Day 12 - Birding and Nightlife

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Daniel takes off birding in the morning and Rachel and I sleep in a while. This the day that Rachel plans to finish her gift shopping. Believe it or not, the other days were mainly “pre-shopping”, meaning scooping out what is available for what price. Now it is time to buy, Buy, BUY! The previous day we found the everyday flea market row, which Rachel calls “skater heaven” since almost all the shops have cute “skater” type Greek boys with piercings and/or tattoos standing out front trying to get you to go in to every shop. Over the next few days, we spent a fair amount of time in this area. So much so that one of the cute boys working starts calling out to Rachel, “Maybe this time you will come in”, or “Hello, again, you came back to shop here, didn’t you”. She is too shy to go in and just smiles, waves and walks on, laughing in my ear.

Rachel finally finds things to buy and we are up to the cash register before realizing that neither of us have Euros on us. Even though many stores show visa stickers on their front doors, we have found that almost none of them take credit cards in actuality. Sometimes we think it is laziness. Other times it seems that their lines go down on a regular basis so the machines don’t work. Our “wallet” is off enjoying himself on some dusty, bare mountain in heat over 100 degrees. Off we go to find an ATM. We walk to a square with several banks. The first bank’s ATM is temporarily out of order. We don’t get too flustered since there are other banks. However, the second bank’s ATM is also out of order. I begin to see panic in Rachel’s eyes and my palms begin to sweat. We go to a third bank and are relieved to see it working. We go through all the steps and at the very end when it was supposed to pass out the money, a note pops up saying that it can’t process the transaction at this time. Rachel and I are now in a full panic. This was to be her ultimate shopping day. The others were just warm-up days. We see one more bank, pray to the Greek gods, and then slowly approach. It seems to be working. We put the card in and hold our breaths…IT WORKS! We lay an offering for the Greek gods at the foot of the ATM and take off in a run to the shops. Disaster averted.

After shopping, we pick up some food at the grocery store in order to make dinner for Daniel when he comes home. We relax and I try and take a nap. Daniel is not due home until 8pm, so we decide to walk the streets some and just watch Athens start coming to life again. In order to give us something to do besides walking, we decide to shop for necklaces for me. The previous day, Daniel had me try on some necklaces and said that he wanted to buy me one as a keepsake of our trip. I don’t normally like to shop and found most of the jewelry shop owners to be pretty slimy. I’m obviously not in the right mood because I come back frustrated and confident that a necklace is not in my future.

Daniel arrives home hot, tired, hungry and in a great mood. I make everyone grilled cheese and pastrami sandwiches and we eat them in our courtyard while Daniel recounts his adventures. Daniel is going to finish this paragraph. “My guide was waiting for me when I hit the street at 6:15. His name is Spyros Skareas and we immediately hit it off (see www.greecebirdtours.gr). We started with talk of the day and bird habitats, but quickly moved on to politics. It is interesting to hear the viewpoints of educated Europeans as they try to politely discuss the idiot king without offending me. I assured him I was an enthusiastic member of the 75% of Americans who would like a change at the top. We first drove up a mountain above Athens to look for Ruppell’s warbler and Cretzchmar’s buntings, two “lifers” that I am hoping to see. After seeing a bunch of chuckar, magpies, jays, etc, we finally hit the area where they could be found. It took about five minutes to locate both species in abundance. Add to that a bunch of blue rock thrush and the sunrise over sweeping views of Athens, and I knew I was in for a great day. After birding the high country (four life birds, around twenty species), we headed over the hill to the coast to visit a salt marsh. Unfortunately access to the first marsh was blocked by fire, so we headed over to a large brackish wetland near the town of Marathonos. This is an interesting bit of history for me. I guess I never questioned where the term “marathon” comes from. The story is that one of the messenger runners common in those days wanted to deliver the message that the Greeks had won the war with the Persians, so he ran all the 45 Km to Athens to deliver the good news. He announced the victory then promptly dropped dead. To this day, the marathon is 45 Km. In any event, the wetland was a great hit. Lots of ferruginous ducks and above all, waders. I got several life birds there including curlew sandpipers, marsh sandpipers, and beautiful collared pranticoles. We ended the day with a trip back through traffic happy and very tired. Thanks Spyros!”

Daniel goes to sleep at 9 pm but Rachel and I have other plans. This is the last night for Rachel to enjoy Athens nightlife, especially the ability to hang out in bars. Even though she doesn’t drink, that is certainly where the nightlife is most happening. We get all made up and head out to a lane filled with cafes with teens and twenty-somethings crammed in like sardines. We grab a table and start to watch the show. From Rachel’s perspective, the first show was the host, the second show was the waiter, and the third show was the young man who came and sat down next to us right after we paid and were ready to leave. He was very smooth and took the opportunity to jump right into Rachel’s seat when she asked for his picture. On our way out of the restaurant, the host started talking with me a bit and seemed disappointed when he found out I was almost 40 and married. I could have kissed him when he said he thought I was in my middle 20’s. Appropriately, he didn’t waste much time talking to me after that. It was all Rachel.

Finally, we broke free from the bar and started walking along the pedestrian lane. We hadn’t gone more than ½ a block before another boy made the moves on Rachel. He said “whoa” as we walked by. Rachel turned to look and she found the boy at a loss for words. He didn’t really speak much English, though you could tell he wanted to be fluent at that moment. His friend lit a cigarette for another friend. He saw his move. “Fire”, he said, while pointing at the lighter. Then he said “fire” in Greek and showed Rachel through hand movements that he wanted her to say “fire” in Greek. He did that several times. Then, he came out with a struggled “I like you”. He then pointed to himself and Rachel and said “You, Me? You, Me?”. Rachel was unsure how to respond so she said “Your nice?” We then waved and started walking way. The boy panicked and said “I love you, I love you”. We laughed and really moved on this time.

Another 10 minutes went by before another group of men approach us. They are two late 20 year-olds who spoke perfect English. One played the confident, tough type. The other played the cute, shy type. They really were a perfect team. They had us laughing in no time. We probably talked with them for ½ an hour, the whole time they are trying to get Rachel and I to go out with them. It became a game that they didn’t expect to win, but were going to have fun trying. The confident one told me that maybe after 20 years with my husband it was time to try a new man. They were talented flirts. After this, I decided it was time to go to bed. Rachel could have stayed up the entire night I think. Her old auntie ultimately had to rained on her parade.

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