Farewell to Athens

On my last day in Athens, I had to send out all my postcards. The stamps were so beautiful, I bought some extra and addressed a postcard to myself so I could have the cancelled stamp. I collect postcards from places I've been or from friends who sent them. This would be the first time I sent myself one. This way I'd know when everybody else got theirs. It gave me an odd sense of accomplishment. Then I was determined to find the Herakleidon Museum which had an exhibit of Degas sculptures. It was difficult to find, tucked away on a little side street near the Thissio metro station, but it was worth it. The Herakleidon is a small gem of a museum, a former private home, very intimate. There were over 70 gorgeous Degas sculptures including the famous one of the young ballet dancer. I'm not sure if it's the same one as in the Clark Institute in Williamstown. Beautiful music from the period played.

After lunch, I strolled around the Thissio square, near Monasteriki. Street vendors were selling stamps, coins, old watches, binoculars, pins from the Olympics, and various bric-a-brac. There were hordes of black men with huge bundles running from place to place from the police. They would drop their burdens which contained what appeared to be knockoffs of designer bags until they got a signal that the cops were nearby. Then they'd pick up and run off.

I wandered to the Royal Gardens and found a gallery which sported an exhibition of movie posters from various eras and countries. That was a lot of fun. Back in the hotel, I watched TV til Jerry got back from Turkey--interesting how the news media in Europe is totally to the left, there was a commentator on RT, the Russian network who suggested the Obama administration bribed the Nobel committee to get the president the Peace Prize--and then we all went out to celebrate our last night. We ate at a very good place with a view of the Acropolis. I told Jerry and his colleagues if I needed to write a doctoral thesis it would be on The Cult of the Virgin: Athena, Mary, Elizabeth I, and Doris Day. Prior to this trip, I hadn't known Athena was a virgin goddess.

The flight back to NYC was about ten hours, but I had my anti-jet pills. They showed four movies--all garbage. Four Christmases, The Time Traveller's Wife, Land of the Lost, and Post Graduate. I didn't watch any of them--that is I didn't listen to the sound on the headphones. The images were enough to tell me how stupid they were. All I could think of the films were "Wow, Carol Burnett, Robert Duvall, and Sissy Spacek must need money." Then they showed TV episodes and it was the same episode of The Simpsons I saw on the last Delta flight I took which was about a year ago!

More Photos from Greece

In the previous post, the stupid thing uploaded the photo of the fisherman rather than the temple. So here's the temple and a shot of Hydra, my favorite of the three ports. Besides, I hear blog posts should be shorter anyway.

Mini-Cruise of the Islands

(ATHENS, GREECE) On Thursday, Dec. 17, Jerry went on to Istanbul for another conference, while I stayed behind in Athens. Thurs. morning we both went to the Byzantine Museum and during lunch in Syntagma Square we watched the general strikers--Mike told us the day before in Delphi that they have these strikes about twice a month, just for the unions to make a point. Note: They also had a small Andy warhol exhibit since it was also about icons. Then Jerry left to catch his plane and I took one of the City Tours. I had seen a lot of what was covered including the Acropolis and the Agora, but it was good to get a feel for the whole city. I also got a much better look at the Academy of Arts and Scienes which was decorated with beautiful statues of Athena and Apollo. Someone had spray painted the word RESIST on the columns.

The next day, I was up at 6 a.m. for a very touristy cruise to three Greek islands--Agina, Poros and Hydra. The passengers were about 20 percent American and European and the rest were Asian, but overwhelmingly Japanese. We basically had about an hour in each port to stroll around the picturesque waterfront area.In Agina, for an extra 25 Euros, we could take a tour of the temple to Apheia, the river goddess (pictured).

I latched onto an older American couple from Florida and by coincidence, the husband had his wallet stolen at the same metro as Jerry. So here's another travel tip--when in Athens avoid the Monasteriki station. By another coincidence, the husband was a classmate of Gore Vidal at Philip Exeter and I was reading Hollywood by Vidal at the time.

Of the three islands, I liked Hydra (pronounced HEE-dra) best. The waterfront was full of stray dogs and cats and donkeys--there are no cars allowed because the streets are so narrow, so the donkeys are the main means of transportation. I wandered around and took shots of fishermen, donkeys, churches, brightly painted windows, old men and little boys pushing carts--there are no cars, remember.

After Hyrda, we had lunch on board. The American couple and I sat with three people from Egpyt. Poros was next and not as cute as Hydra, but I got a great shot of a fisherman mending his net. I just tried to upload it and stupid Blogger erased everything I had written since the last upload. So I'll put that in a separate post.

Then in Agina, we took a bus out to the mountain to see the temple of the river goddess. We were on the bus with the Chinese people. Our guide from the boat--a cigarette-voiced woman who sounded like Melina Mercouri, it seems all Greek women sound like that--would tell us about the pistachio nut trees and the legend of the island, then hand the microphone to the Chinese guide.

We had 20 minutes at the temple and it was very tourist-y with four busloads of people from the boat taking pictures. But it was worth the trip because it was sunset and the effect was quite dramatic against the ancient columns. Of course, there was a souvenir stand where we were sold pistachio nut ice cream--a huge slab of it with goat cheese for four Euros.

Back in the town I walked around and almost missed the boat. They had pulled the gangplank back and the sea was incredibly choppy. I had to run all the way back from the dock. "Can you swim?" asked a crew member, but then he put the gangplank back. I was the last one on board. On the cruise back, we were given a "Greek folklore show" with two dancers in traditional costumes and a comic who did impressions of Elvis Presley, cats from different countries (saying meow in various accents), and dressed in drag as frumpy cleaning woman.

Back in Athens, I had the bus drop me off near the Plaka and I found a nice restautant where I had lamb wrapped in grape leaves. At the next table two flight attendants bitched about their jobs and it was more entertaining than the folklore show. Then back to the hotel and I watched Al Jazeera and BBC. The next day Jerry would return from Turkey and it would be the last full day in Greece.

A Day at Delphi

(ATHENS, GREECE) Wednesday Dec. 16, we took a day trip to Delphi. Our driver was named Mike and he was excellent. Along the way--it was about two and half hours outside Athens--we stopped at the new Olympic stadium, an olive oil factory, a cheese store, a touristy place in this skiing village where we bought a pair of gloves and a statue of Hermes. At Delphi, the main attraction is the Temple of Apollo where oracles would breath in fumes and make with the prophesies. As I said in my previous Athens post, this reminds me on when Steeve Reeves went to the Oracle at Delphi and she told him something about not displeasing his father Zeus. He was to stay on earth for a while. Then it rained and Steeve got all those gorgeous muscles soaking wet and... but I digress.

There was also the temple of Athena and a museum with the finer pieces and statues found at the temple. The temple was set in a mountain and it meant a long climb up. Afterwards, as it was getting dark, one of Jerry's therapist colleagues wanted to see the crossroads where Oedipus killed his father Laius. Mike was not familiar with the spot, but he found out from another driver named George where it was. Evidently, once in 15 years someone had asked to see it. There is no sign or plaque or anything to mark the legendary encounter. There was a memorial to an accident victim (pictured). There are dozens of these along the road from Athens to Delphi. Simple boxes mounted on poles with pictures of the victim, flowers, icons, etc. They are like folk art and I took a picture of the one by the Oedipus crossroads. If I were a professional photographer I would go to Greece and take pictures of all these home-made memorials.

One more thing about Hercules: I used to watch the TV cartoon series in the 1960s and it totally departed from the classic myths. In this version, which came on Sundays on this cheesey local Philadelphia kid's show hosted by a clown named Lorzeno,Herc has a magic ring which gave him his super strength and an annoying sidekick--a centaur named Newton. There was also a girlfriend named Helena, an evil wizard named Daedalus, and a witch named Wilhelmina who has a parrot. None of these elements occured in ancient Greece, except Daedalus was a kind inventor who was the father of Icarus.

Pre-Greece Jitters

Here's a travel tip for you: If you want to check-in online the night before your international flight, make sure your passport isn't going to expire in less than three months. I'm leaving for Athens tomorrow and I received an email from Delta inviting me to check in online. I go to the website, punch in my passport number and expiration date which is next Feb. and I get one of the little red lines saying "You cannot check in if your passport expires within three months. You must see an agent at the airport." My heart stopped. I have visions of having to go the Greek embassy or winding up like Zev and Justin of The Amazing Race when they lost their passports in Cambodia and losing first place. So I called Delta and was on hold for 20 minutes--don't worry I amused myself by watching Jonny Quest--it was the one set in Norway with the acrobatic dwarf disguised as a gargoyle in order to steal the anti-gravity device.

Finally a human got on the line and explained when your passport is within three months of expiring you're not allowed to check in on line. They have to make sure you won't stay past your expiration date--they think of you like a quart of milk. But I said I'm returning in a week, it's even on my return ticket. For some reason, they need a human agent to verify you won't get stuck in Athens for three months.

Oh well, it's off to the airport tomorrow. I'm taking the E train all the way to nearly the last stop and getting on the airtrain to JFK. This is the first time I've done it going to the airport, I've done it coming back. I was tempted to go a comic book sale in the morning, but it's deep in Brooklyn and with this new wrinkle, I want to get to the airport in plenty of time. I'll have to skip it.

I do like travelling in spite of these little hiccups. I love my little blue bag of toiletries I can hang on the towel rack in the hotel. I love sitting in the airport terminal reading a left-over copy of USA Today. There's a travel store on 12th St. where I bought some anti-jetlag pills. They had two fascinating books--one with transit maps from all over the world and another filled with pictures of tickets--from airlines, trains, theatres again from all over the world. There is some fascinating about these little souvenirs and scraps of paper giving glimpses of yours or other people's lives. I bought a Thor comic at Time Machine the other day. (It was #128 with Thor and Hercules fighting the forces of Pluto, the god of hell.) Inside the plastic bag containing it was a credit card receipt dated 2000 from a comic book store in Scranton, PA. I wondered who bought it there and how it wound up in New York. Will someone look at my boarding pass and think "That idiot should have renewed his passport sooner."?