Rome in 9 Hours, Siena in an Evening

Ciao, Tutti!

I apologize for my lack of blogging, but it seems time is shorter than I remember it being. I won't be able to finish the Greece post, though I think I've done enough. I just know that I didn't talk about the Hephaestus temple, which impressed me because it was so completely preserved, and the last day, when Mom and I were so tired and didn't want to do anything, but we ended up just browsing the flea market looking for gifts and had a great time. In brief, that's what I've left out. But so much has happened sine then it seems I can't dwell on anything until I get that covered. And I can't even dwell on that.

Music Announcements

Today I would like to start with the music announcements because since my arrival from Greece a lot has happened, though none of it has been confirmed until just recently. To provide you all with a broad itinerary:

Saturday, June 28, 9:00: The Inspiration Sextet live at the Bluesix Acoustic Room on 24th and Treat street, San Francisco. This will be the first performance of Guest Artist and a celebration both of the year-release of "Summer Victory Dance" and the final six months of the disastrous Bush presidency. A very special day for me in my life, the day where the band gets its name. Julian Pollack will probably be a guest artist (ha ha) for the second set, also special because June 28 is his birthday.

Sunday, August 17, 8:00 The Inspiration Sextet live at the Jazz School in Berkeley, Addison Street between Shattuck and Milvia. We will perform a different rendition of Guest Artist in my last show as a teenage band leader. I will also take advantage of the electricity we will have there that we won't at Bluesix to play as many instruments as makes sense, which includes both guitar and voice (I haven't played guitar in a concert for more than 4 years, and I have never sung live before!) Also a special surprise for my brother, whose birthday is two days later.

Thursday September 25, 6:00 The Inspiration Sextet live at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York City. We will perform Guest Artist live in New York, a fitting celebration of my first 20th birthday (only 20th birthday). I have a knack for booking shows on dates that are meaningful for some reason.

Each show will have a different second set, and I'm trying to make the long Guest Artist different for each show as well so that there is a good reason to go to all of them if you have the chance. Of course, that's probably impossible, so the New York show will probably be quite similar to one of the shows in the Bay Area. But one thing I can guarantee is that there will be a reason to see both of the Bay Area shows if you're in town for them both. I have yet to work out the specifics of that plan, but it will come to be.

The day after the Bluesix confirmed with me the Jazz School wrote to me saying that the 17th opened up. It was very exciting, though now I have to deal with having two shows that fit about 100 people per show and trying to put all my effort into making both of them better than anything I've ever done before and filling them with people. However, the excitement helps the drive, and I'll need all the help I can to get the word out so as many people can partake in these great shows when the days come.

I missed promoting the show I played at the world famous jazz club in Florence, Pinocchio, with the NYU jazz ensemble I'm in called "New York-Italian Connection," also featuring two of my suitemates, Rob and Greg. That show at Pinocchio went great, but it was far away from where everyone lives and it rained, so the audience could have been quite a deal better. The concert we played last Saturday at La Cite, a hip cafe, drew a lot more people but I played unspeakably badly. It was ironic: I played great at the show no one I knew was at and played like sh*t the day people I knew were there. They said it was good, though, so I guess I shouldn't complain, but the drummer (an Italian named Simone, a really great guy) said he could tell I was thinking too much as I was playing, which was true.

The next Italian gig is this weekend at a place called Porto Di Mare. On Tuesday there is an international music festival at the school where we take our music classes, Il Trillo, and I will be playing there, too, as far as I know. It seems from now on every weekend has at least one gig, usually not in Florence, actually, though I am free the weekend of Passover when I will be visiting my cousin Shira in Germany, and also the weekend before finals, when I hope to go to Seville. But we have gigs hopefully in Ferrara and in Terni, plus another place, I think, but I can't keep them all straight in my mind.

On to the main show!



My friends from NYU in Madrid came for their spring break to visit Italy, starting with Venice, then Florence, then Rome in the end. Remember Kat and Amanda from the Barcelona post? They were both there, as well as another Scholar, Alicia, and two new people to meet, Genalise, whose name I can't even pretend to spell, and Stephanie. Sheila, also from the Barcelona trip, joined the party in Rome. On the bottom picture we can see our happy family:





From left to right: Me, Alishia, Amanda, Kat, Genalise, Sheila, Stephanie!

I took them to the right gelaterias and restaurants here in Florence, I suppose. I don't really know which ones are right and which ones are wrong, but they were totally impressed by the food, so I guess it worked, and they even liked my rusty Italian, out of practice due to the effort to learn even the smallest amount of Greek at the sacrifice of my Italian skills.

On Friday I took the cheap train to Rome in the morning, a 3.5 hour train ride, to celebrate Kat's 20th birthday party, the only 20th birthday party ever to be better than what mine is going to be like. I had originally wanted to stay all weekend, but we had that gig on Saturday night and I needed to be rested up, so I needed to sleep in my bed back in Florence. So I got to Rome at 12:30 and left at 9:30 (on a faster, more expensive train). Yes, I did Rome in 9 hours. Good thing I'd been there before.



Doing Rome in 9 hours is almost shoving the paradox of a grand city like Rome into your face. There is an impossible amount to see, and you could spend a lifetime there and still be discovering corners tucked away that you could never imagine. The center of the world's (or the west's at the very least) greatest empire has something for you at every turn. For a tourist, this presents a problem, because how much do you see before you feel satisfied with all you've done in the city? To see all you need to see in Rome, you have to devote much less time to what you need to see to see it all, whereas in a place like Siena or Ferrara, you not only have plenty of time to absorb all the city has to offer a tourist but you have time to get much more out of its limited amount of sights. With Rome, if you're not having a blast or seeing something amazing, you feel like you should be doing something somehow more meaningful simply because the meaning is there waiting for you to take advantage of it. Rome puts a lot more pressure on the tourist than a place like Ferrara, or even Venice, where simply being there is the main thrill.



However, as Venice showed me, the main thrill of a trip is usually found off the track that has been planned. And I have been to Rome before and I know I could always come back before I leave Florence, so I didn't put that kind of pressure into my 9 hours. I had one major sight I wanted to see, the "Ecstasy of Saint Theresa," a crazy baroque sculpture I had studied in Music History. After all, music and the visual arts aren't that different. After that, with the Rome first-timers, I assumed we were going to spend time at one of the most famous sights of the world: the Colosseum and Roman Forum. Plus, I didn't mind seeing those things again, unlike the Vatican, which I didn't really care about seeing again, not yet, at least. Everything was free because it was Culture Week in Italy, and all archaeological sites and museums were free to the public. We took a tour to skip the line into the Colosseum, though it was so bare-bones that I don't know if it really counted, but we saw the Colosseum and I could say what I remembered from last time and the books I've read. Plus, I mean, It's the Colosseum. You don't need much else. Speaking of which, the Roman Forum was closed when we were able to tear our eyes away from the colossal Colosseum, so the girls said they would come back later in the weekend. I was content taking pictures from afar and remembering writing "Song of the Siren #2" in my head last time I was there.



P.S. It was a beautiful day, and I definitely got sunburned.

Kat and her friends were tired from the week of travel, so they planned a two hour napping period before dinner and a big birthday celebration after I was to leave, so they left me the two hours to myself to see my church and do whatever I wanted. This was the time of great exploration for me. You see, I knew the "Ecstasy" was in the church of Santa Maria, but when I got to Rome I discovered there were a myriad of different churches to Santa Maria, including two that were on the street I knew the church I was looking for was on due to prior research. I plotted a course to go through to them through the major landmarks along the way. The first church, Santa Maria Maggiore, looked from the outside to be just as functional as the Roman Forum, though on the inside it proved to be more modern than I could have possibly imagined. Plus it was quite large. And, most importantly, no "Ecstasy." I had to move on. Santa Maria Della Vittoria was money, and I could tell right away from the room. We studied the "Ecstasy" in Music as an example of the baroque tradition, an overflowing sculpture, and the room made it seem plain. It was quite small compared to Santa Maria Maggiore, but it was loaded up with all sorts of colored marble and gold and other precious metals, the walls lined with exquisite sculpture and painting. It was overwhelming, headache-inducing, even. By the time i had finally gotten used to it at all the evening services were starting, and I had to leave with just a short time spent looking at the sculpture I was looking for in the first place.



The Outside of Santa Maria Maggiore

Now I make a long story short, because I saw an incredible amount in the hour or so I had left. I would look at a map and choose a landmark somewhere close to me and see it. If there was a church or an interesting looking street, I'd go in, sort of like exploring Venice without going over the bridges. In the end, I managed to see seven fountains, 4 churches, a gate to the city, two piazzas, and the sun setting over Vatican City.


Sunset at Vatican City

Of course, there was one thing else. At some point I decided that it would take a major accident to stop me from seeing the Pantheon, one of my favorite buildings from the last time I was in Rome. This whole trip I was on a mission to take the pictures I didn't take last time I was in Rome with my family. Last time I only took one picture in Rome, a shot of the Forum. This time my camera was going crazy, and even though the Pantheon was quite a bit out of the way and down streets that made a somewhat difficult maze, I had made up my mind to see the Pantheon and not be late for dinner. Turns out the last part was unavoidable. But the thrill of walking as fast as I could past the igniting street lamps toward the ultimate goal... I felt like I was really there, not just a normal tourist with a limited understanding of Italian and a map, but like I was really getting into the spirit of the city. It was a wonderful feeling, an earthy connection to the roots. It felt like creating experiences instead of just letting them come to you.



The Pantheon was also free for culture week, which was nice, and all the scaffolding I remembered from the last time I was in Rome was gone. It was quite a different experience to see the circle cutout in the ceiling by night, no light filtering through at an angle that gives the impression of ancient clock or calendar. But in a way looking up at the night sky was more peaceful, more a testament to the architectural achievement of the builders. I felt the sky closer to me in that building than almost anywhere I'd ever been, a feeling of being outside and inside all at once. It wasn't like camping where you lie under the stars and partake momentarily in the natural world. Now the sky was coming into the man-made world I was used to, not though a window like I'm used to. I guess it's pretty hard to explain, but suffice to say that I really like that building. I was happy the rest of the day and throughout dinner. I told the waiter to bring Kat a tiramisu while I was "in the bathroom," and he did with a candle in it. She loved it.

The music program was to go see a concert in Sienna, and I have too many fond memories of Siena to just go for just an evening and skip seeing the Duomo or the Piazza Del Campo. So I skipped my classes except composition lesson to go for the afternoon by myself. Oh, hush, you'd do the same thing. I didn't earn myself that much more time, only about 4 hours, but if I could get as much done in Rome that I did in 9 hours, let alone the 2 hours I had to myself, I could basically conquer Sienna. Which I did. It was quite easy to find the great food that I remembered, and I continued the mission from Rome to take pictures of the places I didn't last time I was there.



Nannini is the famous bakery. Siena is famous for its food, specifically for its pastries. I was supposed to get a bombolone conciocolate, but they were out of chocolate, so I got a cream filled one, a chocolate croissant, and an apple turnover. Heavenly! Especially to eat them one by one on the gorgeous shell-shaped Piazza Del Campo, a grand piazza focussed on the bell tower that imposes even more than Florence's Signoria.



There was also this meat shop with a boar's head with glasses that sold the most delicious pork that fed our family last time we were in Sienna for three days, though if we had room in our stomachs we would have eaten it all right there and then. Sadly, like the bombolone con ciocolate, this memory could not be relived, since they were out of pork. That's what happens when you get there in the afternoon: they've already sold out of what they're famous for. But at least I got to take the picture, and I hope to go back sometime. Let's see if I can get to Cinque Terre first, though. I've now failed twice to follow through with my plans to get there. More on that later.



Besides trying to relive old memories, I stumbled upon some new ones as well. The Sienna museum society or whatever its real name is has a very nice thing going on for tourists. There was a very cheap ticket I could buy at the beautiful cathedral that get me into the main museum, the crypt, the baptistery, the Duomo, and the Orology. Of these things, I had only been inside the Duomo before, though it was definitely worth going again. The thing that was so attractive about this ticket was that it granted access to an arch next to the Duomo that I remember trying to find a way to the top of with Joel last time we were there, but we couldn't figure it out. Well, this time I would get my chance.


The Duomo

The crypt, located under the Duomo, gave me my first rush of excitement. We could see the foundation of the cathedral from inside a small chamber whose walls were painted with biblical scenes, and through panes of glass on the ground we could see how much further down the support was coming from. Mom's toes would have been numb. The Duomo, like most of Siena, was built on a hill, so they had to raise most of it to the level of the facade so the main hall would be level. Last time I was there, I didn't realize this, and now I felt like I was in the heart of the cathedral, not just the part for show to everyone but the part that really made the building possible to exist.


The entrance to the lower levels of the Duomo, including the Baptistery and the Crypt

The baptistery was not as impressive as the Florence baptistery, though, like a lot of things in Siena, the frescoes, paintings, sculptures, and other works in the room were overly preserved to the point where they looked like they had just been painted recently. The important thing about the baptistery for me was that the... something... (I couldn't derive its purpose or name) in the middle bore bronze statuettes by many great sculptors of the time, including Donatello and Ghiberti, and there were also along the sides panels that resembled those on the baptistery doors here in Florence. It was fairly obvious which ones were by Ghiberti, who is now one of my favorite artists because he is simply amazing at perspective. Even the Donatello panels could not compare.


One of the Ghiberti panels

I thought the museum was very impressive, just about as impressive as the Academia in Venice, though there was not nearly as much emphasis on painting. There was the famous stained glass window originally in the Duomo facade that is now being preserved, and many sculptures, ancient books, and other treasures that have now been removed from the Duomo for the sake of preservation. There were two rooms of particular interest to me. In one there were the architectural designs for the Duomo, even down to the beautiful frescoes and the "ground carvings." Everything was meticulously planned by the artists and architects, and it was fairly amazing to see the plans that were used all those centuries ago. The other room that caught my attention the most was the room with the holy relics. There were countless relics that lined the walls of this room; an entire shelf was filled with glass boxes containing skulls of saints. There were too any relics for me to believe in their validities, though that was how it was back in the day as well. An example would be how Saint Gregory has roughly 40 fingers if you count how many of them turn up in reliquaries. The pagan nature of this method of practicing Catholicism and my proximity to these holy human remains creeped me out a bit. Though the most important item in the room was a golden rose bush with 19 flowers made out of pure gold that was given to Sienna as a holy gift blessed by the Pope. The confusing religious messages were a little too much for me and I left the room.



Skull of Saint Katherine, I think. I was yelled at for taking this picture.

At the top of the museum was the way to the arch Joel and I saw last time we were here, and I ran into a British couple and we had a nice conversation about the state of government and private funding for artistic creativity. I got a French adolescent to take the picture of me in the beginning of this section.


The arch I was on top of. I forget its real name.

For the sake of moving on, I will concede that this is the basic gist of my last two trips. It seems that I won't get the chance for much more travel as airfare rises and I seem to have concerts every weekend from here on out. I have some one-day trips in mind, like Cinque Terre that I have tried and failed twice to visit. I will try to post as soon as I can. For now, here is a video of the Acropolis I somehow left off last week's post. Enjoy!

A presto,

-Sam g

More Tales from Greece!

Ciao, Tutti!

Now that I have a few minutes to catch my breath and use the internet, I will try the impossible task of capturing my week in Greece and the visit from my wonderful mother. There is just too much to talk about, too many good, strange, and delicious experiences to even try to accomplish the task of documenting them all. I wrote about 40 pages in my travel log in this week, writing as small as I could but still coming up to the end before finishing completely with the trip.

For the record, here is the top ten as far as I can remember it. Mom, feel free to correct me if I've missed anything.

1) Mom visiting from 10,000 miles away. Now is the spring break for the folks back in New York University, and boyfriends and girlfriends from all over are pouring into the NYU in Florence Villa. Having the bad experience last semester doesn't stop me from being able to share this European adventure with someone, and it was good to have a close companion with me rather than the trips to Ferrara and Venice with people I hardly know.

2) The cave where Zeus is said to have grown up, at the Lissithi plateau in Crete. I have never seen such a natural wonder as a cave before, and it didn't disappoint. This is probably the case because pictures in a dark cave are close to impossible, so I had no correct preconceptions of what it would look, feel, and smell like in a cave. I had been thinking about how much of human history I had been seeing and I wondered if I could see some natural beauty that I can't see anywhere else in the world, so Mom found out where this famous cave was and ventured into the mountains (see 5) so I could see it, and the caves closed an hour earlier than expected so the poor woman had to stay behind as I ran up the hill (difficult in 2000 meter elevation!) to procure a precious 30 minutes in the cave. The experience was indescribable, as experiences usually tend to be. It was surprisingly sensual rather than simply visual. There was a distinct smell of old damp rock, the sound of dripping water and the eerie echo, the welcoming cold without so much as a light breeze, the taste of recycled air and moisture. It was almost supernatural, and my initial desire to touch the rocks to see if they were actually rocks and not clay vanished, replaced by a degree of fear and uncertainty. I jumped when a stray drop of water pelted my shoulder from a rock ice sickle above my head, and I brushed it off like one would with a black widow spider. I slowly got more used to the cave and let may camera do its thing, though with flash not permitted and my body shaking all over from the sprint up the high altitude hill, not many have come out very well and none of them give the proper impression of what it was like down there. Again, it's a feeling that involves all senses. And to put the cherry on top, traveling on off-season made it sop I was the only one in the entire cave, arriving just after the stay of a group of backpackers.

Traveling in off-season would be pretty high on the top ten if I had anything all that good to say about it.

3) The Unexpected road trip in search of a good view of Psiloritis, the tallest mountain in Crete. After the trip to the ruins at Knossos, we whimsically decided to head towards that beautiful snow-covered mountain we saw from the road. We found a small town, Anogia, that seemed to be pretty close and not too long of a dive away, so Mom braved the long trek up into the mountains in search of Anogia. I was starting to get the hang of the navigation by then, and we would cross of the tiny one-street towns we passed as we continued toward the giant peak, enjoying the stares of mustached who clearly did not expect to see tourists. We were getting into Crete, away from our resort-style stay in Piskopiano, a city by the water. Mom could not look down, but I can assure you there were great vistas, and the exploration mixed with that to give beauty to the travel. Anogia turned out to be a city about 1000 people smaller than my high school, though Mom was surprised it was that big. There was one main street at the top of a hill across from Psiloritis, a street two cars could not really go down at the same time though they somehow did, and many smaller walking streets to the valley below where there were many churches, houses, a school, and other such buildings. Mom and I smelled a grill and had to stop for a grill, our first taste of the famed Cretan food (See 6). It was fantastic, grilled lamb as Mom had been craving since landing in Athens four days earlier. The restaurant had a window looking out on the glistening peak, and for the first time in the trip I didn't feel tired or hungry or anything other than just happy to be there. After lunch we walked through the town, visited a bakery owned by a woman who spoke very little English, who we had to convince to let us pay for the sweets we were buying. She was quite insistent on giving us gifts, and even when we forced the money in her hand she slipped some extra treats in that we hadn't originally requested. It is true what they say, that the people in Crete are really nice, even if they live in a town that's not used to tourism, like Anogia.

Crete was surprising. I had expected to spend every day in Crete swimming and relaxing, maybe writing some music. Almost none of that happened. In addition, we started our trip without knowledge of the language or where to find our hotel in the small town of Piskopiano, and we got lost on our way from the airport. We asked people who usually didn't know or didn't speak English, backed into a post with the car, a mistake that cost only enough to buy me that Greek guitar I liked so much in Athens, but we finally found our way to the town. Nothing was open. Nothing. Everything was boarded up, like a ghost town, chairs piled up randomly on the porches of restaurants bragging a roof garden view of the ocean, newspaper blocking the windows. Almost half the city was under construction. After finding the hotel and unloading our things, we went in search of a beach, finding signs to a "Famous Fun Sun Beach" by the town of Malia, which I liked but creeped Mom out. There were all sorts of free things, like swimming pools, trampolines, toys, etc, lined at the back of the beach, making it look like a circus, but everything was abandoned and the pools were empty, construction going on over to the right, just like in Piskopiano. I liked being at the beach and I thought the sand was pretty, but Mom was nervous about it, a theme of the trip for her (again, see 5), so we went back to the hotel and played backgammon, neither of us all that inspired by the island. It felt like we should put a note in a bottle and throw it as far away from our lone palm tree as we could, a deserted island. However, without this negative first impression, the surprises of Anogia, the cave, Lissithi, and the other great things we did in our next two days in Crete would not have been nearly as good. Crete defied expectations, then defied them again.

4) Flying a kite on the hill next to the Acroplis. We were in Athens for the final day of carnival before the start of Lent (see 8). The day after carnival ends is a national holiday when the kids go and fly kites all over the city. Mom and I could see them dotting the sky everywhere we looked as we made the climb to the Acropolis that morning, and I decided I had to fly a kite. We found some cheap kites being sold on the street and climbed up the hill across from the Acropolis to fly it. I was worried about being too close to the other kites and getting tangled up, though I guess I should have been more concerned that I have no idea how to fly a kite. It showed. Even with Mom's help, the thing refused to go into the air, usually preferring to dive for the nearby bushes whenever a Greek kite master looked our way or a sunburned tourist had just taken a picture. It got stuck in the bushes one too many times, and I was too frustrated and broke one of the wood poles keeping the thing together. Mom did her best to fix it, and we didn't give up trying to fly the thing, but it was lopsided and not very aerodynamic. We actually did get it up pretty high one time when I was on the verge of giving up (again), and Mom got the pictures, just before the kite dove back down again. The success was tantalizing, and I tried again and again but the poor thing was getting more and more tattered each time and we had to give up, saving what we could of the design and the tail for an eventual scrapbook. I was basically upset with kite flying after that, and Mom promised we would bring one to the beach this summer and learn how to do it right. I would have been able to get it up in the air had I not broken it earlier! Later that night when we climbed the rock at the foot of the Acropolis to watch the sunset, I found an abandoned kite on the ground (amid all the dead kites in the trees and ground) and tried to fly it on the crowded rock. The breeze wasn't so good, and I was having trouble doing it myself, but a German kid a few years older than me came and offered help. He found the string tied on at the wrong place, so he cut it off with a swiss army knife and re-tied it, a process that was quite difficult and took some time, making me feel stupid just standing there. When he finished, he and his friend tried throwing the kit over the edge, and the new knot came apart, sending the kite all the way down and rendering all the work for naught. Mom and I laughed and laughed as they apologized and sulked off. It's probably better that way. I still had some sunset to enjoy without giving the futile effort to kite flying. Ever since then we saw many kites stuck high in trees and other random places throughout Athens and even a little in Crete as well.

The pictures are having trouble loading right now. I'll get them up when I can.

5) Driving in Crete, Mom with white knuckles and numb toes, my nose buried in an unreadable map. This has to do more with the adventure of the whole thing and the surprise of Crete. One of the first things that happened when we were in Crete was that Mom pulled into an intersection without looking both ways, got beeped at, and the man in the other car even took the time to stop and yell at us from his car as we pulled into the supermarket to ask for directions. Then as we pulled out, the back of the car hit a concrete block, producing a scratch that kept Mom nervous for the entire trip, even though it ended up only costing about 300 USD. Mom said that Dad was the only one who drove in Costa Rica since she couldn't handle, so my confidence in her abounded. Plus she has basically no sense of direction, and I would have to give directions back to the hotel a lot before she memorized the route. It turns out she was concentrating on driving down these impossibly narrow streets and 179 degree angle turns and she could not pay attention to the surrounding landmarks, though she did know this one patch of sheep on a wrong road we took twice. She was quite a trooper, and as long as I had the map and knew roughly where we were going, she trusted me with the mentality of getting there as she handled the physical part. We were a great team, even if she would nervously jerks the wheel and then put her arm across my chest and mutter a breathless, "Sorry!" to which I would simply smile. This was even more so in the mountains, where Mom said the vistas would make her toes go numb, and as she described the numbness climbing up her body I wondered if she would be able to press the brakes or turn the wheel when the road forced such action. But despite these issues with the car, it was quite fun going on the road trip, something I haven't done in quite a long time, since Yosemite, actually. Driving through the mountains, looking down into the valleys, gazing at the sights, all this was very fun for me, and even Mom thought she had a good time, though I suspect for other reasons I would not quite understand. It was also empowering to be given the map and entrusted with the directions to wherever we were going on Crete, be it Anogia, Knossos, or Lissithi. There was adventure and yet also some sense of personal control, both whimsicality and
structure at the same time. I was a part of the vacation, I was not just there experiencing it through someone else's planning or even someone else's whims. It was really a cooperative effort to make the driving trip work, but with the map in my hand and Mom making the turns I told her to make, I felt like I was in control, a nice feeling.

6) Food!!! I love tasting the places I go to, which is why I went to three or four pastries in a single day in Barcelona. Everything we ate was very good, from the Anogia pastries to the gyros we had at the same place twice in Athens. It is impossible to chose a hi-light, but the most different thing I didn't expect was the quality of the grill. It wasn't quite barbecued, not quite grilled, and seasoned with tangy spices my mouth did not expect. I have not eaten much Greek food before except once or twice in Michigan and I didn't know what to expect when I got here. Everything was good, and it was always good to look forward to eating each day. Another good thing was how laid-back the food was. Unlike in Italy or the rest of Europe, or even in America, there was eating all day long. It would be perfectly acceptable to have two lunches, one at 11:30 and another at 2:30, or two dinners, one at 7:00 and another at 10:30. Mom and I didn't do this ourselves, as Mom's stomach bothered her ever since the scratch on the car, an incident that cost me dinner once and forced me to eat most of hers on a couple of occasions. However, we noticed that the restaurants in Athens were always open and always seemed to have people in them, no matter what time we passed them. A much more individualistic approach to food, where the most important thing is the diner's personal comfort in time. I liked that aspect a lot.

I will finish the top ten once I have more time. For now, here is the bare-bones list:

7) The Agora in Athens and the temple to Hephaestus.

8) The strange festivals/holidays Mom happened to be in town for, both in Florence and in Athens.

9) The Acropolis. Not just the walk up, but it's presence that even outdoes Florence's Duomo's, no matter where in the city you may be. That's right: one of the seven wonders of the world would not even make my top seven in a week of Greece. I didn't like the Parthenon as much as I liked the fortress-esque hill the thing was built upon. The whole thing was massive and rightfully the center of the city, the landmark that told you where you were at all times, both in the city and in the world. It was always watching over us it felt, and it was almost comforting that I could always just look up if I wanted to do any sightseeing. Mom loved it. It took her breath away. For me it helped me find my way and practice using my camera. Perhaps I will visit some day and the profound nature of the building will set in for me, but it didn't click this time, not the way Botticelli did in the Uffizi, for example. That didn't take away its meaning for me as a constant guardian of the city. It actually facilitated some thought about the importance of older music, like bebop or blues or baroque or what have you. In a metaphoric way. It was very comforting to see its stoic consistency when returning from the volatile stay in Crete.

10) The last day in Athens before the vacation-saturated departure, energy found despite profound fatigue.

Also when I have more time I will put captions on the photos and put them in their right places. I also must somehow find time to talk about teaching and the board game I made for class today. I also must tell the story of forgetting my bag on the train back to Florence from Rome, but don't worry, I got it back. And there is a lot more to say, but, as I said earlier, that task is impossible.