I arrive in Paros tomorrow – updates SHOULD be more frequent, emails will be responded to, and pictures will be posted!
Athens is unlike any place I have been before, as it should be. The high city on the hill is suffused with a pale golden light that seems to come from within the marble pillars of the Parthenon and reflect in a sphere on the miles of white buildings that stretch out around the Acropolis until they fade into the distant brown smudge of the hills, or the sea. Here and there are strips of dark velvet spires, cypresses streaking like a bold calligraphic stroke into the mass of buildings, and the sky above is piled with marbled clouds that seem to reflect the shapes of the kore on the hillside.
Late at night, the plateias start warming up with guitars and voices and the noise of scooters. So many hidden tavernas under canopies of vines, the sibilant murmur of tipsy Greeks and tourists building into a roar of jocularity, and all around you the sweet scent of jasmine.
That is all for now. Tomorrow, then.
