On the Move - Greece
We had an easy trip to Greece. On our way out, we tried Luton Airport and
EasyJet Airline for the first time. It took about as long to get there
from our place as to Heathrow and while there are more transportation
changes (tube to Thameslink train to shuttle bus), the airport itself is so
much smaller and less complex. EasyJet only does e-tickets and hands out
plastic numbered boarding passes--like Southwest does--with no seat
assignments. We managed to get seats in the third row on the flight to
Athens, which was rather nice. The cabin crew chief on our outbound
journey was very silly and fun, joking that "in case of emergency oxygen
will be provided, free of charge, unlike everything else" and announcing
that "the cabin lights will be dimmed for landing--everyone please keep
your hands to yourselves." In some ways it felt more like the local bus
than an airplane flight. On the way back it was informal, but without the
jokes. EasyJet keeps their costs down by providing no free food or
beverages (except water), so the flights are pretty calm without the
interruptions of mass cabin service.
On arrival at the very modern, clean and spacious Athens International
airport, we were met by Juliette, our transfer agent, and taken by cab to
the Titania Hotel on Panepistimou (University) street. She checked us into
the hotel, confirmed the times at which we would be picked up for our
various tours, promised to call us every day to be sure all was well--then
she left and we didn't hear from her again until our final day.
We were too exhausted to brave a new city in search of food, so we just
went up to the Olive Garden restaurant on the roof of the hotel. Not part
of the American chain, this was a fairly high-class, lovely place with a
gorgeous view of the Parthenon. After eating in many Greek restaurants
with murals of the Acropolis on the walls, it's startling to look up and
realize that's the real thing you're seeing. I had some chicken broth with
querelles ("dollops") of white bean paste that was slightly bland, while
Jason really enjoyed his spinach salad with katiki, a soft Macedonian
cheese. That was followed by chicken stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, goats cheese,
pancetta and asparagus. I had grilled lamb cutlets in a wine sauce that
was good enough, but slightly too sweet.
Sadly, I seem to have developed a problem with flying that results in very
bad headaches within 24 hours of landing. In some ways, it was fortunate
that it hit quickly, so that I could get it out of the way and move on to
better things. I'm trying different combinations of
decongestants/antihistamines on each flight, working to stay hydrated and
the like (suggestions welcome). But that was a bad night and we were to be
picked up at 7:15am. Luckily--on that day--the first hour of every tour
involves a circuit of Athenian hotels, so I was able to catch a bit more
sleep before things really got started.
Our bus was filled with a variety of different folk, from different
companies, divided each night of the trip between two hotels, depending on
which agency had booked their travel. There was an Austrian couple, of
which the woman had apparently gotten some bad fish the night before and had
to call for emergency stops three times in the first couple of hours. They
were staying in our hotels, so we shared most of our meals with them and a
couple from Minnesota travelling with their son who is spending the term
studying on Crete. There was a very pleasant couple from Dallas, who were
planning to go to Cairo for the weekend, so we enjoyed sharing our stories
of Egypt with them. There was a French couple, celebrating their 20th
anniversary, and a couple of Greek girls in training as guides. There was
one Indian man--from Madras, but currently living in Birmingham,
UK--travelling alone, and another travelling with a very tall, very blonde,
kind of wacky Scotswoman. Then there were two brothers and a sister whose
family name was Bletzacker, together with their spouses. Two of the couples
live in Salt Lake City, where they grew up, while Danny and his wife, Julie,
live in Irvine, CA. They were lots of fun and kept us all laughing. In
general, the other travellers were in their 40's and 50's. I was amused
that they all seemed to think that Jason and I were much younger than we
are--when the subject came up, the consensus was that we were both in our
mid-twenties.
Our driver, George, was amazing. He took that bus up and down tiny little
mountain roadways, judging every angle right the first time, in and out of
torturous parking lots and many tight spots. He had better English than he
really let on and was always very pleasant. Our guide, Viki, was a woman
in her 50's, with gelled, magenta hair and enormous Onassis sunglasses, who
would not be hurried. She would caution us to hurry, to be prompt, not to
be late--but when we were all ready to go ten minutes before the time, she
would be sitting at a table in the corner, enjoying another cigarette, or
two, or three, until the stated time arrived--or passed. Her information
was sometimes questionable--I don't know much about Greek archeology, but I
know enough to find her stories more entertaining than factual--and either her
non-scripted English wasn't very strong, or she just wasn't very friendly.
On the other hand, the one conversation she and I had resulted in my
telling her that Jason's loves to act and she made him a present the next
morning of a nice booklet about the annual theatre festival at Epidaurus.
Our mornings started quite early at the various hotels' breakfast buffet,
which typically included various breads, cereals, yogurt, fruit, scrambled
eggs, some form of hot meat, cold cuts and cheeses. The yogurt was very
thick and unsweetened, but we found that mixing it with some honey and the
juice of canned peaches worked to provide us with something we liked.
Despite the orange trees we saw everywhere, bulging with fruit, what was
served at breakfast was orange drink, rather than juice. Each day we were
on the bus and underway by 8:30am at the latest.
In the mornings we visited various sites of interest. On our first day, we
started at the Corinth Canal, which connects the Aegean and Ionian seas at
the narrow point of the isthmus between the Peloponnese and the rest of
mainland Greece. Supposedly the first spadeful of dirt was dug in the 1st
century CE by the Emperor Nero with a golden shovel, but it was not
completed until French engineers undertook the task at the end of the 19th
century. It's very deep and cut through solid rock with beautiful
stratification.
After the canal, we went on to the theatre at Epidaurus. Constructed
during the Classical period of the 5th century BCE, it is considered the
best-preserved theatre of the period and is still used during the annual
festival. The most interesting aspect to us was the doorways on either
side of the stage area, which Viki explained that Classical audiences would
have automatically used to identify characters as "strangers" or "locals"
depending on which entrance the actors used. We enjoyed the singing of
another guide from the goat stone (where goats were sacrificed before
plays--according to Viki the word "tragedy" comes from "song of the goat,"
after the chants sung to accompany the sacrifices), but I couldn't convince
Jason that we should sing.
Following Epidaurus, we continued to Mycenae, where we stopped first at the
beehive tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus before moving up the hill to
the site of the royal palace. The most interesting spots there were the
nobles' cemetery, which yielded rich archeological finds, and the Lion Gate,
named for the lintel depicting two lions on either side of the column
representing the earth goddess central to Mycenaen religion. The lions
were supposedly beheaded when the Dorians sacked the city during their
takeover of the region in the 12th century BCE. Agamemnon was identified
by Homer and Euripides as the king of Mycenae and looking down over the
hills to the sea it was easy to imagine his triumphant and fateful
procession home from the Trojan War. We made a brief stop in Nafplion to
take pictures of the lovely bay with its three castles and then pushed on to
Olympia for the night.
Lunch each day involved stopping at a tourist-restaurant, where we could
choose what we wanted from a buffet or carts of traditional dishes. Over
the course of the tour these included moussaka, barbecued
lamb/chicken/pork, beef with orzo in tomato sauce, pork in lemon-dill
sauce, and various forms of baked chicken. It tended to be edible, but not
spectacular, and quite heavy. After lunch each day, Viki would tell us
about the next day's stop at great length, first in English and then in
French, while most of us fell asleep.
Our second day's focus was Olympia, where the Temple to Zeus was considered
one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and where the Olympic games
were founded about 3000 years ago. Excavated by German archeologists in the
late 19th century, the ruins are scattered over an enormous site and include
training facilities for the athletes, housing for them and other important
guests, temples to various deities, "treasuries" holding the contributions
of various cities to the glory of the games, workshops for the artists
involved in construction, and various Roman structures (baths, a villa for
Nero, etc.) from later periods, as well as the famous Olympic stadium.
There are also plinths dotted around that once supported the thousands of
statues decorating the complex, almost all of which were lost to Christian
iconoclasm. After wandering around there for almost two hours, we crossed
the road to the museum where finds from the complex are housed, including
the lovely Nike, the winged spirit of victory, and the Hermes of Praxiteles,
one of the most famous sculptors of the Classical period.
Our days usually also included a shopping stop. These were generally rather
awkward, as we are not big shoppers and resent the sense of pressure to buy.
It was somewhat easier with a group and it was interesting to hear the
vendors describe their products. It was especially nifty to watch a
demonstration of how the frames of the Byzantine-style religious icons are
covered in gold leaf. We visited a store specializing in various styles of
traditional ceramics, one offering a variety of wool, cotton and silk
products, and one dealing mainly in icons. We thought that last the least
likely to tempt us, but we actually ended up buying more there than anywhere
else, although not icons. They did have a lovely icon of the Archangel
Michael, but it was from the 19th century and priced at over 250 euros. Our
purchases included a pear-shaped, mother-of-pearl covered box, a couple of
pottery replicas, and a book that has photographs of archeological sites
together with transparent overlays of hypothetical reconstructions of those
sites' original appearance.
Speaking of euros, it's very handy for us that so many countries have
switched to the euro now, since it means that we basically have one "travel
currency" that's close enough to the dollar to make evaluating prices fairly
simple for us. We ran into a bit of trouble because our transfer agent
wouldn't let us take the time to get money at the airport and for the first
few days we were eking out what we had left from the last jaunt to Ireland.
But once we found an ATM, we were fine.
Our afternoon drives were lovely and we were glad to have the chance to see
so much of the territory--what we managed to stay awake for, anyway. Much
of the time we spent just staring out the windows trying to read the signs
in Greek. That was like having a fairly simple, but ever-changing puzzle to
challenge us. The trickiest part was trying to remember/decipher which
lower-case letters go with which upper-case letters. For example, the thing
that looks like our lower-case 'y' is the lower-case 'g' while the
upper-case 'Y' is almost the same as our 'Y' and the upper-case 'G' looks
like an 'L' upside-down. And there are two different lower-case sigmas
('S'), depending on its position in the word. But between what we each
remembered from math, Russian and fraternities, we managed to piece it
together. It was also interesting to be reminded that so many of our words
come from Greek roots like "acro," "pyro," and "paleo" so that we could
often figure out not only what the signs said, but what they meant. Many of
the city names were also familiar, from history (Lepanto, Missalonghi), myth
(Olympia, Lamia, Thebes), and personal names (Melissa, Daphne, Larissa).
Complicating things slightly is that there is no consensus on
transliteration, so that Latin p's, b's and v's are interchangeable, as are d's
and t's, depending on which map or guide book you're reading.
The best drive was from Olympia to Delphi on our second day. We stopped
briefly in Patras and were running early enough to stop at the church of
St. Andrew, one of the loveliest Byzantine churches I've ever visited. At
Rio we boarded the ferry, bus and all, to cross the Gulf of Patras. The
departure was very dramatic, as the driver of a car denied passage tried to
start a fistfight and a motorcyclist leapt on board as the boat was already
moving. On our crossing we passed the pylons of the bridge which is
intended to replace the ferries in time for the increased traffic expected
around the Olympic Summer Games in 2004. The trip was quick--twenty-five
minutes we were told, although it seemed faster--and we disembarked in
Antirio and drove on our way. We drove through Lepanto, with its lovely
harbor, and stopped briefly to appreciate the view of Galaxides (and duck
behind some handy pine trees) before heading into the mountains. There were
very few times on our drive that we could not see both mountains and sea,
making for stunning vistas, although the landscape itself was generally
scrubby and dry. We were puzzled by the lack of running water and the
number of dry riverbeds we saw, since the whole Mediterranean had a very
wet, cold winter. In many areas, the dirt was the reddest I have ever seen,
a dark maroon that Viki explained came from bauxite, which is extracted
around the city of Itea, on the coast at the foot of Mt. Parnassus, below
Delphi.
In ancient times, the city there was called Chrissos. They had a habit of
charging outrageous sums in taxes to travellers heading for Delphi. The
Delphians fought four separate wars with Chrissos over this issue, before
accepting the assistance of Phillip of Macedonia (father of Alexander the
Great), who flattened Chrissos for them. Thus Phillip earned the privilege
of building a structure within the sanctuary at Delphi and placing statues
of his family, including his son, within it. Everyone else was restricted
to statues of the gods and other mythical figures or famous athletes.
From Itea we climbed up through endless olive groves to Delphi. There are
supposedly more than five million trees in the region. The town of Delphi
is perched on the side of the mountain with its hairpin streets connected by
steps.
Each evening, after hours of driving, we would arrive at our hotel. We were
booked into the Hotel Amalia chain, together with the Austrian couple and
the Minnesotan family. The rest of the group were always at another hotel.
Except in Delphi, these hotels were outside of town and since the tourist
season won't officially get under way for another month, they were pretty
deserted. So after dinner we went to our rooms and ended up getting a lot
of sleep despite our early risings. In Delphi we really enjoyed the chance
to wander the streets and the shops were open late, so we could browse on
our own. The hotels were all enormous, sprawling complexes, slightly
different in decor, but much the same when it came down to the rooms. All
but one night we had two twin beds, which is fairly typical all over Europe.
The rooms were larger than we usually get--the first night at the Titania
our room was bizarrely huge with vast unused space, but the smallest
bathroom of all our hotels. We were sorry, on our return to Athens, to give
up its balcony, but having a smaller room was actually more comfortable for
us. All of the rooms were overheated, so we had to sleep with the windows
open, leading to nasty bug bites for both of us.
On our third day we toured the site at Delphi, on the slopes of
Mt. Parnassus. We started off at the very modern museum that houses some of
the finds from the site. The we moved up the hill, past the former agora,
or row of shops, which had later been turned into a Byzantine church, of
which very little remains, and the partially reconstructed "treasury" of
Athens, the only structure of marble amid the limestone edifices. We saw
the rock on which the pre-Apollonian sibyls sat to prophesy before Delphi
was absorbed by the Dorian priests after the collapse of the Mycenaen
civilization and their earth goddess worship in the 12th c. BCE. Further up
the slope is the main Temple of Apollo, where the sibyls were sequestered in
a central chamber while priests mediated between them and the supplicants.
Our guide said that supplicants could only come during a nine-day period
each year to ask their questions, because "the priests needed the rest of
the year to send out their spies to learn what the right answers should be."
Past the temple ruins is a theatre hewn into the rock of the mountain, and
beyond that, near the top of that ridge, is a stadium where the annual games
in honor of the god would have been held. Down at the bottom, further along
the modern road, is the sacred spring where worshippers had to purify
themselves before approaching the temple from their campgrounds in the olive
groves below. On the other side of the road is a smaller temple, called a
tholos for its round shape, erected by the followers of Athena and Dionysus
in the 4th c. BCE, by which time the popularity of the Apollonians up the
hill was waning. We sat for a while in the cafe at the top of the stairs
down to the tholos, enjoying a drink on their terrace looking down into the
alley, and basking in the sun. The natural setting of Delphi is gorgeous
and the views are amazing. It's easy to see why it was such a popular spot
through the ages.
Our weather the whole week was much warmer than we had expected--about 75F
most days, instead of the 50's the weather report had predicted--and
generally sunny. Fortunately, we always pack to dress in layers, so we were
able to keep cool most of the time and our bus was well air-conditioned.
Before we left Delphi the family of Minnesotans switched to a bus going
directly back to Athens and we picked up a group of seven Japanese college
students, another French couple, a couple about our age from Latvia, and a
retired Australian banker from Brisbane in his seventies. He was the only
one of the new group in our hotel, so he joined us for dinner in the
evening.
Dinners were fairly mediocre and provided no choice. There would be a
small starter course of some form of pasta (pastitsio, stuffed crepes or
canelloni), a main course of meat and starch (pork and rice, beef and orzo,
pot roast and potatoes) with a shredded cabbage and carrot salad, and then
an underwhelming dessert (usually soggy cake, but one night we got flan).
It was a relief to get back to Athens and be able to make our own choices.
Our last night on the road was spent in Kalambaka, in the valley below
Meteora. In the morning, after a shopping stop, we visited the monastery of
Gran Meteora, perched on one of the free-standing spires of rock that dot
the landscape there. There are several other eyrie monasteries, but Gran
Meteora is the largest and is still home to about fifteen monks. From the
parking lot there are about 100 steps down to the crossing and then about
200 up. All the women had to wear skirts, which wasn't a problem for me,
but several of the others hadn't brought one along and there was much
hilarity over the choices offered at the entrance. The monastery is a
fairly simple construction of brick, with a central church lavishly
decorated with frescoes depicting martyrdoms and miracles of various saints.
The views are amazing and thinking of monks climbing the rocks to reach the
monasteries in the days before the steps were installed is fairly
awe-inspiring.
From Kalambaka it was about a five hour drive back to Athens. We were
dropped off back at the Titania and spent about an hour settling in before
heading out to find dinner. Jason had chosen from the guidebook a place
called "Ermou and Asomaton" and described as offering "an extensive menu of
Greek and international dishes, including...smoked eel and chicken in
yogurt, mint and lemon sauce." Ermou is one of the major street, partly
pedestrianized. We hadn't figured out the metro system yet and we were
eager for a walk after so much time on the bus, so we set out. We ended up
walking away from the center, on a road mostly under construction, past the
excavated potters' quarter/cemetery of Keramikos, and being very startled by
a dog barking viciously right at our elbows. We passed a whole fleet of
tour busses, and started to wonder if we were ever going to find the place.
Finally we got to the address, to find a square grey building with no
obvious doors, just large frosted plate glass windows between metal garage
doors. There were letters on the wall giving the address and the name
"Restaurant Interni." Eventually, Jason waved a hand at one of the
windows--having cleverly noticed a motion detector above it--and it slid
aside to reveal an empty restaurant. The decor was fairly industrial,
high-ceilings, all gray, with huge round white paper light fixtures.
Although the kitchen wasn't due to open for another fifteen minutes (it
wasn't nine yet, after all) we were seated and allowed to entertain
ourselves with drinks. Jason asked for ouzo, but they didn't have any--I
said "too Greek" and the waiter agreed, making it clear we were in for a
different dinner than we'd expected. I wondered aloud if this might be a
Japanese restaurant and we both laughed when the first entry in the menu was
sushi. The concept seemed to be Eurasian fusion and they did a very good
job with it.
We started by sharing the sushi plate, which included one nigiri (fish slice
on rice) each of maguro (tuna), hamachi (yellowtail), sake (salmon), and ebi
(shrimp), of which Jason generously let me have the first two. There was
also a tasty maki (seaweed roll) with avocado and some kind of fish we
didn't recognize. For mains, Jason had salmon in a "curry jacket" with rice
and a Thai red curry style sauce, while I had tuna with a black pepper
crust, served over fried noodles in a lemongrass-ginger-garlic-soy sauce.
We were both extremely happy with our choices and they were certainly very
different from what we'd been getting on the road. For dessert we split a
plate of wok-fried beignets filled with chocolate ganache, served in a nest
of spun sugar with a very thin cookie dusted with cocoa in the shape of a
butterfly, an appple doused in strawberry-chocolate sauce, and a scoop of
yogurt ice cream.
It was a delightful meal and we were glad to have a walk back to the hotel
to work off some of it. It was the first night of Carnaval, since the
Orthodox Easter isn't until May 5th this year, and as we strolled through
the pedestrianized section of Ermou to Syntagma Square, we saw people in
silly costumes carrying plastic clubs with squeakers in them, shooting silly
string, and tossing confetti everywhere.
On Friday we spent the morning on a guided tour of the main sights of
Athens. Once again, our driver's name was George and our guide's name was
Viki, leading us to suspect a plot. We stopped at the Temple of Zeus and
Hadrian's Arch and briefly at the stadium built in the classical style for
the first modern Olympic games in 1896. We drove around the block past the
residences of the prime minister and president and the national gardens.
Then it was time, at last, for the Acropolis. As we paused to use the WC's
near the gate, we ran into the Bletzackers and the Japanese kids. Viki led
us up the slope to a point looking out over the rebuilt odeon (theatre) of
Herodes Atticus, a leading Athenian who built several public monuments in
the 2nd c. CE including the fountain we'd seen in ruins in Olympia which
contained a bull engraved with a testament of his devotion to his wife with
the first extant use of the heart symbol in the context of love. The
theatre in Athens is where various big names (Yanni, Pavarotti, Vanessa Mae,
etc.) have played.
Viki explained to us some of the history of the Acropolis and the buildings
on the top. Our group included a party of Islamic men, with their wives in
headscarves. When the guide turned the story of the contest between Athena
and Poseidon to prove by their gifts that they were the best patron deity of
Athens into a funny story of a young girl getting the better of an older,
powerful man, the wives all giggled while the men looked stern. There was
an awkward moment when an American man tried to get into an argument with
Viki's fairly vitriolic comments about Lord Elgin's removal of reliefs and
statues from the Acropolis to England. That's a very sore spot for the
Greeks, but Viki managed to move on with her lecture. After another brief
stop in front of the Propylaia (entrance) to explain exactly what the
different buildings were that we'd be seeing, she let us go. If we'd wanted
a ride back to the hotel, we could have met the bus in the parking lot 45
minutes later, but we decided to take our time and strike off on our own.
Moving up through the columns of the Propylaia, we emerged onto the plateau
and were struck by our first close-up view of the Parthenon, the Temple of
Athena. Its Doric columns are so simple and yet so precise and complex.
They are curved to eliminate the bowing effects of perspective, as is almost
every line of the temple. It is largely framed by the scaffolding and
cranes of the UNESCO project to reconstruct and protect the monument, but it
is still breathtaking and visually stunning. From there we wandered over to
the Erechtheion, the temple for the rest of the pantheon of Olympic
deities. The six famous caryatids supporting one section of the temple have
been replaced by concrete casts, while five of the originals are in the
museum onsite and the other is in the British Museum. The difference is
visible to the naked eye, as the one from London still has much of the
detail of her hair and draperies, while the ones that remained exposed to
the elements and pollution in Athens are much more severely weathered.
We visited the museum and enjoyed seeing the chronological progression of
styles among the statues and reliefs from several of the many previous
temples and smaller buildings that used to adorn the Acropolis. The most
impressive was a statue of Athena with her cloak of snakes from the pediment
of a previous temple to her. Leaving there, we wandered out on the eastern
point to view the city stretching out in all directions. It is hard not to
think of barbarians living amid the ruins of civilization. On the other
hand, the view also takes in the hilltop plaza of the Pnix, where the
Athenian Assembly met to listen to orators and vote on their proposals in
the original "democracy." The other building we had expected to see on the
Acropolis, the Temple of Nike, has been deconstructed by the UNESCO workers,
but will be replaced over the next few years. They have presented a report
that without intervention, the monuments will probably crumble within the
next fifty years, as the smog turns their marble to dust at an
ever-increasing rate. So they are currently experimenting with a
transparent sealant that they hope will protect the stone against further
degradation.
Leaving the Acropolis, we strolled down around its northern side to the tiny
streets of the Plaka. These are filled with souvenir shops, tavernas and
cafes. We browsed some of the shops and I bought a bunch of Olympic pins.
A great deal of construction is going on, all over the country, all aimed at
completion for 2004, but according to an article in the paper we picked up,
the IOC is still very concerned that Athens may not manage to get ready in
time to host the games. We found a cafe on the corner of Adrianou and
Kidathinaion streets advertising gyros and sat at an outside table to enjoy
our lunch. What we got, after our starter salad, were "gyros plates" with
pita, lamb, tomatoes, onions and tzatziki (yogurt mixed with cucumber, dill
and lemon). The meat was of excellent quality and the pita was so good! We
were very glad that Jason had insisted on ordering extra tzatziki to spread
on it.
After lunch we decided that we would try to get out to Cape Sounion. There
were guided tours we could have joined, but we were somewhat tired of being
in groups of tourists and our guidebook said there was a city bus we could
catch. We walked up to Syntagma Square and dove into the metro system. The
new sections of the system have only been open for two years and are very
clean and lovely. At two different stations we came across displays of the
various artifacts unearthed during construction. We found the place where
the busses all terminate at the base of Mavromateon street and when we asked
for the bus to Sounion, the ticket guy came out of his booth to point across
the square to the right bus, saying "3:30! Leaves now! Run, run!" So we
ran, and made it with time to spare.
We had no idea how long a trip it would be--it turned out to be two hours
out to the point of the peninsula where the majestic Temple of Poseidon sits
on the headland surveying the Aegean. It was a hazy day and the sun on the
water along the way turned the surface of the sea to silver. We arrived in
time to get one shot of the sun shining through the columns of the temple,
but by the time we had walked up the hill to the site, the sun had
disappeared behind a low bank of thick clouds and we were denied the
spectacular sunset we'd hoped to see. The busses run every hour, so we
wandered over the headland until the staff chased us out, and were just in
time to catch the next bus headed back. It was very full--I got the
ticket-taker's seat, perpendicular to the other seats at the rear door, with
a little desk in front of me--and there was a horde of Spanish students
taking over the rear of the bus and sitting in the aisles. Jason ended up
standing the whole way. The kids were singing and clapping and generally
annoying the other passengers and the ticket taker, who kept having to wade
back through them to collect the fares of people who crowded on at later
stops. The Spanish kids were really excited when even the Japanese kids
could sing along to the Macarena. I eventually started talking to the girl
in front of me, Sara, and found out that the kids were all from a school in
Galicia, in northern Spain. She had very good English, having spend the
previous year as an exchange student in Atlanta, but she let me speak
Spanish, which was a real treat. That passed the time back to Athens pretty
pleasantly, despite the crowding. There was only one scary moment, when the
bus stopped and wouldn't start again for a couple of minutes. But
eventually the motor caught and we were on our way again. As we came back
into the city, through Syntagma Square, the guards were changing in front of
the Parliament building, silhouetted against the lit wall of the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier, like a commedia dell'arte pantomime with their skirts and
tassles and pom-pommed shoes. The bus made a stop right in front of our
hotel, so we hopped off and were home.
We were very tired and needed to be up early the next morning, but we hauled
ourselves out and took the subway from Omonia Square (pronouned just like
"ammonia," it actually means "harmony") down to Monastiraki, where the
streets are lined with one taverna after another. We took our guidebook's
recommendation of one called Sigala and had a fine meal of grilled meats.
Jason's lamb chops weren't really enough food for him, but my mixed grill
(sliced lamb, lamb sausage, chicken skewers and pork bits with pita) was
huge and between the two, along with a starter salad (Greek, of course :) we
did very well. At the table next to us were two guitarists and a bouzouki
player entertaining the diners with traditional tunes. Most of the other diners
seemed to be Greek, so we felt like we were getting a very authentic
experience. That was probably our best chance to try ouzo or retsina, but
we were both too tired to think of alcohol.
We had bought an English version of the Athens News and enjoyed reading
through it over dinner for some local color and hints of world news. One of
the most fascinating bits was that a television program had uncovered a link
between the president and an illegal gambling club. The report was
generating intense criticism of their sensationalist journalism and a
re-examination of the current system of television. Apparently until a few
years ago there were only two channels in Greece, both run by the government
and very much the mouthpieces of the ruling party. The system was
deregulated, but new channels are required to have licenses from the state
channels, which the state channels, piqued at losing their monopoly, refuse
to grant. So there are ten new channels, all technically broadcasting
illegally.
Saturday was taken up by a cruise of the Saronic Gulf. We were picked up by
bus at our hotel and after the usual whistle-stop tour around Athens, got
out to Piraeus in time for the 8:30am departure of the boat. It was very
windy, so all the inside rooms were very crowded and at first we could only
find seats in the lowest deck, that had tiny windows. But after an hour,
the sun had come out and people were moving on deck and consolidating, so we
were able to find better seats upstairs. They did a simple demonstration of
a couple of traditional Greek dances and I got what I hope will be fun
pictures of Jason taking part. He had bought an International Herald
Tribune that morning and we passed some time catching up on current events.
After about three hours, we landed on Poros, where we had about 45 minutes
to wander the small port town. We strolled up and down tiny hillside
streets of shops and picked up a cheese pastry at a bakery to tide us over
until lunchtime. Then it was back on the boat for the two-hour cruise to
Hydra while the first lunch seating had their meal. At first we sat out on
deck, but after a bit the wind was too much for us (my throat had been
slightly sore since the previous afternoon and I was afraid of coming down
with something, so I was trying to take it fairly easy) so we went into the
quiet upper bar where we found an empty booth, put our heads down on the
table and napped until we arrived. As we pulled up to the quay, a flood of
cats came running down to meet us, jumping over each other to be in front.
Everywhere we went in Greece there were feral cats and sleeping dogs in
various states of manginess.
Hydra was lovely and avoiding the offers of a donkey ride we walked out
around the harbor and the adjacent cliff, where we found a nice bench where
we could sit in the sun and admire the view. We strolled back through town
and were very amused by a little boy walking along with a tiny puppy clamped
onto the hem of his trousers by its teeth.
Back on the boat, it was our turn for lunch. That consisted of a little
bowl of shredded cabbage and carrots with olives and French dressing and a
shell full of pasta salad, followed by plates of white & wild rice with some
chicken in a lemony sauce and vastly overcooked broccoli. Dessert was a
tough, overly sweet thing like a profiterole. We were seated with an
English couple, a younger, burly Australian businessman and a reporter from
Washington, DC. They weren't the most talkative group and the band started
playing loud, cheesy muzak, so we finished up and went out on deck.
Eventually we arrived on Aegina, the largest island of the Saronic Gulf,
with a population of 15,000. It's the closest island to Athens and a very
popular spot for Athenian summer homes. It's also the source of "the best
pistachios in the world" and has hundreds of trees. According to our guide,
youths from all over the country come to Aegina in August to help with the
harvest of 25-30 kilos of nuts from each tree. We had signed up for the
"optional" (i.e. "for an extra charge") tour of the island, so we got off
the boat directly onto a bus mainly filled with Spanish speakers. In
general, there seemed to be relatively few Americans out and about in
Europe.
We were taken by bus across the island to the Temple of Aphaia. She was a
nymph in the court of Aphrodite, but her identity was subsumed into that of
Athena at some point. The temple provides the third point for the "sacred
triangle," together with the Parthenon and the temple at Sounion, and is in
sufficiently good condition that the complex inner structure is visible.
Across the road we visited the gift shop to buy pistachios and try their
over-sugary pistachio ice cream.
On the way back to the port, we stopped at the Cathedral of St. Nectarios.
He was a member of the monastery on the island, famous for his skills as a
healer, who died in 1921 and was canonized as a saint in 1961. As the last
saint of the Orthodox church, St. Nectarios' remains are the focal point of
a pilgrimage that all Greek Orthodox believers are supposed to make at least
once in their lives, preferably on November 9th, his name day and that off a
majority of the inhabitants of the island. The monastery has been closed to
visitors since the construction of a huge cathedral next door about 25 years
ago. The outside is finished, but the inside is still in the process of
being decorated, so no photos are permitted. The saint's remains in its
silver reliquary are housed in an impressively carved marble bier and there
is a gorgeous mosaic in the chancel showing the Saronic Gulf with its
islands and octopus and fish in the water. The bus dropped us off at the
edge of town, so that we could stroll back to the boat past the shops. We
walked out to the end of the pier to see the tiny, whitewashed Byzantine
chapel, and then boarded again for the trip back to Piraeus. The sunset was
lovely that evening. Our bus had us back to the hotel half-an-hour after we
docked. It had been a fun day and we saw some pretty places, but spending
eleven hours out in order to do a total of three hours on the islands didn't
seem like a good value-for-time deal. If I had known, I would have skipped
the cruise and just taken a ferry over to Aegina for the day.
We were exhausted again and needed to pack, so we decided to go back up to
the Olive Garden and enjoy their lovely view and tasty food. Jason wanted
the spinach salad with katiki cheese again, but I went for the rock fish
broth with ravioli this time and was delighted with its rich and subtle
flavors. Jason tried the yogurt crusted roast lamb--the Greeks seem to
believe that all lamb must be cooked very thoroughly--with mushrooms and
potatoes while I went for the shrimp risotto with salmon roe on the side.
That was light and tasty, while Jason found his somewhat too rich and
overwhelming. We skipped dessert and went out on the terrace to attempt
some pictures of the Acropolis by night before going down to sleep.
In the morning we packed up and were out of the hotel just after 8:30am. I
was very tired of the breakfast buffet by then, so we skipped that and got
pastries at a place around the corner instead. We walked up to the National
Archeological Museum, not far from our hotel, and spent a couple of hours
moving steadily ahead of a tourist group through the collection. They have
some very beautiful things and it's interesting to see the development from
one period to the next and the degree to which the Renaissance re-enacted
that process. By that time I had noticed an interesting phenomenon: over
and over, as we toured these different archeological museums, my eye would
be caught by statues or fragments of a woman and it would turn out to be
Aphrodite, every time. In this collection, one of my favorite pieces was a
fragment of a relief, about a foot in diameter, showing her face in profile,
against an 18" circular backing board. Down in the gift shop, I was
surprised to see a high-quality plaster cast of it for sale and even more
surprised when I saw the price--about a third of what I would have guessed.
As I tried to figure out how on earth I could get it home (the shop doesn't
ship and as it was Sunday, I couldn't ship it myself, and it would never fit
in the overhead compartment and I wouldn't trust it to the baggage
handlers), the clerk mentioned that the backing board wasn't included, just
the fragment, which could be packaged so I could carry it onto a plane. I
was so pleased to walk out of there with it under my arm!
We dropped the package off at the hotel to wait with the rest of our
luggage, and went on down the street to the Panepistimou metro station. One
long block includes three monumental buildings, each built in a slightly
different take on a classical temple. The first is the National Library,
with its sweeping stairways. Next is the University's main building, with
Ionic columns and frescoes representing the various branches of knowledge.
Last is the Athenian Academy, flanked by giant columns topped by statues of
Athena and Apollo, and fronted by statues of Socrates and Plato, seated in
thought. We took some photos and got on the metro down to the Akropoli
stop. Coming out of it, we were right below the Acropolis, near the Theatre
of Dionysus. We wandered up and explored that for a bit before trying to
figure out where the main entrance to the Acropolis Study Center might be.
Eventually we found it, but it was closed, contrary to their posted hours.
Someone later speculated that it might have been closed to repair damage
from a recent fire in the subway tunnel underneath the building.
Thwarted, we wandered back into the Plaka and over to the Agora. It was
used as a cemetery in the 6th c. BCE, but by the 5th c. BCE had become a
marketplace. The western side became the neighborhood of smiths and
metalworkers and a Temple to Hephaistos was built there around 445 BCE,
launching the Golden Age of public works under Pericles that also included
the Parthenon. The temple is also known as the Thiseion, because some of
its friezes depict Theseus. It is one of the best preserved temples in all
of Greece. On the eastern edge is the reconstructed Stoa (corridor)
Attalou, originally built in the 2nd c. BCE, which houses the site's museum.
The southern edge is overlooked by the Areopagos, a big rock where the
Athenian supreme court once stood and where the Apostle Paul first preached
to the Athenians in 54 CE.
After a pleasant hour in the Agora, we headed back through the Monastiraki
fleamarket along its northern edge and into the Plaka. We bought some
shirts at one of the shops and made our way back to our favorite cafe. This
time we knew to order "gyros pita" in order to get the wraps we had in mind.
They were so good that we each had two. While we were sitting there, I
looked up and recognized some of the Spanish students from the Sounion bus.
I called out to the girl we had talked to the most and she came and said hi
and sat with us for a few minutes. She left with her group and we strolled
up Filellino street to Syntagma Square to catch the changing of the guard in
front of the Parliament building. In daylight we could see all the
beautiful details of their traditional uniforms of embroidered black jackets
over white shirts, pleated skirts and tights. Their red fez-like hats are
each decorated with a long tassle hanging past their shoulders and their red
shoes have metal hobnails on the bottom that click on the marble as they
parade and enormous pom-poms on the toes that flip in unison as they do
their stylized march. When they had finished and the new pair guards were
on their silent duty, Jason took my picture standing next to one of them.
At that point we were somewhat stumped. Without a stop at the Acropolis
Study Center to take up our time, it was only 2pm, the hour at which the
museums open at all on Sundays close. So we had three hours to kill before
meeting Juliette at our hotel. We wandered into the National Gardens, which
stretch between the Parliament building and the ministerial residences of
the Kolonaki district. There were zillions of families out with their kids
in costume--a little Minnie Mouse re-enacted Marilyn Monroe's famous
blown-skirt moment for us as we all passed over a subway grating--so we sat
in the park and watched them running around the playground in their get-ups.
Eventually we decided to leave--the gardens are not very well maintained and
tend towards the jungly and buggy. When we emerged on the opposite side of
the park, in front of the president's house, we decided to walk around
rather than retracing our steps. We saw a detachment of honor guards
marching down the sidewalk to relieve the ones on duty at the residence, and
then we passed their barracks, where a soldier in modern uniform at the gate
was flirting with a bus-load of teenagers. We walked back through the
square one last time and down Panepistimou to our hotel.
We sat up on the roof terrace for an hour, enjoying a last view of the
Acropolis and the city. At 4:45pm we went down to the lobby and got our
bags. Our transfer agent, Juliette, had said to meet her there at 5:00pm.
Of course, she had also said she would call us every day, so we were a
little nervous. At 4:55, we were paged. I went to the house phone and when
I got back, Jason was talking to the couple from Dallas, the Dollys, who
were back from their whirlwind weekend in Cairo. They'd had a great time
and were completely exhausted, but wanted to try to catch the end of the
Carnaval parade. So they left and we sat down again and Jason said "So who
was on the phone" and I realized I'd forgotten to tell him about Juliette's
call to say she couldn't make it to the hotel in time, but had arranged to
have our taxi driver pick us up on time and meet her along the way to the
airport.
We were dubious, but it all worked out. Traffic was very light and Juliette
was right at the point where she and the driver had arranged to meet. She
hopped in and debriefed us during the rest of the quick trip. We checked in
and said goodbye and then wandered around the shops for a bit. We decided
to get some food and McDonald's seemed like the easiest option. I had one
of the best fish fillets of my life! Our flight was late boarding and we
ended up sitting over the wing. Jason was reading _The Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay_, which had been very funny at the beginning, while the book
I was reading, Amy Tan's _The Bonesetter's Daughter_ was grim and grueling.
Halfway through his started getting grim and mine lightened up, so our moods
were shifting in opposite directions. It seemed to take forever to get back
to Luton, but in fact we landed right on time. It was pouring and we had to
get down the metal stairs and run across the tarmac. Welcome back to
England.
We picked up our bags, bought Thameslink tickets and took the shuttle back
over to the train station. Then we had almost 45 minutes until our train.
Fortunately, there were seats indoors and a little shop so we could get
drinks and a movie magazine, since I had finished my book. The train
finally arrived and we settled in for the trip back to London. It was the
last train of the evening, so we made all the local stops. We made the tube
(we hadn't been sure we would) and arrived back at the flat right around
midnight.
Running through our email, we got the news that Jason's grandmother had died
on Saturday. She's been declining steadily over the past few years and much
worse in the past month, so it wasn't a surprise, but we were sad to hear
it. She was a lovely woman and there are so many friends and family to miss
her and treasure her memory. I am so glad that I could meet her and she
could attend our wedding before she died. Jason called his mother and
talked to her for quite a while, as I sorted through the mail and read
email. We are planning not to travel to Idaho for the funeral, but to plan
to attend the family reunion there this summer, when they are thinking to
re-inter Trish's parents together. It will be good to be all together at
that time.
I've spent the past couple of days catching up and starting to figure out
everything that needs to happen before we leave again for Spain in ten days.
EasyJet Airline for the first time. It took about as long to get there
from our place as to Heathrow and while there are more transportation
changes (tube to Thameslink train to shuttle bus), the airport itself is so
much smaller and less complex. EasyJet only does e-tickets and hands out
plastic numbered boarding passes--like Southwest does--with no seat
assignments. We managed to get seats in the third row on the flight to
Athens, which was rather nice. The cabin crew chief on our outbound
journey was very silly and fun, joking that "in case of emergency oxygen
will be provided, free of charge, unlike everything else" and announcing
that "the cabin lights will be dimmed for landing--everyone please keep
your hands to yourselves." In some ways it felt more like the local bus
than an airplane flight. On the way back it was informal, but without the
jokes. EasyJet keeps their costs down by providing no free food or
beverages (except water), so the flights are pretty calm without the
interruptions of mass cabin service.
On arrival at the very modern, clean and spacious Athens International
airport, we were met by Juliette, our transfer agent, and taken by cab to
the Titania Hotel on Panepistimou (University) street. She checked us into
the hotel, confirmed the times at which we would be picked up for our
various tours, promised to call us every day to be sure all was well--then
she left and we didn't hear from her again until our final day.
We were too exhausted to brave a new city in search of food, so we just
went up to the Olive Garden restaurant on the roof of the hotel. Not part
of the American chain, this was a fairly high-class, lovely place with a
gorgeous view of the Parthenon. After eating in many Greek restaurants
with murals of the Acropolis on the walls, it's startling to look up and
realize that's the real thing you're seeing. I had some chicken broth with
querelles ("dollops") of white bean paste that was slightly bland, while
Jason really enjoyed his spinach salad with katiki, a soft Macedonian
cheese. That was followed by chicken stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, goats cheese,
pancetta and asparagus. I had grilled lamb cutlets in a wine sauce that
was good enough, but slightly too sweet.
Sadly, I seem to have developed a problem with flying that results in very
bad headaches within 24 hours of landing. In some ways, it was fortunate
that it hit quickly, so that I could get it out of the way and move on to
better things. I'm trying different combinations of
decongestants/antihistamines on each flight, working to stay hydrated and
the like (suggestions welcome). But that was a bad night and we were to be
picked up at 7:15am. Luckily--on that day--the first hour of every tour
involves a circuit of Athenian hotels, so I was able to catch a bit more
sleep before things really got started.
Our bus was filled with a variety of different folk, from different
companies, divided each night of the trip between two hotels, depending on
which agency had booked their travel. There was an Austrian couple, of
which the woman had apparently gotten some bad fish the night before and had
to call for emergency stops three times in the first couple of hours. They
were staying in our hotels, so we shared most of our meals with them and a
couple from Minnesota travelling with their son who is spending the term
studying on Crete. There was a very pleasant couple from Dallas, who were
planning to go to Cairo for the weekend, so we enjoyed sharing our stories
of Egypt with them. There was a French couple, celebrating their 20th
anniversary, and a couple of Greek girls in training as guides. There was
one Indian man--from Madras, but currently living in Birmingham,
UK--travelling alone, and another travelling with a very tall, very blonde,
kind of wacky Scotswoman. Then there were two brothers and a sister whose
family name was Bletzacker, together with their spouses. Two of the couples
live in Salt Lake City, where they grew up, while Danny and his wife, Julie,
live in Irvine, CA. They were lots of fun and kept us all laughing. In
general, the other travellers were in their 40's and 50's. I was amused
that they all seemed to think that Jason and I were much younger than we
are--when the subject came up, the consensus was that we were both in our
mid-twenties.
Our driver, George, was amazing. He took that bus up and down tiny little
mountain roadways, judging every angle right the first time, in and out of
torturous parking lots and many tight spots. He had better English than he
really let on and was always very pleasant. Our guide, Viki, was a woman
in her 50's, with gelled, magenta hair and enormous Onassis sunglasses, who
would not be hurried. She would caution us to hurry, to be prompt, not to
be late--but when we were all ready to go ten minutes before the time, she
would be sitting at a table in the corner, enjoying another cigarette, or
two, or three, until the stated time arrived--or passed. Her information
was sometimes questionable--I don't know much about Greek archeology, but I
know enough to find her stories more entertaining than factual--and either her
non-scripted English wasn't very strong, or she just wasn't very friendly.
On the other hand, the one conversation she and I had resulted in my
telling her that Jason's loves to act and she made him a present the next
morning of a nice booklet about the annual theatre festival at Epidaurus.
Our mornings started quite early at the various hotels' breakfast buffet,
which typically included various breads, cereals, yogurt, fruit, scrambled
eggs, some form of hot meat, cold cuts and cheeses. The yogurt was very
thick and unsweetened, but we found that mixing it with some honey and the
juice of canned peaches worked to provide us with something we liked.
Despite the orange trees we saw everywhere, bulging with fruit, what was
served at breakfast was orange drink, rather than juice. Each day we were
on the bus and underway by 8:30am at the latest.
In the mornings we visited various sites of interest. On our first day, we
started at the Corinth Canal, which connects the Aegean and Ionian seas at
the narrow point of the isthmus between the Peloponnese and the rest of
mainland Greece. Supposedly the first spadeful of dirt was dug in the 1st
century CE by the Emperor Nero with a golden shovel, but it was not
completed until French engineers undertook the task at the end of the 19th
century. It's very deep and cut through solid rock with beautiful
stratification.
After the canal, we went on to the theatre at Epidaurus. Constructed
during the Classical period of the 5th century BCE, it is considered the
best-preserved theatre of the period and is still used during the annual
festival. The most interesting aspect to us was the doorways on either
side of the stage area, which Viki explained that Classical audiences would
have automatically used to identify characters as "strangers" or "locals"
depending on which entrance the actors used. We enjoyed the singing of
another guide from the goat stone (where goats were sacrificed before
plays--according to Viki the word "tragedy" comes from "song of the goat,"
after the chants sung to accompany the sacrifices), but I couldn't convince
Jason that we should sing.
Following Epidaurus, we continued to Mycenae, where we stopped first at the
beehive tomb known as the Treasury of Atreus before moving up the hill to
the site of the royal palace. The most interesting spots there were the
nobles' cemetery, which yielded rich archeological finds, and the Lion Gate,
named for the lintel depicting two lions on either side of the column
representing the earth goddess central to Mycenaen religion. The lions
were supposedly beheaded when the Dorians sacked the city during their
takeover of the region in the 12th century BCE. Agamemnon was identified
by Homer and Euripides as the king of Mycenae and looking down over the
hills to the sea it was easy to imagine his triumphant and fateful
procession home from the Trojan War. We made a brief stop in Nafplion to
take pictures of the lovely bay with its three castles and then pushed on to
Olympia for the night.
Lunch each day involved stopping at a tourist-restaurant, where we could
choose what we wanted from a buffet or carts of traditional dishes. Over
the course of the tour these included moussaka, barbecued
lamb/chicken/pork, beef with orzo in tomato sauce, pork in lemon-dill
sauce, and various forms of baked chicken. It tended to be edible, but not
spectacular, and quite heavy. After lunch each day, Viki would tell us
about the next day's stop at great length, first in English and then in
French, while most of us fell asleep.
Our second day's focus was Olympia, where the Temple to Zeus was considered
one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and where the Olympic games
were founded about 3000 years ago. Excavated by German archeologists in the
late 19th century, the ruins are scattered over an enormous site and include
training facilities for the athletes, housing for them and other important
guests, temples to various deities, "treasuries" holding the contributions
of various cities to the glory of the games, workshops for the artists
involved in construction, and various Roman structures (baths, a villa for
Nero, etc.) from later periods, as well as the famous Olympic stadium.
There are also plinths dotted around that once supported the thousands of
statues decorating the complex, almost all of which were lost to Christian
iconoclasm. After wandering around there for almost two hours, we crossed
the road to the museum where finds from the complex are housed, including
the lovely Nike, the winged spirit of victory, and the Hermes of Praxiteles,
one of the most famous sculptors of the Classical period.
Our days usually also included a shopping stop. These were generally rather
awkward, as we are not big shoppers and resent the sense of pressure to buy.
It was somewhat easier with a group and it was interesting to hear the
vendors describe their products. It was especially nifty to watch a
demonstration of how the frames of the Byzantine-style religious icons are
covered in gold leaf. We visited a store specializing in various styles of
traditional ceramics, one offering a variety of wool, cotton and silk
products, and one dealing mainly in icons. We thought that last the least
likely to tempt us, but we actually ended up buying more there than anywhere
else, although not icons. They did have a lovely icon of the Archangel
Michael, but it was from the 19th century and priced at over 250 euros. Our
purchases included a pear-shaped, mother-of-pearl covered box, a couple of
pottery replicas, and a book that has photographs of archeological sites
together with transparent overlays of hypothetical reconstructions of those
sites' original appearance.
Speaking of euros, it's very handy for us that so many countries have
switched to the euro now, since it means that we basically have one "travel
currency" that's close enough to the dollar to make evaluating prices fairly
simple for us. We ran into a bit of trouble because our transfer agent
wouldn't let us take the time to get money at the airport and for the first
few days we were eking out what we had left from the last jaunt to Ireland.
But once we found an ATM, we were fine.
Our afternoon drives were lovely and we were glad to have the chance to see
so much of the territory--what we managed to stay awake for, anyway. Much
of the time we spent just staring out the windows trying to read the signs
in Greek. That was like having a fairly simple, but ever-changing puzzle to
challenge us. The trickiest part was trying to remember/decipher which
lower-case letters go with which upper-case letters. For example, the thing
that looks like our lower-case 'y' is the lower-case 'g' while the
upper-case 'Y' is almost the same as our 'Y' and the upper-case 'G' looks
like an 'L' upside-down. And there are two different lower-case sigmas
('S'), depending on its position in the word. But between what we each
remembered from math, Russian and fraternities, we managed to piece it
together. It was also interesting to be reminded that so many of our words
come from Greek roots like "acro," "pyro," and "paleo" so that we could
often figure out not only what the signs said, but what they meant. Many of
the city names were also familiar, from history (Lepanto, Missalonghi), myth
(Olympia, Lamia, Thebes), and personal names (Melissa, Daphne, Larissa).
Complicating things slightly is that there is no consensus on
transliteration, so that Latin p's, b's and v's are interchangeable, as are d's
and t's, depending on which map or guide book you're reading.
The best drive was from Olympia to Delphi on our second day. We stopped
briefly in Patras and were running early enough to stop at the church of
St. Andrew, one of the loveliest Byzantine churches I've ever visited. At
Rio we boarded the ferry, bus and all, to cross the Gulf of Patras. The
departure was very dramatic, as the driver of a car denied passage tried to
start a fistfight and a motorcyclist leapt on board as the boat was already
moving. On our crossing we passed the pylons of the bridge which is
intended to replace the ferries in time for the increased traffic expected
around the Olympic Summer Games in 2004. The trip was quick--twenty-five
minutes we were told, although it seemed faster--and we disembarked in
Antirio and drove on our way. We drove through Lepanto, with its lovely
harbor, and stopped briefly to appreciate the view of Galaxides (and duck
behind some handy pine trees) before heading into the mountains. There were
very few times on our drive that we could not see both mountains and sea,
making for stunning vistas, although the landscape itself was generally
scrubby and dry. We were puzzled by the lack of running water and the
number of dry riverbeds we saw, since the whole Mediterranean had a very
wet, cold winter. In many areas, the dirt was the reddest I have ever seen,
a dark maroon that Viki explained came from bauxite, which is extracted
around the city of Itea, on the coast at the foot of Mt. Parnassus, below
Delphi.
In ancient times, the city there was called Chrissos. They had a habit of
charging outrageous sums in taxes to travellers heading for Delphi. The
Delphians fought four separate wars with Chrissos over this issue, before
accepting the assistance of Phillip of Macedonia (father of Alexander the
Great), who flattened Chrissos for them. Thus Phillip earned the privilege
of building a structure within the sanctuary at Delphi and placing statues
of his family, including his son, within it. Everyone else was restricted
to statues of the gods and other mythical figures or famous athletes.
From Itea we climbed up through endless olive groves to Delphi. There are
supposedly more than five million trees in the region. The town of Delphi
is perched on the side of the mountain with its hairpin streets connected by
steps.
Each evening, after hours of driving, we would arrive at our hotel. We were
booked into the Hotel Amalia chain, together with the Austrian couple and
the Minnesotan family. The rest of the group were always at another hotel.
Except in Delphi, these hotels were outside of town and since the tourist
season won't officially get under way for another month, they were pretty
deserted. So after dinner we went to our rooms and ended up getting a lot
of sleep despite our early risings. In Delphi we really enjoyed the chance
to wander the streets and the shops were open late, so we could browse on
our own. The hotels were all enormous, sprawling complexes, slightly
different in decor, but much the same when it came down to the rooms. All
but one night we had two twin beds, which is fairly typical all over Europe.
The rooms were larger than we usually get--the first night at the Titania
our room was bizarrely huge with vast unused space, but the smallest
bathroom of all our hotels. We were sorry, on our return to Athens, to give
up its balcony, but having a smaller room was actually more comfortable for
us. All of the rooms were overheated, so we had to sleep with the windows
open, leading to nasty bug bites for both of us.
On our third day we toured the site at Delphi, on the slopes of
Mt. Parnassus. We started off at the very modern museum that houses some of
the finds from the site. The we moved up the hill, past the former agora,
or row of shops, which had later been turned into a Byzantine church, of
which very little remains, and the partially reconstructed "treasury" of
Athens, the only structure of marble amid the limestone edifices. We saw
the rock on which the pre-Apollonian sibyls sat to prophesy before Delphi
was absorbed by the Dorian priests after the collapse of the Mycenaen
civilization and their earth goddess worship in the 12th c. BCE. Further up
the slope is the main Temple of Apollo, where the sibyls were sequestered in
a central chamber while priests mediated between them and the supplicants.
Our guide said that supplicants could only come during a nine-day period
each year to ask their questions, because "the priests needed the rest of
the year to send out their spies to learn what the right answers should be."
Past the temple ruins is a theatre hewn into the rock of the mountain, and
beyond that, near the top of that ridge, is a stadium where the annual games
in honor of the god would have been held. Down at the bottom, further along
the modern road, is the sacred spring where worshippers had to purify
themselves before approaching the temple from their campgrounds in the olive
groves below. On the other side of the road is a smaller temple, called a
tholos for its round shape, erected by the followers of Athena and Dionysus
in the 4th c. BCE, by which time the popularity of the Apollonians up the
hill was waning. We sat for a while in the cafe at the top of the stairs
down to the tholos, enjoying a drink on their terrace looking down into the
alley, and basking in the sun. The natural setting of Delphi is gorgeous
and the views are amazing. It's easy to see why it was such a popular spot
through the ages.
Our weather the whole week was much warmer than we had expected--about 75F
most days, instead of the 50's the weather report had predicted--and
generally sunny. Fortunately, we always pack to dress in layers, so we were
able to keep cool most of the time and our bus was well air-conditioned.
Before we left Delphi the family of Minnesotans switched to a bus going
directly back to Athens and we picked up a group of seven Japanese college
students, another French couple, a couple about our age from Latvia, and a
retired Australian banker from Brisbane in his seventies. He was the only
one of the new group in our hotel, so he joined us for dinner in the
evening.
Dinners were fairly mediocre and provided no choice. There would be a
small starter course of some form of pasta (pastitsio, stuffed crepes or
canelloni), a main course of meat and starch (pork and rice, beef and orzo,
pot roast and potatoes) with a shredded cabbage and carrot salad, and then
an underwhelming dessert (usually soggy cake, but one night we got flan).
It was a relief to get back to Athens and be able to make our own choices.
Our last night on the road was spent in Kalambaka, in the valley below
Meteora. In the morning, after a shopping stop, we visited the monastery of
Gran Meteora, perched on one of the free-standing spires of rock that dot
the landscape there. There are several other eyrie monasteries, but Gran
Meteora is the largest and is still home to about fifteen monks. From the
parking lot there are about 100 steps down to the crossing and then about
200 up. All the women had to wear skirts, which wasn't a problem for me,
but several of the others hadn't brought one along and there was much
hilarity over the choices offered at the entrance. The monastery is a
fairly simple construction of brick, with a central church lavishly
decorated with frescoes depicting martyrdoms and miracles of various saints.
The views are amazing and thinking of monks climbing the rocks to reach the
monasteries in the days before the steps were installed is fairly
awe-inspiring.
From Kalambaka it was about a five hour drive back to Athens. We were
dropped off back at the Titania and spent about an hour settling in before
heading out to find dinner. Jason had chosen from the guidebook a place
called "Ermou and Asomaton" and described as offering "an extensive menu of
Greek and international dishes, including...smoked eel and chicken in
yogurt, mint and lemon sauce." Ermou is one of the major street, partly
pedestrianized. We hadn't figured out the metro system yet and we were
eager for a walk after so much time on the bus, so we set out. We ended up
walking away from the center, on a road mostly under construction, past the
excavated potters' quarter/cemetery of Keramikos, and being very startled by
a dog barking viciously right at our elbows. We passed a whole fleet of
tour busses, and started to wonder if we were ever going to find the place.
Finally we got to the address, to find a square grey building with no
obvious doors, just large frosted plate glass windows between metal garage
doors. There were letters on the wall giving the address and the name
"Restaurant Interni." Eventually, Jason waved a hand at one of the
windows--having cleverly noticed a motion detector above it--and it slid
aside to reveal an empty restaurant. The decor was fairly industrial,
high-ceilings, all gray, with huge round white paper light fixtures.
Although the kitchen wasn't due to open for another fifteen minutes (it
wasn't nine yet, after all) we were seated and allowed to entertain
ourselves with drinks. Jason asked for ouzo, but they didn't have any--I
said "too Greek" and the waiter agreed, making it clear we were in for a
different dinner than we'd expected. I wondered aloud if this might be a
Japanese restaurant and we both laughed when the first entry in the menu was
sushi. The concept seemed to be Eurasian fusion and they did a very good
job with it.
We started by sharing the sushi plate, which included one nigiri (fish slice
on rice) each of maguro (tuna), hamachi (yellowtail), sake (salmon), and ebi
(shrimp), of which Jason generously let me have the first two. There was
also a tasty maki (seaweed roll) with avocado and some kind of fish we
didn't recognize. For mains, Jason had salmon in a "curry jacket" with rice
and a Thai red curry style sauce, while I had tuna with a black pepper
crust, served over fried noodles in a lemongrass-ginger-garlic-soy sauce.
We were both extremely happy with our choices and they were certainly very
different from what we'd been getting on the road. For dessert we split a
plate of wok-fried beignets filled with chocolate ganache, served in a nest
of spun sugar with a very thin cookie dusted with cocoa in the shape of a
butterfly, an appple doused in strawberry-chocolate sauce, and a scoop of
yogurt ice cream.
It was a delightful meal and we were glad to have a walk back to the hotel
to work off some of it. It was the first night of Carnaval, since the
Orthodox Easter isn't until May 5th this year, and as we strolled through
the pedestrianized section of Ermou to Syntagma Square, we saw people in
silly costumes carrying plastic clubs with squeakers in them, shooting silly
string, and tossing confetti everywhere.
On Friday we spent the morning on a guided tour of the main sights of
Athens. Once again, our driver's name was George and our guide's name was
Viki, leading us to suspect a plot. We stopped at the Temple of Zeus and
Hadrian's Arch and briefly at the stadium built in the classical style for
the first modern Olympic games in 1896. We drove around the block past the
residences of the prime minister and president and the national gardens.
Then it was time, at last, for the Acropolis. As we paused to use the WC's
near the gate, we ran into the Bletzackers and the Japanese kids. Viki led
us up the slope to a point looking out over the rebuilt odeon (theatre) of
Herodes Atticus, a leading Athenian who built several public monuments in
the 2nd c. CE including the fountain we'd seen in ruins in Olympia which
contained a bull engraved with a testament of his devotion to his wife with
the first extant use of the heart symbol in the context of love. The
theatre in Athens is where various big names (Yanni, Pavarotti, Vanessa Mae,
etc.) have played.
Viki explained to us some of the history of the Acropolis and the buildings
on the top. Our group included a party of Islamic men, with their wives in
headscarves. When the guide turned the story of the contest between Athena
and Poseidon to prove by their gifts that they were the best patron deity of
Athens into a funny story of a young girl getting the better of an older,
powerful man, the wives all giggled while the men looked stern. There was
an awkward moment when an American man tried to get into an argument with
Viki's fairly vitriolic comments about Lord Elgin's removal of reliefs and
statues from the Acropolis to England. That's a very sore spot for the
Greeks, but Viki managed to move on with her lecture. After another brief
stop in front of the Propylaia (entrance) to explain exactly what the
different buildings were that we'd be seeing, she let us go. If we'd wanted
a ride back to the hotel, we could have met the bus in the parking lot 45
minutes later, but we decided to take our time and strike off on our own.
Moving up through the columns of the Propylaia, we emerged onto the plateau
and were struck by our first close-up view of the Parthenon, the Temple of
Athena. Its Doric columns are so simple and yet so precise and complex.
They are curved to eliminate the bowing effects of perspective, as is almost
every line of the temple. It is largely framed by the scaffolding and
cranes of the UNESCO project to reconstruct and protect the monument, but it
is still breathtaking and visually stunning. From there we wandered over to
the Erechtheion, the temple for the rest of the pantheon of Olympic
deities. The six famous caryatids supporting one section of the temple have
been replaced by concrete casts, while five of the originals are in the
museum onsite and the other is in the British Museum. The difference is
visible to the naked eye, as the one from London still has much of the
detail of her hair and draperies, while the ones that remained exposed to
the elements and pollution in Athens are much more severely weathered.
We visited the museum and enjoyed seeing the chronological progression of
styles among the statues and reliefs from several of the many previous
temples and smaller buildings that used to adorn the Acropolis. The most
impressive was a statue of Athena with her cloak of snakes from the pediment
of a previous temple to her. Leaving there, we wandered out on the eastern
point to view the city stretching out in all directions. It is hard not to
think of barbarians living amid the ruins of civilization. On the other
hand, the view also takes in the hilltop plaza of the Pnix, where the
Athenian Assembly met to listen to orators and vote on their proposals in
the original "democracy." The other building we had expected to see on the
Acropolis, the Temple of Nike, has been deconstructed by the UNESCO workers,
but will be replaced over the next few years. They have presented a report
that without intervention, the monuments will probably crumble within the
next fifty years, as the smog turns their marble to dust at an
ever-increasing rate. So they are currently experimenting with a
transparent sealant that they hope will protect the stone against further
degradation.
Leaving the Acropolis, we strolled down around its northern side to the tiny
streets of the Plaka. These are filled with souvenir shops, tavernas and
cafes. We browsed some of the shops and I bought a bunch of Olympic pins.
A great deal of construction is going on, all over the country, all aimed at
completion for 2004, but according to an article in the paper we picked up,
the IOC is still very concerned that Athens may not manage to get ready in
time to host the games. We found a cafe on the corner of Adrianou and
Kidathinaion streets advertising gyros and sat at an outside table to enjoy
our lunch. What we got, after our starter salad, were "gyros plates" with
pita, lamb, tomatoes, onions and tzatziki (yogurt mixed with cucumber, dill
and lemon). The meat was of excellent quality and the pita was so good! We
were very glad that Jason had insisted on ordering extra tzatziki to spread
on it.
After lunch we decided that we would try to get out to Cape Sounion. There
were guided tours we could have joined, but we were somewhat tired of being
in groups of tourists and our guidebook said there was a city bus we could
catch. We walked up to Syntagma Square and dove into the metro system. The
new sections of the system have only been open for two years and are very
clean and lovely. At two different stations we came across displays of the
various artifacts unearthed during construction. We found the place where
the busses all terminate at the base of Mavromateon street and when we asked
for the bus to Sounion, the ticket guy came out of his booth to point across
the square to the right bus, saying "3:30! Leaves now! Run, run!" So we
ran, and made it with time to spare.
We had no idea how long a trip it would be--it turned out to be two hours
out to the point of the peninsula where the majestic Temple of Poseidon sits
on the headland surveying the Aegean. It was a hazy day and the sun on the
water along the way turned the surface of the sea to silver. We arrived in
time to get one shot of the sun shining through the columns of the temple,
but by the time we had walked up the hill to the site, the sun had
disappeared behind a low bank of thick clouds and we were denied the
spectacular sunset we'd hoped to see. The busses run every hour, so we
wandered over the headland until the staff chased us out, and were just in
time to catch the next bus headed back. It was very full--I got the
ticket-taker's seat, perpendicular to the other seats at the rear door, with
a little desk in front of me--and there was a horde of Spanish students
taking over the rear of the bus and sitting in the aisles. Jason ended up
standing the whole way. The kids were singing and clapping and generally
annoying the other passengers and the ticket taker, who kept having to wade
back through them to collect the fares of people who crowded on at later
stops. The Spanish kids were really excited when even the Japanese kids
could sing along to the Macarena. I eventually started talking to the girl
in front of me, Sara, and found out that the kids were all from a school in
Galicia, in northern Spain. She had very good English, having spend the
previous year as an exchange student in Atlanta, but she let me speak
Spanish, which was a real treat. That passed the time back to Athens pretty
pleasantly, despite the crowding. There was only one scary moment, when the
bus stopped and wouldn't start again for a couple of minutes. But
eventually the motor caught and we were on our way again. As we came back
into the city, through Syntagma Square, the guards were changing in front of
the Parliament building, silhouetted against the lit wall of the Tomb of the
Unknown Soldier, like a commedia dell'arte pantomime with their skirts and
tassles and pom-pommed shoes. The bus made a stop right in front of our
hotel, so we hopped off and were home.
We were very tired and needed to be up early the next morning, but we hauled
ourselves out and took the subway from Omonia Square (pronouned just like
"ammonia," it actually means "harmony") down to Monastiraki, where the
streets are lined with one taverna after another. We took our guidebook's
recommendation of one called Sigala and had a fine meal of grilled meats.
Jason's lamb chops weren't really enough food for him, but my mixed grill
(sliced lamb, lamb sausage, chicken skewers and pork bits with pita) was
huge and between the two, along with a starter salad (Greek, of course :) we
did very well. At the table next to us were two guitarists and a bouzouki
player entertaining the diners with traditional tunes. Most of the other diners
seemed to be Greek, so we felt like we were getting a very authentic
experience. That was probably our best chance to try ouzo or retsina, but
we were both too tired to think of alcohol.
We had bought an English version of the Athens News and enjoyed reading
through it over dinner for some local color and hints of world news. One of
the most fascinating bits was that a television program had uncovered a link
between the president and an illegal gambling club. The report was
generating intense criticism of their sensationalist journalism and a
re-examination of the current system of television. Apparently until a few
years ago there were only two channels in Greece, both run by the government
and very much the mouthpieces of the ruling party. The system was
deregulated, but new channels are required to have licenses from the state
channels, which the state channels, piqued at losing their monopoly, refuse
to grant. So there are ten new channels, all technically broadcasting
illegally.
Saturday was taken up by a cruise of the Saronic Gulf. We were picked up by
bus at our hotel and after the usual whistle-stop tour around Athens, got
out to Piraeus in time for the 8:30am departure of the boat. It was very
windy, so all the inside rooms were very crowded and at first we could only
find seats in the lowest deck, that had tiny windows. But after an hour,
the sun had come out and people were moving on deck and consolidating, so we
were able to find better seats upstairs. They did a simple demonstration of
a couple of traditional Greek dances and I got what I hope will be fun
pictures of Jason taking part. He had bought an International Herald
Tribune that morning and we passed some time catching up on current events.
After about three hours, we landed on Poros, where we had about 45 minutes
to wander the small port town. We strolled up and down tiny hillside
streets of shops and picked up a cheese pastry at a bakery to tide us over
until lunchtime. Then it was back on the boat for the two-hour cruise to
Hydra while the first lunch seating had their meal. At first we sat out on
deck, but after a bit the wind was too much for us (my throat had been
slightly sore since the previous afternoon and I was afraid of coming down
with something, so I was trying to take it fairly easy) so we went into the
quiet upper bar where we found an empty booth, put our heads down on the
table and napped until we arrived. As we pulled up to the quay, a flood of
cats came running down to meet us, jumping over each other to be in front.
Everywhere we went in Greece there were feral cats and sleeping dogs in
various states of manginess.
Hydra was lovely and avoiding the offers of a donkey ride we walked out
around the harbor and the adjacent cliff, where we found a nice bench where
we could sit in the sun and admire the view. We strolled back through town
and were very amused by a little boy walking along with a tiny puppy clamped
onto the hem of his trousers by its teeth.
Back on the boat, it was our turn for lunch. That consisted of a little
bowl of shredded cabbage and carrots with olives and French dressing and a
shell full of pasta salad, followed by plates of white & wild rice with some
chicken in a lemony sauce and vastly overcooked broccoli. Dessert was a
tough, overly sweet thing like a profiterole. We were seated with an
English couple, a younger, burly Australian businessman and a reporter from
Washington, DC. They weren't the most talkative group and the band started
playing loud, cheesy muzak, so we finished up and went out on deck.
Eventually we arrived on Aegina, the largest island of the Saronic Gulf,
with a population of 15,000. It's the closest island to Athens and a very
popular spot for Athenian summer homes. It's also the source of "the best
pistachios in the world" and has hundreds of trees. According to our guide,
youths from all over the country come to Aegina in August to help with the
harvest of 25-30 kilos of nuts from each tree. We had signed up for the
"optional" (i.e. "for an extra charge") tour of the island, so we got off
the boat directly onto a bus mainly filled with Spanish speakers. In
general, there seemed to be relatively few Americans out and about in
Europe.
We were taken by bus across the island to the Temple of Aphaia. She was a
nymph in the court of Aphrodite, but her identity was subsumed into that of
Athena at some point. The temple provides the third point for the "sacred
triangle," together with the Parthenon and the temple at Sounion, and is in
sufficiently good condition that the complex inner structure is visible.
Across the road we visited the gift shop to buy pistachios and try their
over-sugary pistachio ice cream.
On the way back to the port, we stopped at the Cathedral of St. Nectarios.
He was a member of the monastery on the island, famous for his skills as a
healer, who died in 1921 and was canonized as a saint in 1961. As the last
saint of the Orthodox church, St. Nectarios' remains are the focal point of
a pilgrimage that all Greek Orthodox believers are supposed to make at least
once in their lives, preferably on November 9th, his name day and that off a
majority of the inhabitants of the island. The monastery has been closed to
visitors since the construction of a huge cathedral next door about 25 years
ago. The outside is finished, but the inside is still in the process of
being decorated, so no photos are permitted. The saint's remains in its
silver reliquary are housed in an impressively carved marble bier and there
is a gorgeous mosaic in the chancel showing the Saronic Gulf with its
islands and octopus and fish in the water. The bus dropped us off at the
edge of town, so that we could stroll back to the boat past the shops. We
walked out to the end of the pier to see the tiny, whitewashed Byzantine
chapel, and then boarded again for the trip back to Piraeus. The sunset was
lovely that evening. Our bus had us back to the hotel half-an-hour after we
docked. It had been a fun day and we saw some pretty places, but spending
eleven hours out in order to do a total of three hours on the islands didn't
seem like a good value-for-time deal. If I had known, I would have skipped
the cruise and just taken a ferry over to Aegina for the day.
We were exhausted again and needed to pack, so we decided to go back up to
the Olive Garden and enjoy their lovely view and tasty food. Jason wanted
the spinach salad with katiki cheese again, but I went for the rock fish
broth with ravioli this time and was delighted with its rich and subtle
flavors. Jason tried the yogurt crusted roast lamb--the Greeks seem to
believe that all lamb must be cooked very thoroughly--with mushrooms and
potatoes while I went for the shrimp risotto with salmon roe on the side.
That was light and tasty, while Jason found his somewhat too rich and
overwhelming. We skipped dessert and went out on the terrace to attempt
some pictures of the Acropolis by night before going down to sleep.
In the morning we packed up and were out of the hotel just after 8:30am. I
was very tired of the breakfast buffet by then, so we skipped that and got
pastries at a place around the corner instead. We walked up to the National
Archeological Museum, not far from our hotel, and spent a couple of hours
moving steadily ahead of a tourist group through the collection. They have
some very beautiful things and it's interesting to see the development from
one period to the next and the degree to which the Renaissance re-enacted
that process. By that time I had noticed an interesting phenomenon: over
and over, as we toured these different archeological museums, my eye would
be caught by statues or fragments of a woman and it would turn out to be
Aphrodite, every time. In this collection, one of my favorite pieces was a
fragment of a relief, about a foot in diameter, showing her face in profile,
against an 18" circular backing board. Down in the gift shop, I was
surprised to see a high-quality plaster cast of it for sale and even more
surprised when I saw the price--about a third of what I would have guessed.
As I tried to figure out how on earth I could get it home (the shop doesn't
ship and as it was Sunday, I couldn't ship it myself, and it would never fit
in the overhead compartment and I wouldn't trust it to the baggage
handlers), the clerk mentioned that the backing board wasn't included, just
the fragment, which could be packaged so I could carry it onto a plane. I
was so pleased to walk out of there with it under my arm!
We dropped the package off at the hotel to wait with the rest of our
luggage, and went on down the street to the Panepistimou metro station. One
long block includes three monumental buildings, each built in a slightly
different take on a classical temple. The first is the National Library,
with its sweeping stairways. Next is the University's main building, with
Ionic columns and frescoes representing the various branches of knowledge.
Last is the Athenian Academy, flanked by giant columns topped by statues of
Athena and Apollo, and fronted by statues of Socrates and Plato, seated in
thought. We took some photos and got on the metro down to the Akropoli
stop. Coming out of it, we were right below the Acropolis, near the Theatre
of Dionysus. We wandered up and explored that for a bit before trying to
figure out where the main entrance to the Acropolis Study Center might be.
Eventually we found it, but it was closed, contrary to their posted hours.
Someone later speculated that it might have been closed to repair damage
from a recent fire in the subway tunnel underneath the building.
Thwarted, we wandered back into the Plaka and over to the Agora. It was
used as a cemetery in the 6th c. BCE, but by the 5th c. BCE had become a
marketplace. The western side became the neighborhood of smiths and
metalworkers and a Temple to Hephaistos was built there around 445 BCE,
launching the Golden Age of public works under Pericles that also included
the Parthenon. The temple is also known as the Thiseion, because some of
its friezes depict Theseus. It is one of the best preserved temples in all
of Greece. On the eastern edge is the reconstructed Stoa (corridor)
Attalou, originally built in the 2nd c. BCE, which houses the site's museum.
The southern edge is overlooked by the Areopagos, a big rock where the
Athenian supreme court once stood and where the Apostle Paul first preached
to the Athenians in 54 CE.
After a pleasant hour in the Agora, we headed back through the Monastiraki
fleamarket along its northern edge and into the Plaka. We bought some
shirts at one of the shops and made our way back to our favorite cafe. This
time we knew to order "gyros pita" in order to get the wraps we had in mind.
They were so good that we each had two. While we were sitting there, I
looked up and recognized some of the Spanish students from the Sounion bus.
I called out to the girl we had talked to the most and she came and said hi
and sat with us for a few minutes. She left with her group and we strolled
up Filellino street to Syntagma Square to catch the changing of the guard in
front of the Parliament building. In daylight we could see all the
beautiful details of their traditional uniforms of embroidered black jackets
over white shirts, pleated skirts and tights. Their red fez-like hats are
each decorated with a long tassle hanging past their shoulders and their red
shoes have metal hobnails on the bottom that click on the marble as they
parade and enormous pom-poms on the toes that flip in unison as they do
their stylized march. When they had finished and the new pair guards were
on their silent duty, Jason took my picture standing next to one of them.
At that point we were somewhat stumped. Without a stop at the Acropolis
Study Center to take up our time, it was only 2pm, the hour at which the
museums open at all on Sundays close. So we had three hours to kill before
meeting Juliette at our hotel. We wandered into the National Gardens, which
stretch between the Parliament building and the ministerial residences of
the Kolonaki district. There were zillions of families out with their kids
in costume--a little Minnie Mouse re-enacted Marilyn Monroe's famous
blown-skirt moment for us as we all passed over a subway grating--so we sat
in the park and watched them running around the playground in their get-ups.
Eventually we decided to leave--the gardens are not very well maintained and
tend towards the jungly and buggy. When we emerged on the opposite side of
the park, in front of the president's house, we decided to walk around
rather than retracing our steps. We saw a detachment of honor guards
marching down the sidewalk to relieve the ones on duty at the residence, and
then we passed their barracks, where a soldier in modern uniform at the gate
was flirting with a bus-load of teenagers. We walked back through the
square one last time and down Panepistimou to our hotel.
We sat up on the roof terrace for an hour, enjoying a last view of the
Acropolis and the city. At 4:45pm we went down to the lobby and got our
bags. Our transfer agent, Juliette, had said to meet her there at 5:00pm.
Of course, she had also said she would call us every day, so we were a
little nervous. At 4:55, we were paged. I went to the house phone and when
I got back, Jason was talking to the couple from Dallas, the Dollys, who
were back from their whirlwind weekend in Cairo. They'd had a great time
and were completely exhausted, but wanted to try to catch the end of the
Carnaval parade. So they left and we sat down again and Jason said "So who
was on the phone" and I realized I'd forgotten to tell him about Juliette's
call to say she couldn't make it to the hotel in time, but had arranged to
have our taxi driver pick us up on time and meet her along the way to the
airport.
We were dubious, but it all worked out. Traffic was very light and Juliette
was right at the point where she and the driver had arranged to meet. She
hopped in and debriefed us during the rest of the quick trip. We checked in
and said goodbye and then wandered around the shops for a bit. We decided
to get some food and McDonald's seemed like the easiest option. I had one
of the best fish fillets of my life! Our flight was late boarding and we
ended up sitting over the wing. Jason was reading _The Adventures of
Kavalier & Clay_, which had been very funny at the beginning, while the book
I was reading, Amy Tan's _The Bonesetter's Daughter_ was grim and grueling.
Halfway through his started getting grim and mine lightened up, so our moods
were shifting in opposite directions. It seemed to take forever to get back
to Luton, but in fact we landed right on time. It was pouring and we had to
get down the metal stairs and run across the tarmac. Welcome back to
England.
We picked up our bags, bought Thameslink tickets and took the shuttle back
over to the train station. Then we had almost 45 minutes until our train.
Fortunately, there were seats indoors and a little shop so we could get
drinks and a movie magazine, since I had finished my book. The train
finally arrived and we settled in for the trip back to London. It was the
last train of the evening, so we made all the local stops. We made the tube
(we hadn't been sure we would) and arrived back at the flat right around
midnight.
Running through our email, we got the news that Jason's grandmother had died
on Saturday. She's been declining steadily over the past few years and much
worse in the past month, so it wasn't a surprise, but we were sad to hear
it. She was a lovely woman and there are so many friends and family to miss
her and treasure her memory. I am so glad that I could meet her and she
could attend our wedding before she died. Jason called his mother and
talked to her for quite a while, as I sorted through the mail and read
email. We are planning not to travel to Idaho for the funeral, but to plan
to attend the family reunion there this summer, when they are thinking to
re-inter Trish's parents together. It will be good to be all together at
that time.
I've spent the past couple of days catching up and starting to figure out
everything that needs to happen before we leave again for Spain in ten days.