Day 95

4:5
Athens:Greece

Title: I Am Still Hanging Around


We went to the Ancient Agora (on accident, we just kind of stumbled upon it. This happens often Greece; they've got a lot of old shit everywhere) in the god forsaken heat of the morning. It had to have been in the 90s when we were there, and it was only 10 o'clock.

This is the Temple of Hephaestus. It was the favorite ruin for both Ally and me, mostly because it was the only massively impressive one that wasn't undergoing construction and that you could get right up next to. It sits on top of a small hill, so it's prominently displayed against the sky from almost everywhere in the Agora. I have a lot more detailed photos of it, and ones of it from down in the Agora, but I liked this picture the best of any. You can go to wikipedia if you want to see photos of the whole thing.

After the Agora, for some reason we decided to subject ourselves to even more excruciating heat and took a 20 minute walk to the National Library of Greece. This isn't your typical public library, it's like an intense manuscript warehouse and holds culturally and historically prominent works. Well, Ally and I decided to go in not knowing this, thinking that we were just going to be able to browse and check out some Greek literature. Once you go through the foyer, there's a central reading room with lines of desks on either side of a central walkway, and an open ceiling with several levels looking down into the room. There were little metal spiral staircases to get to these extra levels. Everything was so brown, dusty and brittle looking that I could have sworn that I had been transported to the 18th century. Or Hogwarts. It was one of the coolest rooms I've ever been in.

So when Ally and I get to the end of the room via the central walkway between all the desks, I turn around and prepare to take my camera out when I little guy came up to us looking all flustered.

"Can I help you with something?" he asked in a heavy Greek accent.
"Nope, we're just looking around."
"Okay, well you're not allowed to have bags in here," he said, gesturing to Ally's camelbak, "and you must walk around the outside of the room, not down the center."

What the hell's the central walkway empty space for, then?

Yeah, we left after that, sat on the stairs outside while fanning ourselves off when a library pamphlet we yoinked on our way out, contemplated how pointless that long-ass walk in the killer heat was, and built up the courage to do it again.

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I can't remember what day exactly we did this, so I'm going to write about it here (come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was on Day 93). The pictures from it are on Ally's camera.

Just down the street from our hotel there was an outdoor rooftop movie theater, and it had a first showing of The Dark Knight about 12 hours before it came out in the US. Awesome. Ally and I went, paying €16 ($25, which is a lot for a movie, but I would have payed a lot more for that experience), and watched the movie with the Acropolis chilling right next to the screen. That was the most incredible setting for a theater I've ever seen. They had a bar, so everyone was drinking, and every ashtray was overflowing with cigarettes by the time we left. An Athenian guy, about my age, was sitting next to me, and he talked to me a bunch (there were two intermissions so he didn't have to interrupt the movie) about where Ally and I were going and stuff like that. I told him we were going to Sitia in Crete, and he said, "Sitia? Isn't that a drug?" Then when the movie ended and we were saying adios (or yassis, I guess), he handed me an orange balloon and said, "A gift from a Greek fellow." While wandering around trying to find a restaurant still open at 1:30 in the morning, Ally and I saw a bunch of guys walking around with blown-up balloons. He really spread the love with those things.

I still have my orange balloon.