James Salter

Finally

I’ve finally finished with my photos from Greece, which can now be seen in the photo album.

Greece Blog

While I was away in Greece, I tried to write blog entries about my adventures on my mobile’s Outlook calendar. Writing extensively via predictive text, I discovered, is a non-trivial activity. Sometimes therefore I just wrote a few notes.

Over the last couple of evenings I’ve been working on expanding those entries and making them a bit more legible. What you see now on my blog here are the entries I wrote as I travelled, but tidied up a bit. I’ve added some relevant hyperlinks, photos and maps. The full set of photos should be online soon.

Back Home

So, here I am back in the UK, reflecting on what has been a brilliant few days in Greece. I think a fitting summary and conclusion to the trip comes in the words of one of the guidebooks I took with me:

“The Greeks are a special people on a unique journey. They are heir to a multilayered heritage in a vital part of the world. They are generous, mercurial, emotional, instinctive, practical, and supreme improvisers. Personal interaction is vital to them. This means that life in Greece operates on many levels. Or rather, it operates on many crisscrossing levels, offering plenty of possibilities and a tremendous variety of lifestyles. The country embraces geographical variations one would associate with a small continent, only easily accessible. Socially, it has everything from the intensely private to the busy and cosmopolitan. The new generation understands its responsibilities, though not necessarily the challenges that lie ahead. Greeks live for the here and now, and this means they are ready to deal with just about anything, as it happens. The engaged visitor will emerge from the Greek experience enriched for life.”

For every moment I’ve been confused or irritated by the little cultural differences over the past few days, there have been many times greater numbers of exhilarating experiences, laughter, beautiful sights, great conversations and a friendly people trying hard to make sure we are mutually understood (”eyes, eyes, take off your eyes!”)

As the quotation says, the Greeks are a special people on a unique journey. It�s a journey I hope to witness further. I’ll be back…

Sounio and the Temple of Poseidon

Nick and I spent the morning visiting Cape Sounio at the very southern tip of the Attica region of Greece. On its tip stands the Temple of Poseidon. Of course, it’s now in ruins, but still makes for a captivating and dramatic scene. Of all the historical sites we’ve visited this trip, Sounio has been my favourite.

There’s something amazing about this giant temple built on the edge of a cliff. You can imagine how the ancient Greeks must have felt seeing it as they sailed past it leaving or returning to Greece from distant travels.

We’d been debating whether to return back to Athens to explore some more this morning, but for me, Sounio proved a spectacular decision and a fantastic way to end a brilliant trip.

Seeing the Sights = Sightseeing

This evening we took a trip into Athens proper on the new metro system to do a bit of sightseeing. We took in the Parliament building, stood next to the guards (not even a flinch) and then walked through the National Gardens to the Z�ppio, which houses various parliamentary offices. It was originally built as an exhibition hall, but is no longer open to the public. In recent years it has also been used as headquarters for the Greek presidency of the EU and the 2004 Olympic bid team.

Talking of the Olympics, our next stop was the Panathenaic Stadium. This is a 19th century reconstruction on the site of a stadium built by the Romans in the 4th century BC to host athletic contests. It hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896.

From there we retraced our steps through the Gardens and down one of the main Athenian shopping streets, Ermou. Via a side road we got to the big cathedral. Greeks seem to be very religious folk because, not content with the huge cathedral, they built another church right next to it.

By the time we got to the Acropolis it had closed for the night, but it would have been too hot to go up to see it during the day and it gives me a good reason to return to Athens in the near future. However, Athens is a wealth of historical sites, so we were still able to take in the Roman Tower of the Winds and the Ancient Agora (market place).

Athens has so much to see, and it would have been impossible to see it all in a week, let alone an evening. What we did see though gave a good flavour of the city, and I want to come back and explore it more fully soon.

Invasion of the Franchises

This morning was very hot, so we didn’t venture very far. We took a brief trip into the local town to buy some bread (from the bread shop) and a roast chicken (from the roast chicken shop - Ann).

Oh, and some coffee. You know how Greeks love their coffee, and how famous their coffee shops are. So where did we end up? Starbucks. :>