runlindsayrun

Day Three

This morning was ROUGH. Especially because Lindsay had a little time change mix-up and was halfway ready before Geoff kindly pointed out that it was still the middle of the night. Ugh. In my defense, we have a room with no windows at all, and it's black as midnight in there in the middle of the day. Which kind of brings us back to the sleep/time sensory deprivation torture we were discussing earlier...

We got up for real around 7.30, in time for our Team Canada meeting downstairs at the hotel. It was loooong, but we got some good info out of it from our tour organizer and national coordinator. I think it just felt long because we were just about literally dying for breakfast. But the wait was worth it - the hotel put out an unbelievable breakfast buffet, and Geoff was smiling again.

Once we were full, we set out for the Acropolis. It was very hot, very crowded, and very lots of stairs and hills. Makes me respect all the people I know who've visited during warmer months, and busier tourist seasons (though I know there are lots of people in town for the marathon this weekend). It was only supposed to be 24 degrees today, but under the sun up there, it felt insane. Add in the glare off the white marble that's everywhere up there... Kind of overwhelming. I was glad for the over-priced (warm) water I'd purchased before our ascent. I'm not really sure how to describe what we saw up there. The history is kind of overwhelming. The renovations they made to *update* and *modernize* the place were completed 400 years before Jesus was born. That's kind of crazy to a Canadian girl, whose country has only existing for a tiny fraction of that time. One of my books said that Greece recently celebrated its 2,500-year anniversary of democracy. That history, and the realization that this society has been here for such a long time, made it such a beautiful place to me. And the views of the city were spectacular. Until I realized that I'd earned that view by climbing stairs and steep hills - and I'd need to go back down again.

Before our descent, we took in the Parthenon, the Theatre of Herodes Atticus, the Temple of Athena Nike - and all kinds of other really old stuff. The theatre were especially interesting to me, having studied theatre history in university.

From there, we explored the Ancient Agora - essentially, Athens' main mall and 'downtown' from around 600 BC. Lots of cool stuff here, all old and crumbly. The most interesting thing to Geoff and I was the wall the Romans built out of pieces of all the Greeks' important monuments. Kind of incredibly mean. I'm sure the Americans would call it 'repurposing' or something equally PC.

It took a little bit of effort to locate the Herakleidon visual arts museum, the next place to cross off our list. Again, our hunt was well worth it. The neighbourhood was super-cool, and the museum's exhibits were excellent. Their claims to fame are their permanent Escher and Vasarely exhibits, and they had a special showing of Frank Scavullo celebrity photographs. I absolutely loved it. Definitely my style - and speed - of art.

From there, we saw a whole bunch of things in kind of quick succession:
- The Monastiraki flea market area
- Hadrian's Library
- The Roman Agora
- The Tower of the Winds
- More of the Plaka
- The National Garden

In lots of these sites, museum employees spent most of their time yelling at tourists for stepping or sitting on old rocks in the ground. Funny, until you look around and see how stairs and columns made of marble and solid rock are smooth and totally worn away by millions of hands and feet over thousands of years. Kind of put things in perspective for me - my brain is still trying to process all of what I'm looking at. OLD to me just doesn't mean THIS old. I knew in my head that things THIS old existed, but it's something else entirely to see it and touch it (or not touch it, when the museum employees are watching).

Geoff took pictures all day. It's kind of hurting me to have to wait to post some of them. Though we'll need to edit them, because he's been taking pictures of stray dogs and cats - and one turtle - ALL DAY. And mocking my fear of birds. It's been rough. I had one bird in particular who was after me at lunch, without a doubt. I kept on kicking at it to keep it away, and Geoff kept on telling me not to kick it. It was obviously pure self-defence.

Everything here seems to shut down by the early evening (and 'evening' can mean 2 pm here). Around 6, we went to the main city square - admittedly, in seach of Starbucks. We did not find Starbucks, but we did find The Shopping Street - literally block after block after block of stores, from quirky little one-offs to major label stores that Lindsay cannot afford, even when the honeymoon excuse is factored into my shopping math. Lots of fun to window-shop, though, and I did get my coffee after all.

And that's pretty much our crazy-full day! It's 9 pm now, and I'm pretty much ready to crash again. Just needed to get this all out of my head before it disappears.

Tomorrow, the real JIM stuff starts - including race registration and the Team Canada pasta party that I'll be speaking at.

Labels: Greece, Joints in Motion, My Life, The Boy, Travel

posted by Lindsay @ 1:40 PM