Athens, Greece

7/17

This morning we arrived in Piraeus, Greece! Piraeus, in Greek pronounced either pee-ray-oos or pie-ree-oos, I’ve heard both, is the port of Athens. It’s about a 45 minute metro to the center of Athens, but today the metro is on strike so that won’t be happening. Luckily, the busses aren’t on strike today so SASers can still travel independently and cheaply into Athens.

Piraeus itself is much larger and more metropolitan than I expected. I was thinking it would be more like Civitavecchia, the port of Rome: a smallish town revolving around the port. Piraeus still revolves around its ports, but it is definitely a city, with at least seven stories throughout and more in the more densely populated centers. Piraeus, unlike Civitavecchia where there was a chunk of countryside between that city and Rome, sprawls into Athens. When I was on my way to Athens on the SAS tour bus today, our guide just announced that we were in Athens even though there wasn’t much of a break in the buildings. Our tour guide told us that Piraeus is the largest port in the Mediterranean, which was a surprise.

The tour took us around Athens and then up to the Acropolis. First, we stopped at the Olympic stadium in Athens, which was large and quite impressive looking all made of white marble. The floor all around the stadium was also made of white marble, and the sun was so bright that when I stepped out of the bus, I had to squint my eyes almost shut to keep the reflection of light off the marble from blinding me, even though I was wearing sunglasses. We passed by the capital building, which is constructed, as many important buildings in Greece are, in neoclassical style with modern ionic columns lining the front of the building. I was struck by how wide the main road in Athens was, and by how much graffiti there was, much of it having to do with the economic situation. We passed the main city square, which was full of protesters, banners and tents reminiscent of los indignados in Barcelona. No actual protests took place while I was there, but ones in the past had elevated to violence. We also passed the tomb of the unknown Greek soldier, with the two guards outside wearing traditional garb: a red fez-like hat, a white tunic-y shirt with a vest over, a white skirt that poofs out almost like a long tutu, off-white leggings, high white socks with a black stripe at the top, and large dark red shoes with a black puff ball on the toes. I think they must have been trying to out-do the Swiss Guard at the Vatican. 

While driving, our guide told us that Athens had been built to house ½ million people, but today 4 ½ million people live there. As such, they have a problem with pollution, so on odd numbered days, only cars with odd-numbered license plates can be driven, and even on even, which means that people in Athens can only drive their cars every other day. But the public transportation in Athens is excellent (when it’s not on strike): metro and busses that go all over the city and connect all over the country and are very cheap (most tickets under 1.5 euro) and frequent and usually on time. But, if you buy the wrong ticket, don’t validate your ticket or get caught without a ticket, you get fined 60 times the price of the ticket. A group of friends accidentally bought student bus tickets (which are .7 euro instead of 1.4 euro) which were apparently only for Greek students, and the police fined them 72 euro. Also, Athens was completely empty today, except for tourists. Our guide said this was because it was Sunday and very hot (37 degrees C), but I couldn’t shake a weird ghost town feeling. There were lots of trees lining the streets, which was pretty and almost every story of the buildings in both Athens and Piraeus had a balcony covered with an awning to protect against the sun.

It’s always funny for me to see American influences in foreign countries, but today in Greece I saw on the best. In the window of a store were several floor to ceiling cartoon images of Chuck Norris saying something in Greek to advertize their store. Chuck Norris in Athens.

Once we had seen most of the city, we headed over to the Acropolis. Acropolis means the highest point of a city, and the Acropolis in Athens is just that. It really was cool to look up and see the Parthenon above the modern buildings of the city. When our bus was fairly close, we were stopped by a police car. Turns out that no cars could drive past a certain point around the Acropolis because Hillary Clinton was at the Acropolis Museum today. I didn’t get to see her, but several of my friends did and two even got a picture with her inside the museum. So, we made the trek the rest of the way up to the Acropolis on foot. It was very hot, but most of the way up the Acropolis was covered in olive trees, so there was at least shade. Once we got to the archaeological site on the top of the hill however, there were very few trees to provide shade and the sun was merciless. The stones on which we were walking were very smooth and slippery, and several people almost fell if they were not watching their footing. I loved imaging the 2,500 years of feet that had polished these stones to their current slick state.

Around 2000BC, the Acropolis was the civic, social, economic and religious center of ancient Athens, but by 1200BC most other buildings had moved down off the Acropolis (such as the agora, the marketplace) so it was just the religious center of the city. The Parthenon is the temple of Athena, the patron goddess of Athens. According to Greek legend, two god wanted to be patrons of the city: Poseidon and Athena. To decide who would be the patron, both gods gave the people of the city a gift. Poseidon gave a salt water source and two horses. Athena gave an olive tree, and the city inhabitants preferred her gift and names the city Athens.
In the 4th century BC, the Persians sacked Athens and burnt the Acropolis and the entire city. The Athenian fleet defeated the Persians around same time, and the Athenians came back and restored the burned city. 449 BC was the highest point of Greek civilization (democracy was born, Golden Age of Athens), and the ruler Pericles wanted to show that Athens was the most important city-state. He invited the best architects, sculptors and painters to rebuild the city. In this time, all the currently white marble buildings and statues of the Acropolis would have been painted with bright colors.

But later, at the end of 5th century and after a war between Athens and Sparta, not enough money to rebuild until Romans moved in and respected the Acropolis enough to maintain the temples on top. The 5th century AD also begins the Christian Byzantine period, when the Parthenon is converted into a Christian church. In the 11th century, crusaders transform the Parthenon to a Catholic church. The Venetians storm through Athens, then the Ottoman Turks come and transform it to a mosque. The Ottomans eventually use it to store gunpowder, and as it became a militarily strategic point, the Parthenon was bombed to destroy gunpowder by the Venetians.

In the 19th century, an Englishman made an agreement with the Turks to take a bunch of marbles and statues to decorate his castle. He eventually game them to British Museum, where they remain to this day despite multiple requests by Greece for their return. Our guide mentioned this point several times during the tour, and I would tell it was a sore spot.

Pollution damaged the buildings of the Acropolis, so today they are taking more stringent measures to protect the white marble buildings. You can’t smoke up on the Acropolis or bring drinks other than water, and it is protected by UNESCO.

The marbles on the two triangular facades of the Parthenon used to feature the birth of Athena straight from her father’s, Zeus’s, head on one side and the story of the competition between Poseidon and Athena to be patrons of the city on the other. Now, both of those marble stories are in the British Museum.

If you look down from the Acropolis, you can see an incredible view of Athens. You can also see the best preserved ancient Greek temple in Greece: one to Hephaestus, the god of iron and the forge. There is also the Theater of Dionysus, which has been revamped to hold modern plays.

On the top of the Acropolis, you can see three main groups of ruins: the wingless victory temple (which once held a statue of wingless victory), the Parthenon with its Doric columns which once had a 12m high gold and ivory statue of Athena at the end (it had since now disappeared), and the Erectheon. The Erectheon was the most important temple to ancient Greeks on the Acropolis. On the inside, there was a saltwater source and an olive tree because this was place where the quarrel between Athena and Poseidon occurred. The columns are in the ionic style, the most elegant, and the temple itself was divided into two parts: one to Athena and one to Poseidon. It is very well-known today because of the statues of six women in place of the columns on one side: the maidens porch. Now, all these are replicas. Five of the originals are in the Acropolis Museum, and the last and best preserved maiden is in the British Museum. Our guide told us a story, which supposedly occurred after the first maiden was taken by the British but while the other originals were still in the temple. It sounds like an urban legend to me, but it still makes a nice story, and further underscores the resentment the Greeks feel for having so many of their monuments stolen. Of course, it is nice for the rest of the world to be able to see Parthenon marbles in the British Museum. Anyway, supposedly women were sleeping in the Erectheon temple (don’t remember why exactly…it was hot up there and I couldn’t pay attention the whole time) and heard the other statues crying because they missed their sister.

The whole Acropolis has been under restoration, and you can tell where the restorations have occurred by where the bright white marble, which comes from a nearby mountain, puzzle-pieces its way into columns.

When we came back to the ship after our day in Athens, I was itching to find a theater nearby that played Harry Potter in English. So, I talked with other HP enthusiasts on the ship (which were very easy to find…almost everyone I talked to was at least willing to go see HP tonight and many were dying to go). We found a theater in a mall in Piraeus, the Village Shopping center, that was playing HP in English every half hour. So, we hopped a bus to the theater (easier said than done…but we found the right one eventually) and made it in time for the 10pm show. The movie theater we went to looked a lot like one I would see in Southern California. Similar size, similar decoration (except a large, circular chandelier that looked something like a faux-crystal disco ball in the center of the entry area of the theater), even similar snacks being sold (yes, they had pizza, popcorn, hot dogs, sodas and ice cream instead of gyros and feta cheese…but they did have beer so there’s at least one step up). Also, the movie theaters had assigned seating, and for our whole group to sit together (all 17 of us) we had to buy our tickets all together…a logistical nightmare I avoided by passing off my seven euro (even about the same price for the movie!) and slipping to the side of the line. There were several posters for HP around the theater, so I had to take a picture of me with one…unfortunately that one was Malfoy, but the movie was starting soon and it was nearby.

I loved the movie, but am (like so many others) a little sad that no more new HP books or movies will be coming out. But, I will definitely to see it again when I get home.



7/18

Our bus driver on the SAS-organized trip to Delphi today was named Kostas…as if I needed anything else to make me feel like I was in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Two of my friends left for Santorini early this morning…so they probably have that feeling times a million right now. Once we got onto the highway, we passed an Ikea (they really are everywhere) and Autogrill, a European pit stop full of delicious snacks that I originally discovered during a two-week road trip around Italy with my family for Spring break a few years ago.

On the way to Delphi, our tour guide explained to us that marble is relatively easy to find in Greece, which is one of the reasons why the monuments in Greece are mainly marble. Also they have to clean those monuments regularly to prevent the pollution from accumulating on the marble, allowing a chemical reaction that degrades the marble to occur. She said that wood was the expensive building material in Greece, and that wealthy people would have wood floors, not marble ones. We also passed a small Christian Orthodox cemetery. The graves here were topped with marble monuments that reminded me of ones you see in certain cemeteries in New Orleans or other places where the soil is unstable, but here the body is still buried six feet underground, they just have very ornate tombstones.

We stopped at a small market and gas station to allow our bus to refuel. For some reason I was always hungry in Greece (seriously…I ate about every two hours, and not the dainty carrot stick kind of snacks), so despite my sturdy breakfast of oatmeal that morning, I went into the market looking for a snack. I got lucky and found the last sandwich in the market, which was a basic but tasty ham and cheese, and something that looked like a Greek granola bar. It was most almonds with some kind of honey mixture holding it together, and it was very tasty. I also had a few paprika chips that one of my friends bought. This is without a doubt my new favorite flavor of chips. They are everywhere in Greece, and Lay’s makes them! I really hope they become popular in the US, because if not I might have to get some shipped to me to quench paprika chip cravings that I know will happen once I’m home.

Our tour guide used some of the time on the three-hour bus ride up to Delphi to explain the differences between Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox Christianity. I was quite confused of this choice of topic considering that we were on our way to Delphi, the location of the oracle of Apollo and one of the holiest sites of the ancient Greek world, until she said that we would be stopping by one of the most beautiful Orthodox Christian monasteries in Greece on the way to Delphi. Pretty much everyone on the bus had the same reaction to this statement. We looked up from our iPods or from dozing out the window and gave each other a “This is the Delphi trip, right?” look. Apparently this visit to the monastery had been in the itinerary all along, but most of us had bought this tour before we even came on Semester at Sea, ad the full contents of this trip’s description was long-buried under an overload of memories from Spain, Italy and Croatia. So we continued on, up winding roads through steep hillsides in scenic, middle-of-nowhere Greece to the Hosios Loukas Monastery.

While my start with the monastery was unexpected and a little rocky, after having seen it, I am so glad that I went. The monastery itself was established in the tenth century by an Eastern Orthodox monk, Loukas. I’m a little fuzzy on the details, but Loukas at some point began miraculously healing sick people, the news of which attracted more and more follower monks to his monastery. After his death, the followers wanted to make Loukas a saint, but the head of the church wasn’t quite feeling it, so they made his “Hosios Loukas”, a hosios being one step down from sainthood. A church was then built near the monastery and names Hosios Loukas Church.

Now, I had just come from three of the most historically Roman Catholic countries in the world and had seen my fair share of beautiful churches. But this church was strikingly beautiful, and surprisingly different than the Catholic churches I had seen so many of in Spain, Italy and Croatia.  The outside, like most Orthodox churches, was fairly humble. It was made of brick and stone, most of the decoration on the façade being an interplay between these two building materials. A round dome crowned the church, also like most other Orthodox churches. Above the door was a mosaic of Jesus with a background of gold. All the mosaics in the church had a similar gold background, which our guide said was typical of Orthodox church decoration. The purpose of art in the church was not to be beautiful or realistic, but to educate the worshiper and represent the idea behind the painting. The church was meant to symbolize the universe, with mosaics of Jesus near the top and in the dome symbolizing heaven and then the Virgin Mary and other lesser saints coming further down the walls, and then geometric patterns and mosaics of flowers detailing the insides of small arches or lower down on the walls. I feel like I’m doing a poor job of describing what the inside of this church looked like…but I have (or will soon have) pictures on facebook so you can see what I mean. In general the church looked more like a mosque than a Catholic church or cathedral, with similar rows of round arches throughout. Also, the building overall did not have that same grand quality with towering ceilings that makes everyone who enters feel tiny, and our guide said that this was quite intentional: worshipers in an Orthodox church were not meant to feel dwarfed by the power of the religion. Also, there were no pews in the building; just a few ornate wooden chairs built into the wall around the edges for important visitors like the bishop. People stood when attending mass.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but before we entered the church, all girls wearing bottoms that did not cover our knees had to wear one of the skirts that hung lined up on hooks in a small room before entering the monastery. It was very convenient that they let us borrow these skirts instead of having to buy something like I did at a cathedral in Barcelona, but I’m sure this monastery gets a tiny fraction of the traffic that one did. We were the only visitors the entire time we were there, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we were the only visitors that day. It was beautiful, it was just quite a drive from any major city, or even small town for that matter.

We got back on the road after an hour and a half or so touring the monastery and church, with plenty of time for pictures of the beautiful view of the valley below. We passed through a tiny mountain town called Arrahova about half an hour later. We just drove through, but I wished the entire time that we could have gotten out and walked around. It was full of cute little shops that  probably could have wandered around in all day, but I had to be content staring out the window for the five minutes or so we drove (slowly) through the town. Arrahova means “the sound of the wind in the trees,” and they are famous for a special type of goat cheese that is served either grilled or fried (fried cheese was one of the most common foods I saw in Greece…it was on many more menus and in much more variety than gyros even, and I very rarely see it in the US), and for their woven goods. I was also the most shocked I have ever been at how close two busses can come without actually touching. We were part way through the town, and the street was tiny enough for me to think we wee doing well fitting one bus. But lo and behold, another bus trundled along the road on the way back (I assume) from Delphi. Both busses stopped for a bit, and then the other started backing up and I figured they would just have to go all the way out of the town; it was just physically impossible that both busses could be on this street at the same time. The other bus did not go back, but backed up enough to drive one set of tires up on the sidewalk. Our bus did the same, and then they began to drive toward each other. Everyone in the bus (except the tour guide, who stopped talking only reluctantly when she realized everyone’s attention was too absorbed what for her must have been a regular occurrence) held their breath as we watched the other bus pass by…literally less than an inch of space between the side of our bus and the rear view mirror sticking out of the side of the other bus.

In another half an hour or so, my Greece stomach was telling me it was time to eat again. Perfect timing, because we then stopped for lunch. It was an adorable restaurant, tile floors with high, beamed wooden ceilings and a beautiful view of the valley out the back wall, which was floor to ceiling windows. Our lunch was served family style, and dishes or traditional Greek food just kept coming out. We started with bread and tzatziki, which was delicious and so refreshing after the heat outside, and a Greek salad of fresh tomatoes, onions, olives and a huge chunk of delicious feta. Then feta cheese wrapped in filo dough and fried, spanakopita, which was much lighter and more spinach-y than what I had eaten before in the US, cabbage stuffed with rice and veal and topped with a creamy sauce (this tasted a bit like stuffed grape leaves, so it must have been similar), some kind of delicious herbed meat patty with cheese in the center (none of us were expecting this…so when we got to the cheese our entire table almost died of happiness, or at least I did), French fries (which were served almost everywhere I went in Greece), and rice with veggies. For dessert, we could choose between fruit, baklava, and a cake that looked a little like tiramisu with nuts at the bottom. I had the baklava, and it was delicious and fairly light.  Fully stuffed and good to go without eating for at least five hours (a long time for me in Greece), we boarded the bus for Delphi.

Delphi was the oracle of Apollo, and back in the day (around the 5th century BC) the whole area was full of travelers from all over the Greek world bringing questions to the oracle. The oracle would answer questions the seventh day of seven out of ten (ancient Greek) months of the year, so people would literally camp at the base of the hill where the temple was located for weeks, sometimes months, waiting to be able to ask. Of course, not everyone actually went to the oracle; if they had a less dire question, there were a number of lesser “prophets” on the read leading up to the oracle that could answer their question much more quickly and cheaply. But for the others, there was quite a ceremony to approach the oracle. First, the would begin at the base of the mountain, where there were a number of small temples to different gods and goddesses (people were living here, so the base of the hill was much like a mini city). They would then ascend the hill and pass treasuries set up by the different city-states. Technically, these treasuries were meant to be gifts from the city-states to the oracle to venerate Apollo, but they were also means of showing off to all the people who came to Delphi, which was a lot. Our tour guide was from Athens, and she sad the Athenian treasuries (yes, they had two…a small one toward the beginning and a really fantastic huge one later on, they were pretty smart) were the best, of course. Once past the treasuries, they would approach two priests, who would sprinkle the goat the brought with cold water. If the goat shivered, they would slaughter it as an offering to Apollo (and for free lunch), hear the question and take it down to the oracle. The oracle was a virgin woman at least fifty years old, who was technically called the pithia. She would drink water from the spring coming up from the cave over which the temple was built, and that in combination with whatever other noxious fumes were coming up from the cave would make her babble. The two priests would then interpret her babble, which was supposed to be the god Apollo speaking through her, into a riddle-form answer to the question, which had to pose two possible choices. The priests would then come back, tell the owner of the recently deceased goat the “answer” and he would walk back down the hill, probably extremely confused. And, when the circumstance in his question arose, and he found out which choice the oracle had really meant was correct (because the oracle was always right, so if he picked the wrong choice it was because he misinterpreted the oracle’s riddle-answer), he would come back to Delphi brining gifts of thanks.

Interestingly, the priests didn’t simply rely on their ability to interpret the pithia’s babble and hope the answer would apply to the question. Instead, they had dozens of spies who would talk to the people in the city below to gather information on the questions they were asking as well as the news from the Greek world. Then, they would have time to formulate an answer. If they really didn’t like a question, they might sprinkle warm water on the goat, so it wouldn’t shiver, which meant the oracle could not hear their question today. Or, they would just give an answer so convoluted that neither choice could be seen as right or wrong.

The ancient Greeks believed that Delphi was the birthplace and center of the universe, which is part of the reason why it was such a holy site. As such, a common gift to the oracle was a belly button stone, or a more or less 3 foot high cone shapes stone. These can be found all over Delphi, and we saw several both in the archaeological site and the museum.

When we toured the museum, we unfortunately only had 45 minutes before it closed (at 3pm), so our guide did a very quick, but nonetheless complete, tour. It was full of statues, marble faces of buildings decorated in relief and other artifacts found at Delphi. By far my favorite piece was the charioteer of Delphi. This was a life-size bronze statue of the winning charioteer of the Pithian Games, a kind of mini-Olympics that took place every other year at Delphi because sport and religious were intertwined for ancient Greece. It had incredible detail; each eyelash was actually a part of the original mold for the piece, not added on later. Also, the artist put iron-rich clay where the lips were, and they rusted, giving the lips a reddish hue that was still visible.

After the museum, we hiked around ancient Delphi. The site was fantastic, and the views were incredible. The mountains jutting up above us reminded me a lot of Mt. Talac in Tahoe for those of you who have been to SSC. The Athenian treasury had been rebuilt at least in part, and it was impressive. The actual temple of the oracle was enormous. Today there were only a few columns left, but the foundations of the original temple were still there, and it was easy to imagine how grand it must have been when it was functioning. Further up the hill from the temple, there was an amphitheater where plays and music would take place. Further up from that (significantly further…the ancient Greeks really had a thing for building on tops of hills, probably lucky for me considering how much I’m eating here) was a long, narrow stadium that the Romans renovated. I’m glad I make the hike up to the stadium; the view the whole way just kept getting better, and I got some great pictures of Delphi from above. Past a certain point, the stones lining the path were the originals from ancient Greek times. Just like in the Acropolis, I loved imagining the 2,500 years of feet that had walked this same path, wearing the stones to their present perilously smooth state.

I also saw several very cute stray cats in Delphi, one of which I almost picked up until I reminded myself how unhappy I would be to have to go home early due to rabies.

On the way home, our tour guide pointed out the crossing paths at the base of the valley where Oedipus came across his father (without knowing it was his father) on chariot, had a fight and killed him.

When I came back to the ship, I was exhausted from the heat and took a nap. When I woke up I was hungry again, so I found some friends to go get some dinner. Today at 5am, a taxi strike began that will last the duration of our stay here, so my friends and I decided to wander into Piraeus until we found a place to eat. It didn’t take long, and I had a delicious chicken gyro with paprika tzatziki. One of my friends was dying for hummus, and convinced that he would find hummus somewhere in Greece as they sell “Athenos” brand hummus in the US. It wasn’t on the menu of any places we visited through the whole trip, and everyone he asked looked at him like he was crazy when he asked for hummus. I told him he would just have to wait for Turkey.


7/19

Today I had no plans other than to sleep in. I actually told all my friends not to call my room before 11am, and at 11:03am one of my friends called and asked if I wanted to go to Marathon.

I’m sure you all know the story: in the wake of a great Athenian naval victory over the Persians, a messenger was sent to the town of Marathon to deliver the news. He ran all 26 miles there, delivered the good news, and then dropped dead. Every time I hear this story I think of the Eddie Izzard sketch on it and wonder the same thing myself: why run if it was a victory? Just stroll the twenty-six miles, it’s not like you’re warning them of an impending Persian attack. But there were a lot of things the ancient Greeks chose to do that don’t make much sense to me.

So, as many of you probably know, I’m not a big fan of running. But, I had no plans for the day, and the threat of a ferry strike (which never actually happened…good thing, or about ½ of the ship would have been stranded on islands) botched my plans of going to Mykonos. So I, under the condition that I would do absolutely no running, met up with three of my friends to go to Marathon.

Getting there was quite the adventure in public transportation. First we walked to the bus station to take the bus to the metro in Piraeus, which we realized on the way back was completely unnecessary: it takes slightly less time to walk there than to take the bus. Then, we took the metro from Piraeus to a stop in Athens called Victoria. All was going smoothly on the metro until we reached the stop directly before Victoria. The doors closed, and the metro started going back the direction we had come. For about thirty seconds, one of my friends and I just stared at each other, silently hoping that the metro would start going the right way again. But it did not, so we got off at the next station, which happened to be Monastiraki (strong possibility that I just butchered that spelling), the stop nearest to the Acropolis. But today we were going to Marathon, so we went to the other side of the metro tracks to go in the correct direction. This side of the metro was closed, but just for this stop. I’m still not really sure how that works, but we got back on the metro and went one more stop in the wrong direction. We got off, and here the side in the direction we wanted to go was not under construction, so we got on. This time, we got off the metro at the stop right before Victoria, run over to the other side to the metro on the opposite side of the tracks and caught it just in time. As the doors closed, I crossed my fingers, hoping that that train would move in the correct direction. It did. We arrived at Victoria metro station in Athens a few minutes later, hopped off the metro and began asking around to find out where our bus station was. This was a not-so-nice part of Athens, and unfortunately I learned this the hard way while waiting in line at the newspaper stand to buy a bag of my newfound favorite paprika chips.

I didn’t notice at the time, but when I came back to the bus stop about twenty feet away, sat down on the bench and set my purse on my lap, I noticed a slash in the side of my purse. It had clearly been cut with a knife sometime since I had last looked down at it, and I hadn’t even noticed. Luckily, my purse has lots of pockets and nothing fell out or was stolen. I find it odd that this happened in Greece, because other than this one incident, the people in Greece were the friendliest and had the best hospitality of anywhere I went. They also touch a lot when speaking to you. While waiting at the bus stop, I offered an older woman a seat on the bench, and she smiled and said “eferistow” (you’re welcome in Greek…the one Greek word I mastered in my five days there) and touched me warmly on the shoulder and arm with both hands. In restaurants when I asked what was their best dish, on the way to bus stops when we asked directions, on tours when I asked the guide a question, people in Greece would touch me on the arm or shoulder or hand when they were speaking to me.

Our bus finally arrived, and this was a long-distance bus, so we bought the tickets on the bus itself rather than at one of the many newspaper and snack stands along the street where we would buy city bus tickets. About an hour and a half later, the woman we had asked to let us know when we arrived in Marathon told us that we had arrived. We hopped off the bus and onto a simple paved street with unremarkable, 2-3 story buildings around us. There was absolutely nobody on the streets. Most of the stores were closed. Nothing, not even the street signs, was in English. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see when I came to Marathon, but this was not it. It felt so empty, almost abandoned, and I wondered if we had gotten off at the wrong stop. The women we asked had told us that the city (town really) center was a few blocks downhill and to the left, so we headed in that direction. It had been a few hours since I had last eaten, so I was starving and we were dying for an air conditioned café with cold water.  Only a few steps into Marathon, one of my friends said, “no wonder that guy dropped dead, it’s hot as balls out here.” Laura, I will miss you after this trip.

After ten minutes or so of wandering, we found a café that was both open and air conditioned. It smelled delicious. Rotisserie chickens were roasting on a small, rotating spit, some mysterious mixture of meat and veggies was wrapped in foil and sitting on the grill, and some kind of juicy meat was stacked on one of those vertical stakes to be cut off the sides (like in Brazilian barbeque). And giant bottles of water, as well as Fanta and an array of other drinks, were nice and frosty in an open-face refrigerator in the front. Side note, Fanta is much better in Europe than the US, and I had lemon Fanta for the first time here in Greece…so delicious. I asked the woman behind the counter if we could see a menu, and she smiled and pointed at menus further down the counter, which were all in Greek. I tried asking her what was their best dish, but she only spoke Greek (“menu” has spread almost all through Europe to be used in Greece, so she knew that word, but probably not many others). Surprisingly, Greece is the place on the trip so far where I found the fewest people who spoke more than a few words of English. More surprising was that Croatia was the place on the trip so far where the most people (literally everyone I talked to) was almost fluent in or had at least good conversational English. But back to the café in Marathon: luckily a woman eating in the café spoke some English, and she came up and helped us order. She was telling us what different meats they had for the gyro (touching my arm as she spoke and pointing out the different foods being cooked on the other side of the counter), but for many she didn’t know what to say, so she pointed to the layered meat on the vertical spit and said “not chicken.” I ordered a “not chicken” gyro with everything on it. It came out with inions, tomatoes, French fries (several places served them in the gyros under the guise of being “potatoes”), tzatziki and paprika. My first bite was heavenly, and I decided that the “not chicken” tasted a lot like pork carnitas. Also they had somewhere between grilled and fried the pita itself before stuffing it full of goodies, so overall it was a pretty heart-healthy lunch (or snack, since it was about 5:00pm by now).

We continued walking down the street, hoping that we would come upon something interesting. There were lots of stray dogs and cats, just as there were in Piraeus and Athens, and I made the mistake of petting one, which then followed us around for ten minutes or so. We stumbled upon the “Center for the Promotion of the Marathon Race.” It was closed, but there were several large banners out front that proclaimed last year was the 2,500th anniversary of the first marathon, which was ran by that crazy messenger in 490 BC. 2,500 years of running for hours on end…insane. But it’s still impressive to have an event with such history. Further down, we found the stadium of Marathon. A cool mosaic was set in the ground nearby proclaiming that this was the starting place of the Olympic marathon run, and a shiny metal statue reminiscent of the winged shoes of Hermes sat on a white marble base at the white marble entrance to the well-maintained track and field. One of my friends took a lap around the track just for funsies. Also three flags: the Greek flag, the EU flag and a light blue flag with a dark blue banner and some white laurel wreath design in the middle that I think was some kind of Olympic flag, marked the entrance to the stadium.

The woman on the bus had told us that there was a bus to the beach at 6pm, so we found the bus stop, again with more effort than in Athens because people in Marathon were few and far between, but we made it to the stop in time to take the twenty minute ride to the beach. On the way, I saw a few of the classic white houses with blue domes. I had told myself that I couldn’t leave Greece until I saw these, so I was very happy to find them. Marathon on the beach was similar to the city, except without multiple stories in most places. It also had the imprecise feeling of many other beach towns I had been to in central California. We found a place to change into our suits (and a patisserie for me to sample Marathon baklava, which was quite rich and sweet but delicious) and headed toward the beach.

The beach was so nice—not touristy or crowded at all, and only a little rocky (at least compared with many of the other beaches I have visited recently) on the shore and then perfectly smooth sand in the water. The beach sloped out at a shallow grade, so we walked out a good 50 yards before four feet could no longer touch the bottom. The water itself was very flat…so flat in fact that I tasted the water to assure myself that this was the Aegean Sea and not a large lake, because there is a lake near Marathon. It was salty, so I’m going to go with the ocean and not a lake, but I should try to find out where I was on a map to be sure (if any of you would like to take that up as a homework assignment and email me about it, please do so). Being in the cool ocean was fantastic, and we all just waded and swam around contentedly for an hour or so. The sun sets pretty late here, probably around 9:15 that night, so when we got out it was still bright and warm enough to dry off in the sun and change back into clothes. We walked along the beach on the way back to the bus stop. It was lined with adorable outdoor beach bars, cafes and tavernas (which are intermediate between a café and a restaurant in both price and formality and serve traditional Greek food) that reminded me of beach bars in the Caribbean or Mexico. Outside one of these bars, I was shocked to find a cutout of Chuck Norris (with his name on the poster) saying that this place had the best food (or something like that…it was all in Greek except “Chuck Norris”). Before catching the 9pm (which ended up really being the 9:20pm) bus back to Athens, we stopped by a grocery store and bought peach iced tea (I’ve been getting it everywhere while on this trip…it’s just so good), tzatziki, pita, feta, and salami for a picnic dinner on the beach. I also found hot chocolate mix in the grocery store…which I of course bought because I had been going into hot chocolate withdrawal on the ship. It was just too hot in Croatia or Greece to have any, but it’s always cold on the air conditioned ship.


7/20

Today I slept in again, which felt fantastic, especially after going to bed early (for this trip). I met with friends around noon and decided to take the rest of the afternoon to explore Athens. We now knew it was easier to walk to the metro, and we knew because of our adventures with the metro the day before that Monastiraki was stop near the Acropolis and in the middle of the shopping center.

The shopping center was fantastic: there was one main, very wide stone-paved pedestrian (or most pedestrian, anyway) street lined with shops. At first these were large popular shops like Zara, H&M, Berksha and Blanco (kind of like Forever21 but better). At Blanco I found a super cute and comfortable pair of leopard print shoes and bright pink shorts. Eventually these larger stores fizzled into a market with tons of little stores selling all different types of clothes and Greek souvenirs. There were also a few streets branching off the main shopping ones that were lined with bars, cafes and tavernas, which we returned to for dinner before too long.

Between the larger stores and market areas and down a side street was the Sandal Poet of Athens. I have pictures of his shop (and will put them on facebook), but leather unfinished sandals and sandal laces line the shelves of every wall in the shop and hang from every point in the store on which they can be draped. He makes a range of leather gladiator sandals, and when I went in, he adjusted all the straps of the sandals to fit the size of my feet. Then, he hammered nails into the straps to keep them in their proper place, and told me that if I wanted to quicken the darkening of the leather’s color which would occur naturally with age, I could run olive oil into the sandals. Not surprisingly, the whole shop smelled like leather and had a very hippie vibe: hand-painted chairs in abstract, spiraling shapes and bright colors, a shag carpet and natural-colored lamp shades with designs drawn on. The store was cluttered, but in a way that made it feel more alive. The sandal poet himself certainly lived up to his name: he had shoulder length grey hair and a short beard and wore a black, tunic-y button up shirt over his substantial girth, a pair of simple and lived-in olive green pants and a pair of leather sandals. I assume they were a pair he had made, and they were so old they were almost black. The leather had perfectly molded to hit feet, and I knew why, despite literally being surrounded every day by new sandals, he preferred that pair. I asked how long it would take my sandals to turn the same color as his, and he laughed and told me that his sandals were very old. I said they were well-loved, and he agreed.

With my new gladiator sandals on my feet, we walked over and found a taverna for dinner. I asked our waiter what was best, and he was quite pleased and started explaining all the traditional Greek food to us (while touching my shoulder). I ended up ordering moussaka, and my friend Laura had pastitsio, kind of Greek lasagna. We also split a Greek salad, which came out as delicious red quartered tomatoes with refreshing cucumbers, blanched red onion, kalamata olives and a giant chunk of feta covered with olive oil and herbs. My moussaka, layered vegetables and meat with a potato-like sauce and cheese, was delicious. After we paid, we stood up to leave and our waiter came hurrying out and told us to sit, so we did. He brought us out a bowl of Greek yogurt with honey, which was also delicious.

When we got back to the ship, we met a bunch of people going to a Bon Jovi concert in Athens. I have no idea what Bon Jovi was doing in Athens…but there you go.

This was our last night in Greece and hadn’t been out yet, so we decided to go to this karaoke bar right outside the port where a bunch of other SASers were going for the night. It was fun, but a bit of a SAS-fest, so we went to an amazing outdoor club in Athens called Akrotiri Boutique. It was so cool: up on a hill so I could see the lights of Athens at night all around us.


7/21

This morning I went on the SAS-organized trip to the Corinth canal and ancient Corinth.  The canal was incredible: cut into rock and a skyscraper’s worth of stories deep. I had a snack of paprika chips at the market near the canal, and then we got back on the road to ancient Corinth. In ancient Greece, Corinth was one of the largest city-states in ancient Greece. The museum was small, but quite detailed. There were a number of marble statues, many of which were headless because to save money, they would just change the head to the new important figure instead of making a whole new statue. There were also a few sarcophagi and marble sphinxes. Several cases were full of hand-painted vases, plates and other daily objects, some of which were in miniature as burial goods. Well-preserved mosaics of myth scenes, geometric patterns, and grape vines decorated some of the walls.

The actual ruins of ancient Corinth were a little underwhelming compared with Delphi, so I wish I had seen them in reverse. The main temple was originally six by fifteen Doric columns, but today only five by three are left standing on the foundation of the temple. Much of the area is open rubble what used to be the agora. There were also the ruins of several fountains, including the Fountain of Peirene, and buildings which used to be stores and houses.

The economic situation is pretty palpable in Athens right now, lots of protests and public transportation strikes (which really complicated my traveling). Piraeus and Athens also felt strangely empty for being such large cities, and I found myself wondering where all the locals were. But despite the obvious hardship, overall the local people here are the friendliest and have the best hospitality of any country I've visited on this trip so far.


Love from Greece,
Ginny