Magic Jewball

Hey, I’m home! No, not in NY, silly. In Jerusalem. That is, I’m in my family’s apartment in the Katamon section at the end of a narrow little cul-de-sac that the sherut drivers can never negotiate. A sherut is kind of like a shared taxi, a bit like Super Shuttle, and so I got in at like 5am as I was close to the last one dropped off. But it’s fun to abandon hotel living and give an address authoritatively, like “this street off of this street, no not there, od, od, po” (further, further, here). Yes, I did not get lost today.

However, other problems exist such as finding the grocery store closed at 2pm because tonight is a Jewish holiday. Somehow that never happens at the A&P. “Sagur!” the guy yelled at me through the closed sliding doors. Closed! Well, happy holiday to you too. I had to go to the bodega which is called a makolet here and they didn’t have my favorite brand of hummus to go with my fresh bakery pita and no large size of mint lemonade. D’oh! I was so dismayed I almost gave the storekeeper a 2-euro coin instead of the 10-shekel one. Must sort out my wallet.

Tomorrow the holiday goes on and then it’s another half day in Jerusalem before taking the bus to my cousins in Hashmonaim which is helpfully midway between here and the airport in Tel Aviv. Did I mention my flight was at 6am? What a perfect time for a Kosher Big Mac at the airport Mickey D’s. Then just a billion hours later I’ll be back in my own bed. Unless that thrombosis thing you get on long-haul airplane flights kills me first.

Good morning, everyone! Today I’m having breakfast in a whole different square in a whole different city. I’m in Omonia Square in Athens (Greece, not Georgia) and along with my frappe I’m having a peach-jelly donut. I chose peach because the woman described the other one as “it’s like cherry.” No sale. This one’s a little bizarre but not bad. As I type this, two elderly ladies approach me with religious materials but although they have passable English skills, there’s no sale there either.

I arrived yesterday afternoon and got immediately lost. Again, this was not my fault as it seems that several of the main streets have two names and my map designers evidently decided to go with the less common one in each case. I did ask several people and although I actually showed them a map and we were literally 5 blocks away it turned out, no one could help me. An hour later, I found my hotel, which I nicknamed Big Brother Inn because you can’t turn on any electricity without their permission, you must leave your key when you go out and retrieve it upon your return, you sign for a remote control, and the free Internet is only servicible in their one IE window (I brought a USB drive with portable apps - useless). They also gave me 10 minutes of instructions at check-in which I promptly forgot.

Anyway, I spent the afternoon exploring the city and today I will attempt the Acropolis and Parthenon before heading to the airport en route to Jerusalem. So far it’s been fun and interesting except everyone forgot to tell me that Athens is full of stray dogs running in packs. Marvelous! In case you’re worrying about me having a heart attack, they’re actually kind of comical, really. They wait at lights right next to the people before bounding across the street. Nice.

Oh, and after a pleasant long weekend in the country, we’re back to chain restaurants, especially the Greek ones, Goody’s and Everest, but McDonald’s and Subway too. I popped into Starbucks just to see if they had frappes but they did not. Just frappucinos and music from Starbucks Records. Bleah.

Lastly, just a reminder: only a few short days till my birthday so get your song-gifts in, should you want to. Nothing from Zorba, thanks!

The time stamp on this will say something like 3:30 or 4am but here it’s breakfast time as I sit at a cafe in Syntagma Square in Nafplio sipping Nescafe frappe which is exactly what it sounds like. There is no brewed iced coffee here, only this frothy whipped iced instant. It’s better than you’d think and the proprietor here already knows me and gets my frappe going when he sees me.

See that’s the fun thing about sticking around the same small, pretty town for several days. I no longer get lost at all and know which are the best routes to take anywhere. I am supposed to go to Epidavros today to see a stunning ancient theater but I’m already thinking of skipping it and hanging around here some more. I’ll see how I feel when my breakfast arrives.

Here’s the funnest thing about this town, by the way. There are a ton of churches but you can hear the bells of two of them from my pension. I know it is two because one has its clock set wrong and ding-dongs two minutes after the other. This is especially delightful in the middle of the night.

This morning there was also a marching band at 8am. I caught up with them as I passed the church on the way to breakfast. They stood lined up in formation in front of the open doors, idly, as the priest gave his sermon. Even though it was in Greek, I knew it was the sermon. After attending religious services all your life, you just know. I couldn’t help imagining the priest as the one from the Seinfeld episode where George tries to convert to Latvian Orthodoxy. I didn’t think it was a good idea to teeheehee right in front of the marching band and the church so I kept moving.

In other news, remember my sunburn on top of another sunburn? Yes, you guessed it, now that it’s gone there is a new one to add to the picture. Apropos of nothing, today I bought a new bucket hat.

Well, that’s all for now. Weather is here, wish you were beautiful!

PS, I’m not responsible for any spelling errors in this post, the CrackBerry has no spell check.

Well folks, I’m here and I’ve only gotten lost once! It’s actually the lady at the bus station’s fault. I showed her the name of the street where my pension is and she waved her hand in my face and told me to ask at the tourist office. Sadly, she wouldn’t tell me where that was either. The pension turned out to be two blocks away. Brilliant. Because my suitcase weighs a ton and a half. I would like everyone to know, by the way, that I’m spending ten days in two countries with one carry-on bag. Ha!

I took two buses from the airport and everyone was correct: Athens is a pit but the countryside is lovely. And now, I’m off to explore the town. Or fall asleep. This room is adorable and you’ll have to take my word for that because not only am I posting via Blackberry but I forgot the USB cord for my camera back in the US of A. Oops. Pictures will follow… in a couple of weeks.

Ta from the future because I’m 7 hours ahead of you.*

*your mileage may vary depending on where you live.

Boy, Rosh Hashanah is a long holiday! I haven’t been able to post in like twelve days. Oh, I kid, but I had other excuses. I was contemplating all my sins and how to be a better person. Yes…. that was it. It’s a long process, you see. What? WHAT? OK OK, I’ve been utterly drowning in my Greece plans. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing! This might be just dandy for other people but I am the sort who has my whole holiday planned down to the bus schedule between Penzance and St. Just. (That worked a lot better for Cornwall than Greece, thus I can’t reuse it). But I’m leaving in a week and I have no idea what I’m doing other than landing on a Delta jet in Athens. Lou my Greece expert has been very patient with me and all my indecisiveness but after weeks and weeks of conversation, it comes down to this advice: “Wow, Greece is fantastic! So many great places to go! So many things to see! Too bad you don’t have time to do any of them!”

But he’s right. I really don’t have time to do all that island hopping that everyone associates so with Greece. Instead I’ll be spending time in the charming (so they say - not Lou, though, he’s never been there) city of Nafplion on the Peloponnese peninsula. Or Nafplio. Or Nauplion. It’s like they have a different alphabet over there or something. It probably has three triangles in Greek. But I’m excited! I finally picked somewhere to go, a fun, non-touristy, visually stunning base for day trips. And there’s water, I like water (I know, so rare in Greece) . But then I realized that merely picking a city doesn’t actually find you a hotel or transportation. Yadda yadda yadda, I stayed at work till ten because I had fourteen FireFox tabs open and I knew I’d never find my way back to where I was.

I’m also staying one night in Athens and these two cities seem to have opposite problems. All the reviews of Athenian hotels were like “what a dump!” and “stay far away!” whereas all the hotels in Nafplion seem to be palaces. Sadly, I don’t have a royal budget. I gave up on finding something in Nafplion for this night but I did manage to pick a hotel in Athens. It was the one whose only bad reviews were that it was near a bunch of sex shops and that prostitutes were walking around. Coming from New York I call this “local charm.”

But back to Nafplion (that’s what my Frommer’s book calls it so I’m going with that). According to people on Flickr, it looks like this.

(pic NotiX @ Flickr)

And this.

(pic feuilllu @ Flickr)

And apparently it’s famous for its gelato. Mmmm, vacation.

(pic Kristie’s NaturesPortraits @ Flickr)

Not bad! I think I will finally be able to get away from it all there. And by getting away from it all, I mean all the planning it takes to get away from it all.

Title comes from The Marx Brothers’ Cocoanuts/Why A Duck scene.