Ok, let me begin with a clarification about my internet situation here. Basically, Tony and Elle do not have high-speed internet. I’m not ever sure they have dial-up. There is, however, a wifi source nearby that is not secure. It’s unethical, but it’s all we’ve got right now. The thing is, to get a strong enough signal to sign on to the internet, I have to place my laptop on the balcony ledge on the patio. When I say “on the ledge,” I mean “precariously balanced just to the not-quite-tipping point.” So I’ve basically got $1300 worth of plastic, glass, and metals spitting in the face of gravity while I try to check my messages and see which of my friends actually really love me and have sent me a message of some sort. Furthermore, the only time I actually get to get online is from about midnight until 3 a.m. in Greece. That’s about 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. if you’re CST. If you’re not… do the math. Finally, there are mosquitoes all over the veranda, so I like to be out there as little as possible. So to post these blog updates I stay up late inside the house and then go to the balcony corner for all of 5 or 10 minutes–just long enough to copy/past the blog to the site, update my facebook status, check my email and go to bed. I usually try to get all of this accomplished before 4 a.m. The reason I bring this all up is to say that if you see me on Facebook chat and I don’t talk to you, don’t take it personally. F you say hello and I tell you I’m on the way out, I probably am. That being said, today I was lucky and had my iPod touch at the coffee shop (which I’ll get to in a second) and they had free wifi, so I drank my Frappe while the two love birds enjoyed each other’s company and updated my status. If it were an iPhone, you would have gotten pictures, too.
So today was the best day I’ve had since I got here. We spent the entirety of it at the beach. I somehow managed to tan nicely without earning any crustacean camouflage. We then ate souvlaki (pretty much shish kebab) for lunch and all three of us got out of there for less than nine euros total. It was a success. We then migrated to this unreal ice cream shop for dessert followed by a stroll through the main drag of the small town we were in. I couldn’t ask for a more pleasant afternoon.
One feature of Athens is that there are bakeries and sweet shops on every other block, even in the outskirts of the metropolitan area. And all of them make unreal baked goods and sweets. The thing that kills me about it is that there are tons of these things everywhere. It’s nothing special at all. It’s just a part of their way of life. In Murfreesboro we have one bakery like that that I’m aware of. It’s a novelty which is a word that means overpriced. Prague has the same sort of feature, only it’s pubs that mark every corner instead of bakeries. And I won’t even get started on comparing the differences between the prices and quality the Czech beers and ours. It’s not even fair.
We ended our evening out in this fantastic coffee bar on the street that lines the beaches. If just one place like this existed in Murfreesboro, or even in Nashville, you would never be able to get in because it would always be packed, and we don’t even have the sea for a view. And this was just one coffee shop; and it wasn’t even in a busy or trendy part of the city. It’s just about cultural priorities I guess. Maybe people from other countries visit those dive country and western bars on Broadway in Nashville and go back home saying the same thing. I doubt it… but maybe.
Anyway, I closed my evening with some more of Elle’s ridiculously good cooking (Cypriot meatballs, tzatziki, greek salad, and some sort of bulgur wheat dish) and a run. I did some walking with Geoff for a bit of it, but all told I think I pulled off about 4.5 miles tonight. The lower humidity here makes it much easier to run.
Well, that’s all I have for tonight. It’s 3:30 in the morning and I still need to upload this and brush my teeth and catch some shuteye.
P.S. The pic on the left is the sea. The pic on the right is the view from the coffee shop.
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