Our second day in Athens looked like it was going to shape up to be a hot one. We had seen the weather forecasts yesterday, and it was apparently going to be 37 degrees. YAY! No more winter freeze. Well, not that Melbourne really froze, but it’s certainly a very welcome change to the temperatures I had been enduring.
I managed to drag Lapzang and Dr Doolittle out of bed in time for them to get some breakfast. This could have been a mistake… they both had 2 eggs, but didn’t eat the yolks, which they placed on my plate, and Lapzang started calling them ‘eyes’ and told me that they were ‘watching me’, making sure that I ate all of my food like a good little boy. I told him that he had better start behaving himself, or else he would be sent to bed without any supper… which he took literally, and headed back to bed for another snooze. I think I might need to look into getting a more energetic sherpa for my travels.
After finally dragging his lazy backside out of bed, and convincing him that showering was a good thing, we set out to see this changing of the guards thing we had heard about. Every hour on the hour, out the front of the Athens parliament house the guards on duty have a ceremonial replacement, and after having seen it consider it one of the more cruel and unusual punishments that I have seen. The guards have to wear a fez… with a tassel, and their tunic… looks like a dress, and their shoes… have pompoms. Wow. It’s either a duty for naughty soldiers, something to break the spirits of new recruits, or just something invented by a sick and twisted individual. It involves a lot of slow motion goose stepping, a jump to the left and then a step to the right, and rifle-butt slapping. In all fairness, it was a very precise operation, although after standing out in the sun for an hour on a 37 degree day, I’m sure you can imagine that these guys were a bit the worse for wear. Very impressive… although I’m not quite sure of the purpose behind it.
After seeing this fantastic display, we went for a wander in the shopping area next to parliament house, and finished this off with a beer in the park. While sipping our beverages, a random man came along and leant a fold up stool and display easel against a tree next to us. We thought he was just going to use the WC, until, 20 minutes later, he still hadn’t returned. Very bizarre, and we moved on promptly once we realized that we might cop the blame for this if the police came by.
We jumped on the train again to finish off our tour of the Acropolis area, and this time we saw what was left of the Temple dedicated to Zeus. Originally it had about 108 columns, give or take, but due to earthquakes and thrifty people wanting a nice bit of polished marble, there are only 16 left, and one of them has toppled over. The mastery with which these buildings had been built, considering that they were erected over 2500 years ago, with no machinery (ie. Mining, transportation and polishing devices) is absolutely amazing. Particularly since modern buildings will never last that long. I couldn’t help but wonder what people 2500 years in the future will think of us when they sift through the ruins of our civilization.
We decided to have a very lazy late lunch, and due to an attack of the CBFs, we opted for returning to our room and having drinks. We returned to the gyros hut 2 doors down from our hotel for dinner (which I’m sure has already forced me to put a few more notches in the belt). We got to chatting with the owners, Georgie (Gi-or-gie) and Bruna, and discovered that they had moved from Albania 8 years earlier and opened up the store. One of their friends, a writer by profession, had also moved with them, and he bore an unsettling resemblance to the Doc from Back to the Future. Unfortunately, despite being quite clue-ee, according to Georgie, he was unable to operate my camera properly, and I was cut out of the group photos. I did manage to take a few good ones myself, and told him that if he ever came to Melbourne, we would look after him and show him how gyros huts operate in other countries.
Being a big night of celebration, we were definitely the worse for wear when we called it a night.
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