June 20 - Sweating through the motions

Why is everything worth doing in Athens about 15 million steps in the vertical direction? The only thing that we got accomplished today was seeing the Ancient Agora. Imagine a set of ruins with a few reconstructed buildings/areas and a small museum. Nice and all, except the three of us got there at about 4pm thinking that it would be cooler (temperature wise). But it wasn't it was still really hot - the sun was beating down on us and Laura and I were melting into little puddles of goo. After finally leaving the Agora we walked down and on the way trying to find food ended up in this market area with both sides of the streets lined with small shops and jewelry stands. In one thrift store like place I even managed to pick up a few new books. With a new rolling duffle with more room comes the possibility of more book space. By the end of the street we ended up finding a McDonalds (we all wanted to be cultural and all, but at the end of the trip ALL of us are poor and a 1 Euro cheeseburger is very exciting).

But what you don't know at this point is that our plans for the rest of the evening was to go see this traditional Greek dance performance group - and I needed to stop by a pharmacist. Yet what happens? I mention that I need to go throughout the day but Lian's like "let's try and do the Acropolis!" and Laura and I get distracted by the jewelry stands, and eventually we have to just head out to the performance. Of course the reality of the story being closed didn't really hit me until the very end of the evening when we couldn't find the actually performance venue. We climbed a freaking MOUNTAIN (a small one, but still) and I'm dying the entire way, my lungs burning with sweat dripping off my body, and we don't get to the theater. Lian didn't have real directions and the locals were vague and only somewhat helpful, to the point that we had to just give up and go home. And it's at that point that I realize that there is no way for me to go the pharmacy and that I would have to just deal with my pains for another day.

Let's just say that my good humor didn't last the night.