July 2

I’m going to start here and go backwards and see if my memory gets refreshed on the past days when I just had to stop writing for awhile.  This is a good one to start with.

We are on a four hour train ride to Kalambaka  as I write where we will spend the night and tour Meteora, which is a monastery on top of natural stone columns.  We disembarked yesterday in grueling Athens heat, grabbed a cab to our hotel which is right across from the train station (Really! One block on the other side of the street! Al is absolved of past sins!) We couldn’t check in right away as it was about 10 a.m. so we caught a #B52 bus to somewhere near the Archaeological Museum of Athens.  Oh my, it is quite the museum.  Housed in this museum is all of the stuff that has fallen off buildings or been dug up from tombs or excavated from the ground or found in shipwrecks (lots of bronze stuff) or, in the case of priceless artifacts , has been collected over decades and then donated to the state by a really rich lady.  My back does not like to stand around, I’ve discovered, I’d rather keep moving, so museums are starting to be a bit of a drag for me.  I kept at it though and as usual am glad I did.  It was well planned chronologically and it gave me some sense of how Greek turned to Byzantine anyway. 

I finally had to cry uncle though and it’s a blur how we got to the little restaurant in the area at the base of the Acropolis. Can’t remember the name as I’m finishing this 6 months later. I had beef/lamb gyros with tzatziki and pita.  I really need to find a good pita restaurant in the LA area to fulfill that need now and again.  I couldn’t eat it all and enjoyed it later for dinner. 

Still blazing hot and we decided for the sake of keeping me from ending up as a homicidal maniac that we should head back to the hotel for a break.  I was pretty desperate (those of you who know the Mary-in-Arches-Natl-Park -this- time -last -year know what I’m talking about) by the time we reached our room.  My clothes were soaked through, I hopped in the shower and wondered if it was a good idea to shock my body with the cold water that I dumped on it.  I survived that experience (someone told me you shouldn’t do that to dogs, not sure if it’s true for humans).  The little air conditioner was trying its best and Al was able to sleep but I just lay there thinking of the beaches I’d been to in the last week.  

(I’m going to stop here, because one of the reasons I decided to start writing on the train is that we are in hour four of this journey and about five rows up – we have assigned seats- two young women have been playing cards the entire time.  That’s great, I love playing cards, but whatever they are playing is a short game, so that every 5-10 mins the cards have been loudly shuffled.  Apparently, she thinks 5 shuffles is enough each time. So if I’m being generous and saying it’s been every 10 minutes since half an hour into the trip, – let’s see, 6 shuffle sessions per hour x 3 = 18 sessions.  5 shuffles per session x 18 sessions means we have listened to sharp shuffling (she’s good) of that damn deck 80 times.  I know that I have difficulty with annoying sounds but I think the Greek people must be the most patient people on the planet.  Were it not for the fact that I just don’t want to be that person, I would be up there gently suggesting that maybe they are ANNOYING THE ENTIRE TRAIN and maybe teach them what I call the “grandma shuffle” which is holding the deck in one hand and sloughing it off into the other, intermingling the cards.  Instead I put my earplugs in and took down the notch a bit.  I just don’t understand how this doesn’t drive other people nuts.  It’s like people whispering/talking at a performance.  Drives me insane.  One of my mahjong pals experiences this as well and there is a name for it “misophonia”.)

Back to our regularly scheduled programming.  About 7:30 p.m. Al went out and got some food for today’s trip and came back to the hotel completely and totally disgusted with himself.  “I’m in Athens for probably the only time in my life and I’m sitting here in this hotel room”.  Go! I told him, but he was beside himself and kept saying it was too late, the sun was going down, etc.   Only one thing for me to do – throw on some clothes and say let’s go.  This was an easy peasy prospect as we had bought Metro tickets for 24 hours and it was right down the street.  We didn’t need to take the bus. Got off at the Akropolis station and walked out into Saturday night in Athens, a breeze starting to cool things off, young people everywhere (I thought of my youngest, Jeff, who spent a few months during college taking a class in Italy and then backpacking a bit), music everywhere. We first went past the Odeon which is a functioning theater to this day.  There was some kind of music going on inside – noticed Diana Krall was there the day before, and although she’s not my favorite (can we have just a little vibrato?), it would be fun to see someone that famous there I’m sure.  Those ruins with lights shining on them are just so magically delicious to the eyes. 

The Athens Acropolis rose above us and we walked all around it, just outside the entrance (it was closed of course at this time of night) there is a rocky outcrop where people gather to watch the sunset and enjoy the beauty of the city of Athens the Acropolis just above.  

We walked around some more – easy to get lost but not hard to get found again – grabbed a bottle of water (we left in such a hurry we forgot our water) and what may or may not be my last two scoops of gelato before I leave this part of the world.   The square in the area was packed with people of all ages, families, everyone just having a great time.  As usual when it comes to seize the day stuff, Al was right. Had hot and lazy Mary not rallied we would have missed a quintessentially Athens Saturday evening under the Acropolis.

Got back to our hotel after riding like locals on the Metro, only to realize we had forgotten that the electricity – as in many hotels now – only works when the room card is placed in the slot just inside the door.  We had taken our key with us of course and walked into a room just as hot as when we first walked in.  Opening the window helped air it out again but it was probably not for a few hours that I could finally fall asleep.  

Up at 6 a.m. to catch a 7:57 train.  Our luggage remains locked up at the hotel – we will be in Meteora overnight, then back tomorrow evening by train and then….home.