ATHENS, GREECE - I arrive this morning in Athens, Greece to join a friend who teaches in Liverpool for a university trip in Athens, Delphi and Corinth. I have to pretend to be an academic again by reading a couple of articles and making a presentation on a topic but the rest of the time it is soaking up Greek food and culture!
As I write this, I sit on the balcony of our room looking at the Acropolis and Pantheon bathed in soft yellow light. The moon is a sliver that periodically peaks through the clouds. The glow of Athens stretches to the mountains and there are two other well-lite rock formations as high as the Acropolis that seem to stand guard over the city.
Athens is an interesting city and nothing like Paris, Vienna or Rome. Some of the architecture in the city center is well maintained and the transit system is good due to hosting the Summer Olympics in 2004. But after the city center, the architectural interest drops off. It is a city that has been lived in for 7000 years so it is bound to have some wear and tear.
In some ways it is a dumpy city filled with smells, exhaust, graffiti, squat, non-descript buildings with flat or red tiled roofs and metal pull down shades or angled awnings. But there is also a vibrancy in the chaos and once I looked beyond the disrepair of streets and buildings, it was clear the city is a living organism with people rushing around, the mandatory Mediterranean scooters and men and women surfacing after dark and hanging out at cafes with a beer or a coffee.
I took the bus one hour from the airport to the city center and then a taxi for the short ride to my hotel. Of course, it is an old city with very narrow one-way streets (forget US SUV's) which are twisted into an almost indecipherable maze. At one point, my driver had to ask for directions and then a helpful fellow on a motorcycle led us out of the neighborhood but after driving in a circle, we ended up in the same neighborhood where we started. Finally, the driver figured out the hotel was at the top of a hill, pointed up and dropped me off. After approximately 30 steps, I was at our hotel.
But with a second floor room and a small balcony, I have my view of the Acropolis and Pantheon.
Bus Trip to the End of the Road
SOUNIO, GREECE - We took a two hour bus trip from Athens along the coast to Sounio which has been a sacred site since very ancient times. The "sanctuary of Sounion" is first mentioned in Homer's The Odyssey and the Temple of Poseidon that now stands at Sounio was built in 444 BC atop of older temple ruins.
After we visited the ruins we walked down to a Fish Taverna by the beach and had dinner. A good Greek salad (onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and a block of feta cheese) and atherina (sand smelts) which are considered a humbler, perennial local fish which is lightly dipped in batter and eaten head and tail. They are only a couple of inches long so it is just like throwing popcorn in your mouth and they are delicious. Very little fishing is done here from the end of May until mid-October so sand smelts and sardines it is!
We found a short cut along the beach and walked up the hill back to the Temple where we could watch the sunset and had a spectacular view of the Aegean Sea. During the day the water was turquoise but as the sun reflected back on the clouds, there was a mirrored reflection of pink on the clouds and the water.
All was calm and quiet with the world.
