Okay, here’s my token vacation blog. It’s gonna be mostly pictures, ’cause it is.

So I flew into Athens, then took a bus to Pireaus, which is the little nearby port town, and hung out for a few hours ’till it was time to catch a ferry to the island of Lesvos, which the Lonely Planet had raved and raved about. It’s one of the bigger islands and there’s lots of stuff to do besides sit on the beach, so it seemed like the best of all worlds.

It’s 12 hours by boat. Our boat was called “Theophilos”, aka God-lover. I thought maybe this was an omen, or maybe I’d have some sort of profound experience on the thing, but mostly, as it was an overnight ferry, I just slept.

Then we got, finally, to this town Molivos on the coast. Pretty pretty pretty.

They have a castle. Which I got to go see on Shabbos (best Shabbos karma ever–I was let in for free [useful, as I had no money on me, had thought I’d just go snoop around the outside] because it was like 20 min. to closing time. But as it was Shabbos, there are no close-up pictures. Here’s a far-away one, taken Friday:

They have pretty pretty cobblestoned streets with a little canopy of flowers.

Lots of fishing action.

My travel buddy and I hung out there Friday and Shabbos, and then Sunday morning rented a car to tool around the island a bit. I, uh, learned to drive stick shift for the first time, as they only had manual transmission, and of the two of us I had the license and N. had the knowledge of how one might drive stick. (Another thing I learned: it’s awfully fun and useful to travel in a language that people don’t understand. When it became clear that this was the situation, N. and I confrerenced in Hebrew about what we should do. Then we turned to the rental guy and said, in English, “Okay, we’ll take the car!”) That was kind of funny, in a terrifying, somewhat stressful way. (”Ack! It’s just not reversing! I’m afraid I’m going to kill someone!”) I had just never had the opportunity to learn before. Well, now I’ve learned. It was actually kind of fun, once we got through this one town with the narrow narrow one-lane road in which two lanes of cars were supposed to drive. Ack. It was cool, being car-enabled–we saw monestaries, hot springs, and these outrageously gorgeous views. Out. Ra. Geous.

Then we went to Athens. Lost a day’s travel ’cause the boat was delayed 12 hours due to winds (!!) but still got to see the greatest hits of Old Ancient Stuff. And I gorged myself at the vegetarian restaraunt, having basically been able only to eat Greek salad and bread for like 4 or 5 days straight at this point. Greece, not so much the place to be kosher vegetarian. Good thing I’ve gotten more relaxed about my relationship to non-kosher (rennet-ish) cheese. Otherwise I would have been a very very hungry person. Heck, I was anyway.

But anyway. The Acropolis is the big religious center of ancient Athens. It is, like the Temple in Jerusalem, built on a high hill that you see with reverent awe from the marketplace.

The corrolations between the two places were actually kind of jarring, just ’cause there are certain logical things a person would do when setting up one’s holy space in a city, and you can find some of them both in J’lem and in Athens. I jokingly asked whether we should start singing “Shir HaMaalot” as we headed up. I got yelled at for that.

They were wayyy under construction.

The places of avodah zarah (alien worship) were wayyy crowded with tourists. An interesting contrast to Molivos, where things were still 1/2 shut down, since it’s not really high season yet.

I was finding that I didn’t have the same deep reverence for these old places that I did once, as a traveller. Which I think has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve gotten grounded in an ancient tradition, and have a relationship with it. And also, you know, these places as worship sites are way problematic in my religious system. But it was nonetheless interesting to see from the perspective of a history geek, classics geek, and Jewish ancient world geek (particularly as I’ve studied mishnayot that take place in a bathhouse to Aprhodite and the like). The thing I found myself getting blown away by, though, was the sculpture. I know that Greek sculpture has such-and-such place in art history, and the rediscovery of it in the Renaissance by folks like Michelangelo (blah blah blah). But I can’t recall having LOOKED so closely at the works themselves, and found that I was blown away by the way they handled anatomy, texture, the folds of garments, stuff like that. Really something. Beautiful and amazing.

The rest of Athens was a large, dirty city. Not very exciting. We saw museums and the old marketplaces, and then we got milkshakes.

Anyway, that was it in a nutshell. Would love to go back someday. But not today. Today I go off and do some of my big girl writing work, to grasp these last tiny moments before spring break ends and I’m back to being a grad student. Oh, and I ought to study for my halakha exam sometime, too. That might be an OK idea.