Some Highs and Lows of Travel in Athens

Our day today was both fabulous and awful.

The good part – we went to the National Archeological Museum, which has a simply astonishing collection of the art (and some other artifacts) recovered from archeological sites throughout Greece, many of which we have been visiting.  We began with the simple and yet pretty figurines from the Cycladic civilization, then into a room (actually four segments of a very large room) filled with the treasures from Mycenae, such as the so-called mask of Agamemnon, and then the development of sculpture from the 800's BC, the archaic period, through the increasing refinement of both physical portrayals of bodies and fabrics, the display of emotion in faces and scenes, and finally the individualization of faces and expression during the Hellenistc Era after the Macedonians conquered Greece and the long years of Roman dominance.  One amazing sculpture, funeral stele, bust, mask, or figuring after another.  We had lunch in the Museum restaurant in the square outside the museum, then headed in for more, including a completion of the historical survey – once again, I found the Rick Steves audio tour, downloaded from his free app, to be invaluable.   (Time to thank my high school friend Maureen Zupan for pointing me to that)  Then we looked at a special exhibition entitled the Countless Aspects of Beauty, drawing together some of the best depictions from each of these eras, as well as a quick walk through the museum’s collections of vases and bronzes.  I took many photos of the choicest items.




We headed home, and after a brief rest and schmooze with the rest of the family, we headed off for the Acropolis so that Joe, who had just arrived the evening before, could get his own chance to see this wonder of Athens.  Nancy and I were glad to have this excuse to pay a second visit.  We entered from the bottom entrance just outside the Plaka (where we could not enter the day before because of the requirement of checking the stroller outside the gates), seeing a few new sights on the way up the hill, but even without the separate entrance, I felt that I was seeing the Acropolis with new insight and with fresh eyes on a second visit.  And, looking out over Athens, I felt I had a new appreciation of what I was seeing.  More nice photos.....

From there, we descended from the Acropolis into the Monastiraki neighborhood, heading to the restaurant along Mitropoleos Street where Sam and Nafisa had settled in with their children.  The food at Kapheneion was straightforward, no innovative dishes that I would see, but the food was well-prepared, and Nancy was of the opinion that the grilled squid was good enough to meet Capetown standards – the squid we had in Capetown South Africa having been consistently superior to any squid we had ever eaten where else.  I had the mixed grill which was fine, and a mixture of soft cheeses with a slight hot pepper seasoning. The waited treated us to a Pastis-like combination of ouzo and water, and we capped off the evening with an ice cream with some unusual flavors from Zuccherino across the street.  We walked of toward home, happily eating our ice creams.

So why no photos here?  Why was this a rough day as well as a wonderful one.?  Well, along the way to the Archeological Museum, we boarded the subway at Syntagma Square and changed lines at Onomia to head for the Victoria station, which looked to be the closest to the museum.  The car we boarded was crowded, and it was hard to maneuver the stroller.  People crowded around, and I instinctively lowered my hand toward the pocket carrying my wallet.  As we left the train, one of us noticed that she had been cleaned out – the money kept in her fanny pack had been expertly extracted and the wallet returned to the fanny pack.  Hundreds of Euros lost, though we looked on the bright side – no credit cards had been taken, so we would not have the difficulties, experienced in Salvador Brazil five summers earlier,  of canceling our credit cards and completing the trip with limited access to funds, after I foolishly proceeded into a crowded street corner in the late evening and was relieved of my wallet.

One of the family noticed a face among their cell-photos, taken as the subway car was pulling into the station.

He was among the crowd that had hemmed us in, enabling the pocket-pick.

We resolved that things could only get better for the rest of our trip.

Well, maybe not.  While we were heading toward the restaurant, me studying the cell phone to find the way to the place that Nafisa had identified, walking along Mitreopolois Street, I got separated from the others by walking too quickly, and Nancy had left her cell phone behind so we had no way to call her.  I was terrified about our party being separated before dinner with no way of being in touch.  Then, walking home along Mitropoleos Street, we encountered a man exclaiming loudly into a cell phone.  He kept bumping into me on my left side.  Finally I called him out, and he pulled away slightly.  Eventually, he stopped crowding us, and we congratulated ourselves on having foiled whatever his plans might have been.

Again, maybe not.  When I got home and went to download today’s photos, I found that my camera bag had been opened and the camera slipped out of the bag, leaving it closed.  My best guess is the loud guy on the street was only the distraction, allowing somebody else to get into my bag while I was worried about him and chastising him.

It was distressing to be victimized twice in one day (there were a couple of other traumas).  Now, in theory, perhaps we could have forestalled both thefts.  The fanny pack could have been pinned shut instead of simply zipped shut, and maybe the clasp on the camera bag could have been left open, making it easier to slip into the bag unseen.  Maybe I could have avoided walking along using my hands to eat ice cream, thus keeping better control of my bag using both hands. 

But the incident left me shaken about my assumptions about whether I can still travel as easily and as freely as I have for the past fifty years.  Are we more of a target, and more of a pigeon, as we travel in crowded cities in our late sixties, close to our seventies?  Do we need to modify our travel plans in years to come, as we pass into our seventies?  I have thought about the many places that I still want to see before physical decrepitude makes independent travel too difficult – actually, I keep a bucket-list— but are there limits to travel as an older person that go beyond the physical limitations?  Am I just too confident in what I can do?

I have a good deal of thinking to do.

Meanwhile, I am hoping to find some public domain photos with which to update this blog post, and to replace my DSLR camera.  Yes, I have a cell phone, and the photos from smart phones have got better and better, and maybe I need to learn how to use my camera phone better, but there's nothing like a DSLR, short of professional equipment, for quality photos.