Getting to Athens

The first step to getting to Athens was spending a day in Minneapolis, where my in-laws provided a place so calm for me that I got my best night's sleep in weeks.  Not to mention just great company.  Got to see little Ethan and Jacqui and Jason too.  A great way to start this trip.

The flight was very smooth and particularly gorgeous going from Philadelphia to Athens.  My favorite parts were seeing sleeping cities.  Flying over a night time Paris, I was surprised to be able to easily locate Champs-Elysees.  I also saw a place that looked like what you sometimes see mapped out as your brain on Nova or other PBS shows:  a black sheet dotted with orange dendrites, lit up areas of activity, some of them very clearly with lines and dots, and others more nebulous, Milky Wayish.  The stewardess told me that was Shannon Island, Ireland.  What I liked most about it was the shoreline of towns (orange lights on black), last bastion giving way to deep darkness, water.  Each town street was so well outlined with lights that I could identify Main Street for each one, even from 37,000 feet.

And then, on the water, only a dot of white light from some lone boat. . .

Once in Athens, again, things went very smoothly.  I caught the bus from the airport and was surprised to soon have my view blocked by a huge blue cube of a building:  IKEA.  Funny how that wasn't on my list of expectations!  Then, I enjoyed how the 1960's architecture (think of older James Bond movies, very metropolitan, baby) tended to scoff at the ads for say, Dolce and Gabbana.  One era gets its inspiration from the other, and they coexist in a beautiful, market economy kind of way here.

The mountains here are geologically similar to Albuquerque's.  But they're everywhere, so I have to break out my compass to get around.  No depending on "the mountains are East" here.

Once I found my hotel (and got tickets for the bus and ferry today -- and took a long hot bath in my fabulous Athens bathtub), I walked for two or three minutes to the National Archaeological Museum.  It's simply stunning to see so much revered sculpture in one place.  And the pots -- I realized I'm a sucker for Attic amphorae (see www.yasou.org/ancient/vases/fig17.jpg), especially the sophisticated and moody use of negative space around figures.  Gorgeous.  And besides the traditional greats that are in the museum, I was particularly drawn to a 200 b.c., 10-foot bronze sculpture of a woman.  It was found in the Aegean at the late date of 1994.  The bronze was pitted and green and red and textured and worn, yet preserved -- I was in love.  She was just haunting and graceful.  I wanted to know the spot where she'd been living for centuries.  I would give you a link to that one, but she's so new that the museum hasn't published her image yet.  It's nowhere to be found, and I was prohibited from being the first to publish her image with my own camera.

Leaving Athens at 6:30am.

So, today I am off to the island of Skopelos.  It's a 2.5 hour bus trip, then two more by ferry. 

And for you Broadway fans, Mamma Mia! the movie is being filmed on Skopelos.  Pierce Brosnan is in it.  He says, 

 "What a kick in the pants, to be able to go off and spend time with Meryl [Streep] on some Greek island, singing Abba songs."

More soon. . .