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Today was good. Rested and such.
So my overall goal for today was to get to Cape Sounion, specifically to the Temple of Poseidon there. Getting to the bus station for that was a bit of a chore, but instead of whining about it (or, more accurately, in addition to whining about it), I decided to make it into an adventure. The National Archaeology Museum was on the way to Areos Park (where the bus station is), so I decided to see that. turns out that today is "World Museum Day", so while that makes stuff like this free (yay!), it also means today was crowdTASTIC. It's okay though, it was a lot of fun.
Finding the museum sent me through a park that had to have once been nice, but was now entirely taken over by homeless people and graffiti (see pic). One the bright side though, I did see just about the cutest stray kitty ever next to the museum (see pic again). I did notice that Athens specifically and Greece in general seem really laid-back (or lazy) about cleaning up graffiti/strays/homeless people (if that's something that can or should really be "cleaned up"...). The vast amounts
of graffiti on the metro here is kind of cool though. Made a video of one particular stretch that would likely have been better during the day when it was brighter outside the train than inside, but you can still get the gist. And anyone who gets the music reference gets a ++, even though putting my headphones on the camera didn't work too well since I'm still not 100% sure where the mic is on it, heh.
The museum itself was a tiny bit of a letdown, largely because it's nothing I haven;t seen before and in greater quantities (and arguably qualities) in other museums, specifically the Metropolitan in New York which I saw pretty recently. It's funny, since I'm pretty sure it's true that the US and UK have "stolen" more each that Greece has now in total. There's even a spot reserved in a museum that's been pointedly left empty awaiting the "return of the missing Elgin marbles" from the British. There were a good amount of nice pieces in the museum though. The ones that stood out to me were the metalworked pieces, since I hadn;t seen many of them before. There were of course
a few famous ones as well, which I tried to get myself in the picture with as you can see 😊
After the museum I headed on to the bus station, where it turns out I had just missed the bus which comes once an hour. No biggie though, as the Areos park is right there. So I took a leisurely stroll there. It's amazing how hard it is to find shade in Athens.. which is made worse by the fact that you can't find sunscreen ANYWHERE in the city (and I've tried)! I'm definitely going to be sunburned in the morning, I may end up using my umbrella as portable shade like they do ll the time in Japan if I don't find some tomorrow morning... but anyways. Areos park was nice because it was full of Greeks being Greek. Lots of leisurely lounging and animated talking-- and lot of board games being played. It's interesting as every game had at least a couple observers who seemed to be enjoying themselves just as much as the players-- not something I see very often. Backgammon especially seems to be popular here, as there was an entire grove dedicated to
the game with at least 7 tables set up.
The bus rides themselves were nice, as I slept through almost the entirety of both (2 hrs each way). The Cape itself didn't disappoint. The views were excellent, and the Temple of Poseidon itself remarkably well-preserved, considering that they allowed people to literally walk all around in the thing until only a few years ago. One "relic" of that time is that there are many names carved into the ruins, many of which are supposedly famous, although I didn't recognize any. Maybe you will (see pics). since I did take the 2 hour drive there, I decided I was gonna take a dip into the Mediterranean early. It was about the wussiest dip one could ever take, since I hadn't brought the proper attire, but it still counts! 😊
The rest of the day was winding down. Just wandering an outdoor mall close to my hostel, eating the HUGEST CREPE EVER (or about half of it, since it was that huge), and then hanging out at the hostel with this cool English girl who's apparently working for the hostel owners on the interior decorating for the new unit opening
up (She's a sculptor by trade apparently. No I don;t know her name. 😞 Yes I am bad at these things 😉 ).
Tomorrow I hope to get up early and take the 4 hour train up to Meteora in central Greece in time to actually do something up there, since I've (currently!) only budgeted myself one day for the place, since apprently the ferry from Greece to Italy takes 22 hours + the train from Meteora to Patras (7 hours?) + the train from Bari to Rome (another 4 hours?). THAT day is not going to be fun. But anyways, focus on today I always say, and technically Meteroa is today (12:09 AM baby!) so that's enough for now. See you tomorrow I hope!
NOTE: I have a few larger videos that won;t upload to this site (100MB max), so I'll try to edit those down to size soon. For now, enjoy what's there 😊
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Aunt Mary
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hello again
Grandma and I are enjoying a late night tour of your blog... You make us want to explore Greece...love the flowers and the video of you being a "dip"... oh I mean taking a dip... :) the pic of the sculpted hand and yours is cool! I just dropped your mom off at the house, and I know that she is looking forward to seeing you. Hope you all have fun this weekend with your dad! Aunt Mary