensils and other objects from Macedonia, Thrace, Persia and Turkey, some dating back to 3000 BC. A nice contrast is the Museum of Cycladic Art, a spare backdrop for the contemporary-looking figure sculptures made 5,000 years ago in the Cyclades Islands, which include Santorini, Naxos and Mykonos and were once the center of Greek civilization.

Late afternoon is siesta time. Or pool time, depending on my mood. If it’s not too smoggy, the Parthenon will be visible from the St. George’s rooftop pool. (Angelenos will feel at home in Athens on two scores: the brownish haze haloing the city and the urban sprawl.) As dusk falls evening sounds fill the streets. Laughter, tinkling silverware, a burst of folk music.

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Kolonaki has some of Athens’ more interesting restaurants. Two places we’ve returned to time and again--though never before 9 p.m.--are the elegant Kafeneio and the lively Gyali Kafenes. Both are modern takes on the ouzeri , traditionally a working-class bar where patrons drink ouzo, the colorless liqueur flavored with aniseed, and eat bits of sausage and cheese before heading home for a real meal. Ouzeris have become de rigueur of late. The two in Kolonaki are elaborate enough to call restaurants and the large families and couples dining on nouvelle Greek mezedes are dressed to kill.

The plates are small, but these mezedes, or appetizers, are more inventive than typical Greek fare, and a twosome can easily make a meal of four or five dishes.

Gyali Kafenes is known for its tree-lined sidewalk cafe and its seafood--cornmeal crusted mussels, shrimp and squid with feta and tomatoes. But I have a soft spot for the fried Graviera cheese and the Cypriot meatballs on smoky grilled pita. Tiny seared lamb chops are always delicious at Taverna Dimokratos, and for sheer romance, Rodia, with its dining garden trellised with grapevines, is the place to share a silver pitcher of red wine and veal in oregano sauce. We try to hold onto the mood by riding the funicular (on the same street as Rodia and behind the Hotel St. George) up the side of Mt. Lykavittos. From the summit (very civilized with a restaurant and cafe), we can see the glitter of Athens and the suburbs reaching almost to the edges of Attica. Gazing north, we see that Mt. Parnis looms close. We can practically touch Hymettos to the east, where the thyme-flavored honey we drizzle on our yogurt at breakfast comes from. To the southwest, on Lykavittos’ twin hill, is the Acropolis, and far beyond, the sea. The lights flickering below create an illusion of being enveloped by stars.

We follow the path back to Kolonaki and pass a languid mongrel that barely blinks an eye. It is late, yet we are strolling back to the square, back to the joys and boys of Kolonaki.

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GUIDEBOOK: Athens’ Hip Hillside

Where to stay: St. George Lycabettus, Kleomenous 2; from U.S. telephones (800) 448-8355 or 011-30-1-729-0711, fax 011-30-1-729-0439. The 165 rooms with black marble baths are tasteful and there’s a rooftop pool with a bird’s-eye view of the Parthenon and city. Rates: $120-$240.

Athenian Inn, 22 Haritos St.; tel. 011-30-1-723-8097, fax 011-30-1-724-2268. A small pensione on a quiet side street, with motel-style air-conditioned rooms, some of which have balconies and views of Mt. Lykavittos, others of which can be rather dark; very solicitous staff. Rates: $65-$75.

Where to eat: Ouzeries : Kafeneio, 26 Loukianou St.; dial locally 722-9056. Two can dine for about $60 including drinks.

Gyali Kafenes, 18 Ploutarchou St.; tel. 722-5846. Around $45 for two including drinks.

Restaurants: Bajazzo, 14 Anapafseos St.; tel. 921-3012. Popular with Europeans and locals. Dinner for two around $150 without drinks.

Dekaokto, 51 Souldias St.; tel. 723-5561. Intimate, elegant, deft with grilled fish. Dinner for two about $60 excluding drinks.

Tavernas: Taverna Dimokritos, 23 Dimokritou St.; tel. 361-3588. About $35 for two without drinks.

Rodia, 44 Aristipou St.; tel. 722-9883. Dinner for two about $40 without drinks.

Museums: Benaki Museum, 2 Koumbari St.; tel. 361-1617. Temporarily closed, scheduled to reopen next spring.

Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art, 4 Neofytou Douka St.; tel. 724-9796. Closed Tuesday and Sunday.

For more information: Greek National Tourist Organization, 611 W. 6th St., Suite 2198, Los Angeles, CA 90017; tel. (213) 626-6696, fax (213) 489-9744.

--C.H.