The Acropolis

Breakfast was being served today from 7 to 10am, and who would I be to turn down a free meal? I arose, dressed, and made my way down stairs to the dinning hall. The selection was meager at best. It certainly wasn't The Royal British Hotel, but it did just fine. It was edible, and I had my fill of it happily. The seating arrangement was certainly interesting in the dinning hall. It was a huge room full of tables and chairs as far back as you could see, and amidst them were the scattered remains of people still getting over whatever it is they did the night before. I love watching tourists. They seem so afraid of eachother. In a hostel you'll get strangers from warring countries coming right up, sitting down with you and introducing themselves. Here in the hotels the people want nothing to do with eachother. They sit, each one of them, at their own table with at least one table between them and the person next to them. No one speaks to anyone else, and if you have to, you whisper. Men's room ediquite applies here. You come to do what you need to do, and leave. I decided to shake things up a bit, and said hello to the guy in line next to me and smiled. He gave me a head nod, and blood-shot smile like he didn't know what to do, but it seemed well recieved. I think these people just need to be liberated. A lot of people forget what it's like to smile for no good reason. Life is easier when you don't know the rules. In a foregn country, where you actually don't know the customs, you start to remember these things.

I finished my breakfast, and grabbed my Lute from upstairs with the intention of trying to find a post office that could ship it for me. Right next door to my hotel is a Western Union, so I walked in and asked if they could ship it for me. They told me basically the same thing Israel told me, which was that they could ship it if I could find a box big enough to put it in. So off I went to find me a box. I walked into a couple shops around the area that seemed like they sold things of decent size, hoping I might score the box they came in. However, I had no such luck. I got a whole bunch of strange looks, and dead end leads, but no box. Eventually, I got a hot lead from a guy in a gift shop who told me that up three corners (blocks, I assume) and to the left, there's another post office that might be able to ship something that size. I followed the man's directions, but still couldn't find any post office anywhere. I wandered a little further, and found myself in a beautiful little town street full of hidden little shops and bohemians. I forgot all about the post office, and just began to lose myself in the little city square. The square opened up into a bustling city, and at the heart of it was the parliment building. In the distance I noticed some streets leading towards the Acropolis, so I followed them that direction. The big city turned back into a small town, and ruins of Old Athens began to replace big business. I climbed further up hill, noticing some construction and wondering if I was going to be allowed to go up to the Acropolis. I stopped for a second to ask someone, but he just pointed to the top of the hill as soon as I said the word "Acropolis." Up I hiked, up the side of the mountain just following whatever road lead me up. There's actually another way around the other side of the Acropolis that's a whole lot easier, and it's the way you're supposed to go, but I didn't know that at this point, so I was hiking through people's back yards, and climbing up rocks and stairs that haven't been used since the BC era. It's also raining while I'm doing this, which makes finding your footing on ancient stone much more difficult. At last I make it to the top where the roads end and find an amazing view, and a dead end. So I start making my way back the other direction, and I run into another American traveler trying to make the same mistake. Her name was Leilana, and she's a biology teacher in Miami Florida. I told her that way leads to nowhere, and we walked around the other side together. Eventually, we found a sign we both must have missed, pointing us in the right direction. We took it's advice, and reached the top of the Acropolis. At the top, we went our seperate ways, niether of us wanting to slow the other down. I'm not sure what to say about the Acropolis, except I understand why the Greeks thought the Gods resided there. The view in of itself is breathtaking. The ruins of ancient amphetheaters, and city markets, and endless fallen collums litter the mountainside. In the very center of the mountain top was the Parthenon in all it's glory. It was massive, and just looked ancient. It was also covered in scaffolding due to restoration work taking place, but regardless it was awe inspiring to look at.

I gazed at it for several moments, and took a million pictures. Next to one of the structures was a sign that said "Do Not Touch", but I had to touch, because that's how I experience things. I have to be there in the moment with all my senses to truely experience the situation, and touch is such an importaint one for me. I like to touch. So I reached out my hand and touched one of the collums, and immediately a gaurd yelled out "Don"t Touch!" My hand shot back to it's original position, and I slumped away. I said I was sorry, but secretly I was really glad I did it. I now know what the Greecian collums on the Acropolis feel like, and it's different than what I would have thought. If you want to know what I mean, you have to go to Greece and touch.

I spent a lot of time on the Acropolis just walking around the buildings, and then I walked down through the ancient gate, and down the ancient stairs to a cool rock adjacent to the mountain that had a view of all of the Anient city of Agora. From there I called my sister to wish her a Happy Birthday, and I tried to explain to her what I was looking at, but you really just can't describe something like that. It was beautiful. After I got off the phone, I waked through Agora and read some of the inscriptions about the buildings that once stood there. I tried to imagine what the city must have looked like in its day. It must have been unbelievable. It's amazing how much techlology they had that long ago. It wasn't a lot different really from a city now, just set in a different time. I walked through the Church of the Appostles, and looked at the ancient wall paintings that are still mostly preserved, and then walked out back into the modern city trying to find my way back.

Finding the way back was a little tricky because I wasn't really sure how I got where I was in the first place. The good news was that I had a giant mountain and monument to use as a marker, and I knew my hotel was on one side of the Acropolis. Although, it's hard to tell which side because the mountain has kind of a round shape, making side finding difficult. So the plan was just to walk in a circle around the Acropolis until I found something familiar. On the way I realized I was hungry, but I checked my funds last night, and was not at all happy about what I saw. I need to really be careful about spending from now on. Throughout the middle east I prettymuch just hemmeraged money, because I was new at this and didn't know what I was doing most of the time. Now, I'm gradually getting better, so I need to hold on to the rest of my money as best I can. Eating in Greece is really expensive, and I havn't yet found a place like I did in Israel where I can eat for 5 sheckels. Also the Greek food is not always the easiest for me to get down. I knew I was going to have trouble eating in Greece to begin with, because even back home I never really took so much of a liking to Greek cuisine. I think it's great in small doses, but I'm not really a big fan of goat cheese, eggplant, and excesive amounts of green olives. Those are all foods that are meant to be eaten as garnishes, or delacasies, in my opinion, not as a main course for everyday. I was really craving fast food. I just wanted to find an American food chain where I could get cheap, preservative filled, greasy, salty food. I looked around, but I couldn't find one. Finally, I saw a menue that had "Burger" on it. It wasn't all that cheap, but cheaper than most anything else, so I sat down and ordered it. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind. It was really a couple of grilled burger patties, Greece's attempt at french fries, and a side of rice and steamed vegetables. It was good, even though it wasn't exactly right, but I considered it a happy medium.

When I got back to the hotel I took a nice bath, and listened to my iPod. I'm gunna try to get a little bit cheaper of a hotel maybe tomorrow, but I'll certainly miss this one with my own bathroom and TV.