Athens Travel Journal – Part 3

Friday 22 April

Another long and super busy day.  Last night, of course, was the pre-convention dinner.  We made it there only a few minutes late (at the expense of not having had time to go home and get cleaned up and changed first, as we’d hoped to), and quickly spotted the other bookcrossers. Of course, we weren’t the last to arrive by a long shot, a large group being guaranteed to be impossible to completely organise, but eventually everyone was assembled and the food began to be brought out.  I won’t even attempt to list what we ate, because there was so much of it!  Every time we all thought it must be the last dish, something else would appear, until finally, when we must have sampled every traditional Greek vegetable dish there is, they announced that now we’d have the meat (!).  Not a lot of meat got eaten, despite it being delicious – nobody (except the Greeks, of course) had any room left.  And then, when we insisted we couldn’t fit any more in, the waiters cleared the tables… and brought out desert, and orange syrup cake.  I think I ate about one mouthful of it before giving up.  One thing for sure, you’ll never go hungry if you let the Greeks do the ordering!
It was a very late night, with us not getting home until after 11, and we had plans for an early start this morning.  Bronwyn and Robyn opted to sleep in, but Lytteltonwitch and I headed out early to find breakfast, then went back to the Acropolis as it opened at 8, to beat the crowds.
It was so worth going back! It was wonderfully crowd-free at that time, so that it was actually possible to pause and admire details without having someone with a selfie stick get in your way.  An unexpected benefit too was that we got to see the flag being raised for the start of the day. A group of soldiers slow-marched in with the flag (they had a weird lopsided sort of march, with one leg being raised and stomped down, and the other sort of shuffling), then after much ceremony and presenting of arms, the flag was raised as they sang what I presume is the national anthem (though they sang it so tunelessly, it was hard to tell – they sounded like a bunch of rugby players)… and then was lowered again because they’d got the rope tangled.  But they got it up smoothly on the second attempt, then did their stomp-shuffle slow march back out again.

While we were watching, we got chatting to an elderly couple from California.  They were incredibly well-travelled, and had even been to Pitcairn (I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s visited there before!).  Made my own travels seem pretty tame in comparison, but we compared notes on a few favourite places.
After we’d had our fill of the Acropolis (and watched the feral cats chase each other up an olive tree), we walked down to the Theatre of Dionysus on its lower slopes.  As well as the theatre itself (or amphitheatre, though I learnt today that “amphitheatre” actually just means “shaped like a theatre”, so it’s a bit tautological), there were all sorts of other ruins to see on the lower slopes, so we spent quite a long time wandering around them.

The tickets that we’d bought for the Acropolis also let us into various other historic sites, so we decided to take advantage of them and see as much as possible. So first we went to the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, which was seriously impressive – massive pillars, the scale of which was impossible to capture in a photo – just believe me when I say they were huge, and felt like they were towering over you.

Too tired to finish this off now – I’ll write up the rest tomorrow.