Expat Vagabonds "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow mindedness." Mark Twain

Singing from the Sunday service at the cathedral stirred me awake and the carillon that followed made me jump out of bed.  We wanted an early start to complete our coursework in Greek history at the National Historical Museum and the City Museum of Athens this morning.  Connie will probably earn an A- while I will be happy to scratch out C+. 

The National Museum took us from the War of Independence from the Ottomans in the 1830s to the Greek-Italian campaign in World War II.  Greeks, it seems, are always willing to fight for their freedom, no matter what the odds.  When they have vanquished their enemies they are ready for a civil war.  It is always the “us” v. “them” issue, “us” being defined as those who speak Greek and belong to the Greek Orthodox Church.  With the exception of sometime ally Russia, because of the similar religious beliefs, “them” is anyone else.

The City Museum was a gem.  It was as much an art gallery as a museum and it houses many paintings that were made when the rich and famous took “The Grand Tour” during the early 19^th Century.  We finally saw what we had envisioned the Parthenon looking like, standing intact far from the urban sprawl that is 21^st Century Athens.  We were just a couple hundred yeas too late.  Better late than never, no?

We collected our luggage and took the metro to the airport to pick up our rental car, a tiny Nissan Micra.  Getting out of town was like being trapped in a nightmare on fraternity row.  It wasn’t that Connie had lost her nearly mystical powers of navigation, rather that everything outside of Athens is written in Greek.  There are no road numbers and the maps are far from helpful.  Greek drivers pay no attention to speed limits and will pass at the most unlikely and dangerous places.  Praying may help - but to which god?

We eventually made it to Marathon, site of the battle in which the Athenians finally defeated Sparta in 490 BC.  A messenger, Phidipides by name, ran the full 26.2 miles to deliver the news, then dropped dead, setting the distance for the race that bears the name of the battle.  The story was more impressive than the “Tumulus,” a fenced off mound where the remains of the dead Athenian soldiers are buried.  There isn’t much in Marathon so we traveled on to Rafina, the port for island ferries, for the night.  Our hotel wasn’t very good but the seafood is to die for.  I won’t say that grilled squid is my very favorite meal but it is a contender.

We did a lot of driving today, at least if felt like that in our munchkin-size Nissan.  We stopped to see the Temple of Poseidon in Sounio before skirting Athens on our way out of Attica.  The Monastery at Dafni, a World Heritage Site, was being repaired so we had to settle for photographs through a chain-link fence.  Eventually we left Attica and entered the Peloponnese part of Greece and the town of Corinth where we will stay for the next few days.