June 20: Adventures in Plaka

Today we only did one thing. We visited the Acropolis museum, one of the biggest museums in all of Greece. It took 8 hours to get through it, but it was beautiful. A representation of the parthenon was in place on the third floor with the original metapedes and trigliphs that once were present on the parthenon. How this buidling was ever constructed astounded me so much. The drums of the columns were stacked on top of each other by making them initially with a bulge on the end so that ropes could be wrapped around them and then lifted into place to form the parthenon. Imagining the manpower it took as well as taking 10 years to build it was amazing. Here every piece of pottery, housing, sculpture, statue, and anything associated with or near the Acropolis could be found here. The amount of time it took to see everything felt like nothing though. I didn't even notice until we took our coffee break on the second floor around noon. I ordered an expresso frappe, a Greek version of a cold iced coffee. As we had gone out the night before to the Thession Station I felt as if I needed an extra boost to help me perk up from the limited sleep that I got. There coffee's here are amazing, so much creamer than anything else. Greece makes Starbucks look like something that you pulled out of a kiosk (convienent store). We toured the top level for about a grand total of 3 hours. It was impressive, probably the most ancient things we had seen to-date. I felt as if I could stare at it all day trying to decipher the story attached to each frieze. There were four friezes, one with the centaurs and the lapiths, another with the amazon women, another concerning the Trojan War, and another with the birthday of Athena. The Parthenon had finally reached it's peak beauty here where it could be reperesented and gazed upon for hours. We finished around 3 and then as we were walking outside we took pictures by these two men dressed in all white. Turns out in the pictures I am in with him that he is pinching my boob. And not just an unnoticeable piece either. So a very cute picture turned ugly and I was quite upset, but it's whatever. We are in Athens after all. We ate lunch at café crescendo and I ordered a ham and cheese pie for 2 Euro. It was delicious, of all the café's this one was one of my favorites with lime green little chairs and an orange overhang. We had the opportunity to see an alien with a bag of parasols run away from a cop right by us. It then turned into a who is faster as they raced back and forth, the cop on the cobblestone and the alien on the sidewalk switching directions to throw the cop off. It was quite funny at the time as the cops really have no intention of arresting them but simply to scare them off. He dropped a few umbrellas as he passed us the fourth time rounding a corner and a few minutes later we saw the cop come back around the corner with his bag of parasols. And what do you know about 5 minutes later the guy walks by!! Right before this though we had taken the few umbrellas that he dropped and a Greek man near our table leaned over to us and started lecturing us about how we stole this man's parasols. He kept saying that this man sold those for food so that he could eat and that we were stealing when we had food and he didn't. This made me really mad first of all because I am not a thief and second of all this man was just being plain ignorant of us. We went to the roof after lunch and I wrote my reports for the Agora on Monday. I wore the same dress that I wore to the Acropolis a paisley dress except not with the cardigan this time. We ate in downtown Plaka on the same street that we ate on arrival day. We ate souvlaki as usual with red and white wine. We were originally attracted to the area because of the live band that was playing and we had lucked out with every other place so far. Although our dinner was not the best; we had a waiter that took forever and it was chilly on the rooftop terrace but the music was enjoyable as well as the view of the Acropolis from our taverna. As we were departing the live band had really picked up and we were trying to decide if we wanted to watch or not, so brian made the decision for us by walking to get a beer and table. Seeing him Perri and I decided to walk up as well as most of the group had already made their way up there. So as we are passing by the band on the stairs I can't get by because the man singing is blocking the stairs. And as he turned around I planned on passing by him quickly in order to not blcok the way of everyone, but he had other ideas. He took my hand and we started dancing!!!! I loved it! It has definitely been one of my most favorite times spent here. As he was singing the song from Grease we were dancing and people started to clap and whistle. It was so fun, to stand there and dance with him. It was probably the most spontaneous thing that I have ever done. Most of the group ordered drinks and Perri and I split baklava, a pastry dessert covered in honey and nuts. Talk about delicious, it was so moist and sweet. It would have been perfect with ice cream. Then Brian met some Greeks , they were adorable to say the least. Sokrates and Mikel were there names and Brian told them as he told everyone that we were from Canada. It was so hilarious, he went on to tell a story about how he didn't learn French like most Canadians because he moved around to Toronto, and they bought it. I didn't figure it out until then that he had also been telling people that we were from Spain, South America, and Canada..What's next?