Monday, March 13, 2006

It's all Greek to me

The trip of a thousand stitched begins with a single bag of yarn.


The Greek are just like Israelis, only more so. Very, very laid back--our flight was boarding at 5:15 for a 6:00 take off, and the gate agents finally strolled up to the gate at 5:45. Then the pilot flew double fast to keep on schedule. At the airport in Athens there were almost no signs telling you where to go, so people stood ont the Passport Control line only to find out that this was passport control for transfer flights, and we had to stand on a different line if we were staying in Athens. At least the luggage came quickly.

My contact person met me at the airport (SMS is a wonderful invention) and took me to my hotel, the Titania on Panepistimiou, then told me to go touring a while, as she had meetings to do.

Consulted my knitting, and it told me--to the Acropolis.


Simple enough--go two blocks to the Metro station, watch what everyone else is doing (buying tickets and putting them through the validation machine) and do the same. Maps in the Metro are in Greek and in English. Take the subway two stops to the Acropolis, get out and--no maps. But when this

is visible, it's pretty obvious where you need to go.

First stop was the Theatre of Dionysos. Since I have a B.A. in Theater, this was exteremly cool. To be somewhere you've learned about and never expected to go...

Then you climb and climb and climb to get to the temples on the top of teh mountain. Remember the ampitheater? Sure you do--it was about 2 lines up. Well, here's how it looks from almost at the top:


What knitting wants, knitting gets. Holly's neck band at the Parthenon:


Next: My big, fat, wasted Greek trip.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Give Sophocles a big squeeze for me. Beautiful pics!


Michelle
the mostly MIA yarnho

Anonymous said...

Enjoyed your blog. The Titania seems to have been renovated from when my husband and I stayed there some years ago. I didn't knit at the time...but always interested in culture, and Athens was really interesting. Now I'd like to go to one of the islands and sit and knit!