Day 78 - Acropolis: Round One

Yep. Today I went to the athens acropolis. Every city around here had an acropolis at one time. It was simply a raised area with fortifications and a water supply, according to my city guide. As with many of the great monuments I've seen on my travels, much of the acropolis was entwined with scaffolding (as opposed to the Eiffel Tower, which is scaffolding, and very impressive scaffolding, at that). Regardless, it was still impressive to see the parthenon and some of the adjacent buildings. Really there were only three adjacent buildings: The gate (propylaea), the temple to Athena and Posiedon, and museum. The temple to Athena Nike just seems like part of the gate to me. I'm not even sure I took a picture of it. There was so much construction going on, and so many pieces of the ancient buildings around, I wondered if they weren't planning to rebuild some of the other buildings. My map even names some of the piles of rubble as thought there were buildings there.

As you may have heard, the view from the acropolis is stunning. Athens may be unkempt at street level, but it's still beautiful from above. The city just sprawls in every direction. It's burly. I tried to take lots of pictures and a 360 degree movie. I've still got most of two memory cards left and only two days, so I can afford the space. I'm not bothering to delete bad pictures anymore, either. Take 'em all and let mom sort 'em out. :)

Seriously, though, there will be sorting. I will have an entity relationship diagram for my simple database, along with a tentative list of picture catagories before I touch down in Sacramento. Once I have a computer, chair, and bed, and maybe a little food, it's straight to work. I will post the list of topics, and anyone who wants to see a slide show can just tell me what topics they're interested in. I can tell them how many hundreds of slides that entails, and they can tell me to never mind. :)

I did some provisioning this morning. I think my lunches and breakfasts are taken care of until departure. Outside of one other food necessity, that only leaves dinners. Last night I went to Eden, the one vegetarian restaurant in Athens, according to one web site. I went and found myself having tofu kabobs. They were well seasoned, if a little dry. Overall, I'd say not worth the price. That said, I'll probably still go there for my last night. There were a couple more dishes on the menu I wanted to try. Tonight, however, I think I'll go to a more traditional greek restaurant and try my luck. As for that other food necessity, the chocolate covered raisins are still at large.

It remains to be seen who is holding them. It could be the nun cops. But it could be someone else. There was a detail I neglected to mention in my story of my travels from Budapest to Belgrade. You may remember how I just barely had enough hungarian money (4750 forints) to buy the ticket (4743 forints). And that was only thanks to the lucky find of a fifty cent piece on the floor. Well, what I couldn't reveal until now is that it probably wasn't luck at all. After I bought my ticket, I took a close look at my remaining forints. Three ones, forming the all seeing pyramid. Two twos, forming the foci of the copernian elipse. Five coins in all. Yes, my friends, I can now say with some certainty that I was safely ferried across eastern europe under the watchful eye of the Illuminati. Perhaps simply because I took the time to visit Zurich, or perhaps for some darker purpose. I may turn out to be a pawn (or even patsy) in some international conspiracy. I think the raisins are the key somehow. Raisin... Reason... If only I could figure it out.

Time will tell.