More on weather, ancient stuff, poop--you know, life in Athens

It's time to catch up on some of our questions from faithful readers.  Wait, what's that?  We don't have any faithful readers?  To quote Giorgios Carlin, "Eau contraire, mon frere!"  We do in fact have four, count 'em, FOUR comments on the blog.  They may all be from the same person, but hey! that's pretty darn faithful of you, Tim.  And so in response to his request, here's a picture of our coffee place, where I've been practicing my very complicated coffee orders for over a month, and just when I had it down--"Espresso fredo, metrio, mai ligo galla fresco"--the weather changed (see weather note below), and I had to learn a new order.

It's been very nice to sit here, across the street (most tavernas and coffee houses have outdoor sections more or less adjacent to their indoor areas), with wireless access when needed, enjoying a cold fredo on a hot day.  But even before the weather changed I'd begun ordering most of my afternoon coffees "ya exo" on the way somewhere, often to Modern Greek class at 4:00.

We don't have any other regular "watering hole" (sorry, Tim) as we generally just grab a drink wherever we are when we're out.  Annabel has no problem being left alone, which we've done in order to go to the local farmer's market or on some other errand, but we haven't left her alone in bed at night.  (When her grandfather Jonathan arrives later this week, we'll no doubt get out on a date or two.)  Alex has gradually gotten used to letting Annabel go alone to the bakery, or home from someplace nearby when we want to sit a little longer.  But we hate to leave Annabel home alone at night, partly out of parental over-protection and partly because we just hate to make her hang out alone.  She's very much looking forward to the first meeting this Saturday of an annual winter local kid's group, Drama Kings and Queens, for English-speaking 8-12 year-olds.  She's also been enjoying Skyping with her friends Aspen and Sophie during those all-too-brief windows in the space-time continuum.

But there are still plenty of fun things for her to do around here, especially when Dad's not busy with work.  Annabel and I had a wonderful outing two weeks ago, a VERY long walk that began with us climbing Likavitos hill.  Here's a picture of it from near our apartment--you can sort of see the cool little church on top--and a couple more pictures looking out over the city from the summit.  It's an astounding view, with all of Athens at your feet, disappearing into the faint distance to the north and southwest past Piraeus, and the sea and the three mountains surrounding Athens seeming very close indeed.  In the second picture below, the Acropolis is over Annabel's left shoulder, and in the bottom one Annabel is getting out her camera in preparation for taking a picture of a cat, as she spends a lot of time doing whenever we're walking around Athens and she has her camera.

 

This last picture I took because it's got our neighborhood in the background.  If you have computer skills and can zoom into this picture, you'll get a look at Pagrati where we live; if not you'll just have to squint.  Annabel and I had approached the hill via that road running directly up the middle of the picture.  Above Annabel's head are the National Gardens and just to the left the original Athenian games stadium.  (There were four or five major athletic/religious competitions in Greece, including one at this site in Athens, among which the one in Olympia has triumphed as eponymous--hence our tendency to refer to this as the "Olympic" stadium.)  Equidistant from the top left corner of the stadium and the top end of that street in the center of the picture, and a little above both of them, is a very big church, kind of a brown blob to those of you looking at a small version of the picture.  We live very close to that blob--er, church--close enough to hear the bells quite clearly--quite, quite clearly.

Across much of the top of both pictures is the Aegean, though it's hard to tell.  I know I promised better pictures, and some of them are better (aren't they?), but this was a very hazy day, shooting into the sun to get these shots, and the light was challenging.  At least it never rained on our long walk, although it threatened to at first and I lugged an umbrella the whole way.  We had planned to take the funicular up the hill, but once we got to where it started (at the top (or near end) of that same street in the middle of the bottom picture), and we found out it cost seven-and-a-half euros each, and ran underground so that there wasn't even any view from it, we just walked the rest of the way up, and were glad we did.  (For those of you not familiar with our family's current favorite word in the English language, a "funicular" is a kind of tram.)

Around the time Annabel and I had gotten our fill of the heady view and started down, our Saturday walk turned into a marathon.  Actually, I should be careful about throwing the word "marathon" around lightly.  In a couple of weeks they're holding a race to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of the original marathon--yes that extra zero is not a mistake--covering the original route, starting from--you guessed it--Marathon.  Participating in that would be something unforgettable for a runner.  We were thinking of signing up for the 5K version, but it's the day Galen arrives, and the day after we return from Istanbul, and things will be kind of hectic, so unfortunately we'll have to settle for trying to watch a little of it.  I don't know where it's going to finish, but it seems likely that it will be at that original stadium very close to our apartment, so we might be able to get a look down at it even if we can't get too close because of crowds.

Enough of ancient history and modern athletics--back to our stroll.  From the top of the hill we headed off towards downtown, at a right angle from the route by which we'd come, through the fancy shopping area and past the main square, down into the tourist areas near the Acropolis where we knew stuff would still be open on Saturday afternoon.  We had lunch, did a little window shopping, and then headed back home.  I asked if she wanted to take a cab, which I was planning all along to do if we got tired, but she was game to walk home, and so we completed a roughly equilateral triangle with a couple of miles on each side, and a lot of vertical mixed in.  How about a view of the Acropolis (again, bad light) on our way down from Likavitos, framed by a fancy neighborhood, along a line of banisters that proved to be just too tempting?

Annabel likes to set challenges for herself, and in this case she insisted on sliding down ALL the banisters.  Dad did one just to say he did, but kind of wishes he'd done more.

So far this entry has been mostly about one day's outing, and it was supposed to be a chance to catch up on all kinds of stuff.  Well, how about the weather?  I know I already talked about it, but can I talk about it some more, please?  Have you ever noticed that human responses to weather are completely relative?  Like when the March temperatures in Fairbanks reach +20 and students are walking around in shorts and t-shirts?  Well, we northwestern Americans from Oregon and Washington and Alaska went from roasting to freezing the minute the temperature dipped into the high sixties.  It's true, the weather did actually change (thank goodness), and it was fairly dramatic.  Autumn came in with the month of October, and suddenly it felt, not exactly like October, but perhaps like August in Oregon rather than in Florida.  It was a great relief, but it also provoked almost comical responses from the students of being suddenly "freezing."  It also threatened to end the beach season.  I say "threatened" because Annabel would have none of that, and in the next blog installment, detailing our most extremely fabulous weekend on the island of Paros, you will see that ain't no weather gonna keep that girl out of the water.

But what about the poop update I promised?  Okay, how about a pigeon crapping on my underwear as it was hanging outside on the line?  There's a whole lot of irony there.  It shouldn't be all that disgusting, I guess, as all I had to do was wash them again, but there just shouldn't be any excrement on my undies that wasn't originally mine, is how I feel about the situation.  No picture, once again.  Sorry, Tim.

Where were we, before poopus interruptus?  Oh, yes, heading back up the hill to Pagrati from downtown.  As we approached home on our long walk, Annabel continued to take pictures of cats for her planned photo-essay, and I took a picture of her taking a picture of a cat on a staircase we pass by often on our way downtown.  Halfway up the block I spotted for the first time (the students had seen it some time ago) this statue up in the corner of a decrepit old building.

May Athena and her owl watch over you and protect you, as they clearly have this building.

See you on Paros.