We just arrived back in England. Tomorrow we head out to Oxford. The hotel we are staying at charges by the hour for internet service, so instead of paying their stupid fees I’ve got the laptop balanced on the window sill leaching off of an unsecured network.

The B&B we’ll be staying at in Oxford has free wifi, so I’ll post properly tomorrow.

Today we visited the Temple of Apollo and the ancient monuments at Delphi. The modern day Delphi has only been in existence since the 19th century, when interest in the ruins of ancient Delphi began to increase in the archeological community. Russia, America, and France all expressed a desire to excavate the site, but in the end the Greek government chose France. They uncovered a sizable city on the steep mountainous slopes, and cataloged and preserved countless artifacts from not just Greece, but all over the world.

You see, ancient Delphi was the home of the Temple of Apollo, which contained the most famous of all Oracles. Peoples from all over the world came here via the Mediterranean Sea, through the Ionian Sea and into the Corinthian Gulf to offer gifts to Apollo and consult his Oracle. An oracle was a prophecy handed down by a god, sometimes as themselves and sometimes through an intermediary priestess, called a Pythia. The predictions, which Apollo related to the mortal either aurally or written on a parchment, were always rather ambiguous and mysterious. The Delphic Oracle was particularly well known, and you find references to it in just about all western literature. I’m sure you remember the gist of the play “Oedipus Rex,” don’t you? Oedipus, the man who unknowingly killed his father and married his mother, and after discovering his terrible trespass blinds himself? The Oracle plays a pretty big part in the play.

Since Apollo was the god of the arts and leader of the Muses you find references to Delphi, Apollo, and the Muses in just about every canonical work of literature. Even Christian poets invoke the muses and reference this place. It sort of lends your work a little gravitas. After wandering around the site of ancient Delphi and the Temple of Apollo I understand why. Even now, with the Temple in ruins, the place is beautiful and inspirational. The ruins reside on the side of a mountain, so if you look up you see more ruins and if you look down you see the valley floor way down below. Besides the Temple of Apollo you can see the Treasury of the Athenians (on the left) and the large Theater, both of which remain in good condition. I can only imagine the reverence pilgrims to the Oracle felt as they trekked along the road dubbed “The Sacred Way” up to the Temple, past all the other awe-inspiring stone structures. It must have been grand. Unlike most ancient sites ornery zealots did not destroy this one- Mother Nature did. Rock slides and earth quakes eventually completely destroyed it, but fortunately the numerous references to the Temple in literature make reassembling it via drawing fairly accurate.

Sadly, they no longer allow you to walk through the actual Temple. Too many visitors wanted to achieve immortality by gouging their name in the ancient stone pillars, just like Lord Byron who did so when he visited here. Six enormous columns are all that remains of the Temple. It’s still an impressive sight, and as I said before, and now I understand why so many authors and poets make reference to the Delphic Oracle. And while no Priestess exists to hand out prophecies some people still believe this place holds mystical qualities. We watched as one person lit a handful of candles, said a prayer, and gently laid them on the ground in what I assume was a form of sacrifice or an act of spiritual reverence.

If you ever visit here the crowds might annoy you a little bit. They sure did us. But solutions do exist. Off of the main path you’ll see many little side paths that look infrequently used. Take them. Wander off and very quickly you’ll find yourself out of earshot of the tour groups and school children, and you can enjoy nature all around you and still see the ruins.

At the very top of the ancient city of Delphi you find an enormous stadium where the Pythian Games were once held. Every four years in the third year of the Olympiads they held an eight day festival comprised of music and physical contests all dedicated to Apollo. The stadium in which this festival was held still exists in relatively good condition. We strolled around the stadium for quite a while, and during the time we were there groups of guys would spontaneously organize footraces and sprint across the stadium. Onlookers would whoop and yell. That happened several times with completely different groups of people who couldn’t have seen the last group race. It made me wonder if they did that just to see what it was like to run there, or if something intrinsic to the place remains which demands contests of physicality. Probably the former…but I like to imagine it’s the latter.

We also visited the Temple of Athena, which sits a good ways down the mountain from the Temple of Apollo. Not much of Athena’s Temple remains either, but it’s still a really neat place. Not many tourists attempt the climb down the steep hill to the Temple of Athena, so you have the opportunity to truly enjoy your time at an ancient site without all the hoopla of the touristy crowds. Also, you’re surrounded by olive trees, which is kinda neat. I’d never seen an actual olive tree before, and let me tell you that fresh olives are a lot juicer than the canned ones. Don’t squeeze one of the dammed things because it’ll squirt all over you and stain up your fingers (and your pull-over hoodie). You’ve been warned.

It’s so beautiful here I could probably write pages and pages about Delphi. We saw a herd of mountain goats on the walk back to the hotel after visiting the ruins. We heard what sounded like pots and pans clanging together and we couldn’t figure out what we were hearing. We looked over the stone wall down the mountain to our left, and to our amusement saw a huge heard of goats clomping along. Large tin bells attached around their necks with burly rope accounted for the cacophony of clanging we had heard. We stood on the sidewalk and watched them as they passed. They ate bits of grass off the ground and leaves out of trees as they went.

Tomorrow we take a train back to Athens, where we catch a plane headed for London. We’ll spend one night in London and then catch a train (again with the trains) to Oxford. We’ll be there for May Day when large numbers of naked Oxford students run into the freezing river at the university. Apparently it’s tradition. Or just an excuse to run around naked. Whatever. We’ll take plenty of photos…just don’t expect to see us in any of them.

Adio.

Today we took a bus from Athens to Delphi, which took about three hours. As we left the bustling city of Athens and progressed further into the mountains the roads got more and more narrow. Our bus bounced over the pot-hole littered road, and on one side of us the mountain rose high into the air, and on the other side our bus seemed perilously close to the long drop down to the valley below. We could look out the window and see over the top of the valley to the mountain opposite ours. Switchbacks like giant Z’s cut across the surface of the mountain and snaked their way all the way from the top to the bottom. If we looked up we could make out the ridge of the mountain we traveled around. Evergreens decorated the sides and grey rock tipped the peak. On some of the nearby mountains we could make out the remnants of snow leftover from winter.

We have a wonderful view from our room. Our hotel literally juts out over the side of Mount Parnassus, and from our balcony we can look out over the olive groves in the valley and over to the Corinthian Gulf. The room’s a little plain, but the view totally makes up for any mediocrity.

Delphi is a very small town. I’d go so far to say that it’s really only a village. The streets all run parallel from one another horizontally over the side of the mountain. There are a few places where long stone staircases connect parallel streets. With all the up and downhill walking the natives must do here I don’t understand why they don’t have calf muscles like Popeye had forearms.

We arrived here late afternoon, and we wandered the streets for a while before we decided to have supper. We chose a restaurant out of our guidebook. We had wonderful food but our waiter was absolutely terrible. Our appetizer and our main course arrived at the same time, we didn’t get any bread with our meal like all the other diners, we didn’t even get our salad, and we had eaten half of our meal before he even brought out our wine. The manager gave us a discount and told us our wine was complimentary. So if you’re ever in Delphi you can eat at this joint and get good food, but don’t blame me if your service sucks.

Tomorrow we visit the Temple of Apollo, the location of the ancient Delphic Oracle. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Today we visited the ancient Agora of Athens. While the Acropolis functioned as the primary location for all religious activities in ancient Greece, the ancient Athenians would enter the Agora for any number of reasons-ranging from the desire to work out in the enormous gymnasium, purchase goods at any one of the local shops, or sit in the shade and listen to philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and even St. Paul wax intellectual. Sadly not much remains of the Agora, save for the Temple of Hephaestos and The Stoa of Attalos.

Most of the ruins are just that: ruins. You pretty much have to rely on the graphical representations on the signs to imagine what the buildings looked like, because lines of stones of various heights are all that remain. The Temple of Hephaestos and The Stoa of Attalos are the only real exceptions. In all honesty, The Temple of Hephaestos is the only exception, as the Stoa was reconstructed and rebuilt in the mid 20th century. And who paid for such an enormous undertaking you might ask? A Rockerfeller. I find it a bit sad that it took the pocketbook of an eccentric American billionaire to get the ball rolling, archeologically speaking. While we walked through the museum in the Stoa I noticed that on just about every description card of every exhibit it stated that Americans funded the dig where the object was found. And the Greeks wonder why the English won’t give them back their artifacts.

Unlike the Stoa, which practically looks brand-new, the Temple of Hephaestos looks ancient and surprisingly beautiful. It’s in much better shape than the Parthenon, and they let you walk right up to it. I learned from the description on the sign that up until the 1930’s the Temple functioned as a museum. That means that it still possessed walls, doors, and everything else that goes along with a functional building. I find it very sad that in a mere seventy-five years the Temple has fallen to its current state of disrepair, no matter well it compares to other structures in Athens. At the current level of maintenance in another seventy-five years it’ll be nothing but another heap of rubble with a sign showing you what it used to look like.

We just happened to be walking around the Agora as the groundskeepers were cutting the grass, and half the Agora remained under the shade of a thick layer of foliage. It occurred to me that only through constant maintenance by man do those ruins remain visible. If we left it up to Mother Nature the Agora would have disappeared hundreds of years ago. Nature would have just swallowed it up like an afternoon snack and carried on like nothing happened, and humankind would be none the wiser. I just wonder how many other sites of archeological and historical significance lie just under the surface of the ground, waiting for someone to happen upon them.

How long will it take for our civilization to disappear underneath the vines and grass? I betcha the Wal-Marts won’t last near as long as the Temple of Hephaestos or the Parthenon. Will any of our buildings even survive long enough for future generations to catalog and study? I have my doubts.

Enough fatalism. On with the food:

We had dinner this evening at a restaurant from a recommendation made by our guidebook, and this time it totally redeemed itself. We ate local olives as our appetizer. I ordered lamb and Leigh ordered pork chops and we were both very pleased with our meals. The wine was so-so. I’m beginning to think we became a little spoiled from all that Italian wine.

While we enjoyed our dinner a man played on his guitar-like instrument which created a very romantic ambiance. He had his instrument case set out to collect donations, and he also had a stack of CDs set up in the case for listeners to purchase. We had planned to simply throw a couple of Euro into his case as we left, right up until we heard him break into “Stairway to Heaven.” After that we just had to buy one of his CDs, even if “Stairway” didn’t appear on them. Anyone that cool deserves our patronage.

We ended the night with baklava and panna cotta for dessert. Mmmmmm.

Tomorrow we leave for Delphi, the so-called “navel of the world.” I’m anxious to see the Temple of Apollo. Hopefully the muses will reveal to me fantastic secrets of our mortal world.

Or at the very they’ll have some colorful souvenir books to buy. Either way really.

Yesterday we walked all over central Athens. We went shopping, drank a few Nescafes, bought some souvenirs and spent the day quite leisurely. Athens is a strange place. From an archeological and historical viewpoint it’s one of the birthplaces of modern civilization. The ancient Greeks developed an organized society, they invented Democracy, they valued art and literature, and contemporary academics still utilize much of the philosophy from that period of time. Modern Greece is much different than that long gone idyllic place. You’ll find no Socrates or Plato here.

Street vendors sell knick-knacky shit on every corner. For some reason magnets are the big thing and the “salesmen” walk in front of you throwing them up and down. They practically force you to push them out of the way…which we’ve done…several times. Restaurant employees stand in the middle of the road with menus and follow you down the sidewalk in an attempt to lure you into their restaurant. Graffiti adorns every building (actually some of it’s pretty good). It’s hard to remember the illustrious past of this country with the dog and pony show in full swing.

The only sensible thing to do is to find a café in the shade, order a few drinks and maybe a dessert, settle into your seat and watch the freakshow. There’s no admission cost unless you want a few magnets.

Let me also say this: Frommer’s lies. Constantly. Since arriving in Europe we’ve relied heavily on the Frommer’s Guide Books. The one for London and the one for Italy were quite well done. We found a few mistakes, but hey, nobody’s perfect. But the one for Greece stinks. First off they don’t list the names of places they recommend in Greek, which is a problem. Some establishments post a transliteration of their name underneath the Greek, but many don’t and we spend half our time trying to figure out the location of the restaurant we read about. We usually rely on the street addresses, but again, sometimes those are difficult to find.

Then last night we went to a restaurant that the book highly recommended. They must’ve been drunk when they wrote the review. They stated the staff spoke English and were quite helpful. What an overstatement. The guy who seated us spoke English, but our waiter did not. Or I’m assuming he didn’t. He could’ve just been an asshole and didn’t feel like dealing with Americans. He pretty much told you what you were to order, and God help you if you asked for a few moments to decide. By his reaction you’d have thought we were in France. We asked him for a carfare of wine, but instead he brought us rubbing alcohol. Oh, he said it was wine when I asked him, but I know rubbing alcohol when I see it. See Leigh’s face? That’s what happened with every drink. That stuff could’ve removed paint.

Then on the way home we encounter this chucklehead. Now, I’m a pretty cynical and hardened fellow. I don’t easily fall for cons or sales-pitches, and I’m lightening-quick about telling pushy jackasses “I SAID NO.” But this guy got me. He jumped in front of us and started cutting a piece of paper with scissors. We tried to walk off…he said “wait, just wait.” We watched as he proceeded to cut our silhouettes out of the pieces of paper. When he finished he looked at me and said “five euro” and I realized I’d been conned, but dammit if that wasn’t the most inventive con I’d ever seen.

So now we own five euro worth of paper in the shapes of our heads. Hooray.

I’ll write up today’s post and post it tonight…which should be the afternoon in the states.

No bloggery until tonight, my time. Check back then.

We’ve experienced a bit of a culture shock after having traveled from Italy into Greece. In Italy it seemed like every Italian owned a well-trained, beautifully groomed dog that they brought with them everywhere they went. Most shops and restaurants don’t even bat an eye when a patron walks in with a puppy companion and neither do the other customers. Italians will even bring their dogs with them on the subway and buses, and you’d be amazed at how well-behaved the dogs act. We even saw one guy who had a ferret with him. Some people just gotta be different.

Today while walking around Athens we saw dogs all over the place, but unlike Italy these dogs wander free and roam in packs. They’re scruffy and dubious and they’re around every corner. Some of them look up at you with eyes that plead with you to take them home which breaks your heart, and yet others are frighteningly feral and you cross the street simply to avoid crossing their path. Oddly, over half the wild dogs we’ve seen wear collars. It’s very sad. No pictures of them…I could barely look at them without tearing up much less shoot photos.

On a lighter note, we visited the Acropolis today. You know the image even if you don’t know the name. Atop the Acropolis you’ll find one of the most famous temples in the world, the Parthenon. According to our guide book people have worshipped here since 5,000 B.C. During the golden age of Greece over 250,000 Greeks worshipped here, and the areas encircling the Parthenon and the Acropolis became the cultural center for the known world. The Parthenon sits atop the huge rock of the Acropolis where sheer rock walls provide natural protection from invading enemies. Not to say that no one has ever successfully attacked and controlled the Acropolis, but it does make for an imposing image.

Unfortunately they forbid climbing the walls…sorry, Flood.

The sight of the Acropolis from the streets below is an amazing thing…then you actually walk up to it and the crowds dispel much of the mystery you felt at the foot of the hill. I can only imagine the number of clamoring tourists which vacation here in the peak months. It’s bad enough now and we’re in an off-season.

We visited the Acropolis museum, which houses sculptures and pieces of the Parthenon and surrounding temples that have fallen and need protecting from the elements. Everything they have in that museum is rock of some sort. For centuries it survived outside through the scorching Grecian summers and whatever else mother nature saw fit to throw at them. Ironically, the guards in the museum seem to feel that camera flash poses an insurmountable danger to rocks which survived several millenniums. Not only do they not want you to use your flash, but they also don’t want you to pose in front of any of the exhibits. If you do suddenly decide to strike a pose because you feel there’s nothing to it, then they run at you screaming like banshees “NO POSE; NO POSE.” The guards were far more interesting than the actual exhibits. I took a lot of photos of them, until one of them caught me. I was tempted to yell “NO POSING” at her, but I didn’t.

Two weeks ago while at the British Museum we heard that the Greek government wants England to return all the Greek artifacts they currently hold. During the 19th century while the Turks ruled Greece England managed to engage in a very lucrative relationship with the Ottoman Empire. While in Athens Britain’s Lord Elgin took an enormous amount of Grecian artifacts which he donated to the British Museum where they have remained ever since. Since that time Greece gained independence and now wants their stuff back, post-haste.

England says no. They claim that the Turks gave them the stuff so if they return it to anyone it will be the Turks. Frankly, I find the argument a little thin. However, after seeing how inefficient the Greeks handle their museums and their archeological sites in general I have to admit that it might be better for posterity if England hangs on to the stuff for a while.

For one thing the unreliability of the labor system here makes consistent archeological work unreliable. We’ve already been warned that strikes are so prevalent that if we want to see something to do so immediately, because you never know when the unions will choose to strike. Also, many of the environmental conditions here are detrimental to the integrity of the artifacts. Take for example the Caryatids from the Temple of Athena. They moved the originals inside the museum because the acid in the smog which constantly hovers over Athens eats away the surface of the sculptures. Unfortunately, the Greeks let the smog work the Caryatids over pretty good before they decided to move them inside. However, Lord Elgin stole one in the 19th century which we saw at the British Museum. It looks brand new because it has remained indoors, thus avoiding all the smog damage the others weathered so poorly. The picture on the left is from the British Museum and the one on the right is from here in Greece.

It’s a bit of a conundrum, weighing cultural heritage over the preservation of history for the greater good. I’m glad I don’t have to cast a vote.

This is a beautiful city. Mountains surround it, and from the height of the Acropolis you can see for miles and miles around. You’re so high up in the air that a cool breeze blows continuously, keeping the whole Acropolis from melting under the gaze of the hot, hot sun. Walk down from the Acropolis into the neighborhoods below and the spicy aromas emanating from all the restaurants assault your senses. And they’re not the pretentious restaurants of Italy either. They’re the type of restaurants where when the juices from your gyro run down your forearms you struggle to lick them off instead of demurely and subtly wiping them off with your napkin.

We’ve got some sight-seeing to do here, but our toursity schedule is a lot lighter than in our previous stops. I’m looking forward to eating a lot of gyos and taking it easy.

I’ve posted some more pictures on the flickr page, so check’em out. See ya tomorrow.

I got suckered into buying stuff from a market again. Today we had planned to take it easy and leisurely stroll around the Pantheon and Piazza Navona before catching our flight out of Rome. When we got to Via Dei Fori Imperiali we saw that the street had been blocked off and some kind of festival was taking place. We still aren’t exactly sure what the Romans were celebrating. We heard something about the Fire Brigade but we never saw any firemen wandering around, so if it was dedicated to them they decided to not show up.

Local artisans and merchants lined the street hawking their goods. The vendors were selling fresh cheeses, homemade wine, hand-pressed olive oil, fresh fruits, smoked hams, jams and just about anything else you can imagine. I’m such an easy mark. If I take a sample I usually walk away with their product, and today was not an exception. We bought some olive oil, and some salsa and some really good fruit. Leigh bought some fresh strawberries and they were wonderful.

We finally made it to the Pantheon (way too crowded) and to the Piazza Navona (even more crowded), but I’m sorry to say that after the festival they kinda lacked in comparison. We had hoped to find some nice original paintings from a local artist, but everything in the Piazza seemed rather unoriginal. So we walked away empty handed. Well, unless you count gelato, but that’s pretty much a given I think.

We were due to catch a train from the Termini to the airport, which is a thirty minute train ride, at 5:00 because our plane left at 7:00. We got to the Termini and found out after we bought tickets to the train, that the train wasn’t running, but our ticket would work for the bus as well. So we paid the train price to sit on a stinky, hot, bus that took twice the time to get to the airport than the train.

Then we get to the airport and discover our plane had been delayed. Yippee.

Now, I may make someone angry by saying this but fat people should be charged more to ride on airplanes. Hold on…hear me out. I’m not saying people who might weigh 20, 40, hell even 60 pounds over the average weight for their BMI, but if your stomach won’t fit in between the armrests on the plane then you need to get charged for a double seat. Come on people, it’s only fair. Shit, they charge you extra if you have heavy luggage…what’s the difference? I had to ride all the way from Rome to Athens next to this really fat guy who couldn’t even fit in his seat, and he had the audacity to act annoyed when I kept pushing his enormous fat rolls off the armrest. Simply because I’m not an enormous fat pig (who grunts and burps constantly) I get punished because my tummy stays within my designated area.

A madman drove our taxi from the airport to our hotel. He zoomed in and out of traffic at 100 miles an hour…and no, I’m not kidding about the speed. My eyes stayed glued to the speedometer the entire trip.

We’ll explore the Acropolis tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it goes.

I’ve posted a few new pictures to flickr so check those out.

Hang on everyone, I’m gonna try to write a post while we’re in the air between Rome and Athens. I’m not a very good air passenger (I turn white at the slightest noise) so if at any point this become incomprehensible I’m sure that you’ll forgive me.

I didn’t post yesterday because truthfully, I didn’t have the energy to sit in our room and write up the post, download and resize pictures, figure out the layout for the post, save the file on my computer, burn it to a CD, take said CD out into the hall of the hotel, try and navigate the Italian interface of the ancient computer they had set up for hotel guests, work through my anger at the slow internet connection and Bloggers constant timing out required to complete a post from our last hotel.

Yesterday we walked and walked and walked. If I remember nothing else about Rome it will be that we walked until right before our feet bled. We took guided tours of the Coliseum, the ancient Roman forum, and the Palantine. If you ever decide to visit any of these places, our any of the museums in Italy for that matter, you it would behoove you to get online and reserve your tickets before you leave America. If you should happen to not have tickets when you arrive in Italy you can accept the invitation of free-lance tour guides outside of each tourist destination. This route usually costs you a few extra Euro, but at least you don’t have to wait in lines which snakes down the sidewalks, and as an added bonus an English-speaking tour guide leads you through each site providing you with a historical context which really enriches your visit. As an added bonus you also get to take a picture with an honest-to-goodness Gladiator. They get a little smart-assy when it comes to picture takin’ though, so watch out.

You may think that after a given period of time you might become desensitized to the majesty of the many ruins of ancient Rome…well, you’d be wrong. Each time you catch a glimpse of the Coliseum, the ancient Forum, or the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica you see something new and inspiring. I challenge anyone to stroll down Via Dei Fori Imperiali with the Forum on their right and the Coliseum rising up at the end of the street in front of them to not feel the dense weight of Rome’s long history pressing down upon them like a thick blanket. The mere fact that people have walked that same road for thousands of years makes me feel a little inconsequential.

Here’s another quick tip for you would-be Rome travelers: Rome boast hundreds of public fountains from which you may drink or refill water bottles, and the water from them tastes better than most commercially available bottled water. Only uninitiated tourists pay for water in Rome. The veteran tourists and the Romans drink out of the free fountain water.

We saw some Orange trees in the garden at the Palatine. This Texas boy had never seen Orange trees before, and I tried and tried to jump high enough to knock one down. Leigh dissuaded me from throwing my shoe up into the tree to hit one (that’s what I used to do to get pears out of a tree in one of the many pastures my father owns).

On the tour of the Palatine Hill we saw an older gentleman who had on a pair of jeans with the phrase “Porn Star” embroidered over his ass. Look, I’m all for the senior citizens having a good time but don’t advertise it, okay? Ugh. Reading that ruined the rest of tour for us because we couldn’t get quit looking at the old dude who apparently thinks of himself quite highly in the sack.

It’s really amazing that any of the ruins of Rome still exist. The Christians did their damnedest to destroy anything they could (you can still see indentions on many of the remaining columns where they attached ropes in an attempt to pull the temples down), and looters of the Renaissance recycled much of the architecture to build other things. For example, Michelangelo viewed the Coliseum as a quarry while constructing St. Peter’s Basilica. So much so that the sides of the Coliseum remain black to this day from the smoke which pillowed out of the massive smelting pits Michelangelo built to melt down masonry to use on the Basilica. The ashes from those pits raised the level of the floor five feet. On the temple here you can see the indentions I mentioned previously. Thank goodness Roman construction proved too strong…in that particular case at least.

Many archeological digs are ongoing and right now only twenty percent of the Palatine (the site where Romulus directed the first Romans to build a city and where emperors such as Domitian, Octavius, Tiberius and Caligula built a massive palace) has been excavated. When you look at the cleared section of the Palatine and realize that a portion eighty percent larger than the one you’re looking at still hides under the ground your jaw just hits the floor.

We ended the night by meeting up with the couple we had met the day prior at a jazz club called “Alexanderplotz.” We had dinner and listened to a really spectacular jazz band. After that we went home and went to sleep. Walking all day in the Roman heat really tires you out.

Sorry, but I am way too tired to write up a proper post for today. We walked all over Rome, and then went to a jazz club for dinner. I have quite a bit to share, but I just lack the energy to write it up.

Expect a normal post tomorrow night when we arrive in Athens.