![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Details of travel
Dec. 14th, 2018 02:51 pmNow we are in Nauplion, for an incredibly luxurious three consecutive days. The last leg: from here it's Olympia Delphi Athens home - or in my case Olympia Athens Delphi Prague, home. I have begun to be able to be excited about Prague, as it comes out from behind the other places. This may very well be the greatest number of new places I ever see in a year, let alone three months. It may take me more than a decade to stay in this many hotels again.
I am getting dangerously used to the idea that sweet pastries are a breakfast food. I have also, less dangerously, come around to cucumber as one. There is a decent array of fruit, muesli (although the bowls are too small), some egg I haven't dared try yet - and some boiled eggs I shall not, hotels here seem uniform in boiling their eggs grey. Also peach juice. The hotel lets us have two key-cards for our room, thus simplifying a lot of logistics as to meals and city-wandering (especially since I'm not using a cell phone). The beds are soft, and there are for the first time blankets - I would almost always rather have blankets than duvets, which give me restless dreams. In one hotel I resorted to lying on top of all the bedding and wearing thick socks. The bathroom, meanwhile, has a real door, and the controversial theory that consistent hot water and an effective system for stopping water going onto the floor can coexist in one shower is finally proven.
Greengrocers are cheap and plentiful, the success rate for mandarins is high, and bananas can almost be relied upon to be edible. I have finally stopped reading '[phi]apmakeio' (pharmacy) as 'mapmakers' at first glance. (Those common letters. Back in Athens I had three or four moments of thinking, 'Ooh, what an interesting shop to find, no wait'. This despite the green LED cross all pharmacies have here). I can still say hello and thank you and not much more in Greek, and this has still never really been a problem; the phrasebook I carry goes unconsulted. Now we're back from Crete it is no longer necessary to buy bottled water, though many of us still do, preferring its flavour to the hotel tap stuff. I disliked all water here for the first days in Athens, and have now got used to it - or perhaps it was my general jet-lag weirdness I was disliking. It will be interesting to get back to NZ tap water. A dinner staple remains gyros, veges meat chips and tzatziki in a pita wrap - everywhere we've been some shop has turning vertical skewers of pork or chicken waiting to serve us. Very cheap. No food poisoning yet.
In the tombs of Mycenae there's a most amazing echo. Huge buried cylinder of stone, gravel on the floor, and every footstep snapping back and forth across the space crisply, as though each disturbed stone of the gravel was speaking individually, as though one was very important or was being paid very close attention by something. A perception I will use sometime in a story for being looked at by a god. Now I have come home from a twenty-first birthday dinner, with nicer food and a greater quantity of spirits and wine than has been the usual, so I will post this without further details - and go to bed.
I am getting dangerously used to the idea that sweet pastries are a breakfast food. I have also, less dangerously, come around to cucumber as one. There is a decent array of fruit, muesli (although the bowls are too small), some egg I haven't dared try yet - and some boiled eggs I shall not, hotels here seem uniform in boiling their eggs grey. Also peach juice. The hotel lets us have two key-cards for our room, thus simplifying a lot of logistics as to meals and city-wandering (especially since I'm not using a cell phone). The beds are soft, and there are for the first time blankets - I would almost always rather have blankets than duvets, which give me restless dreams. In one hotel I resorted to lying on top of all the bedding and wearing thick socks. The bathroom, meanwhile, has a real door, and the controversial theory that consistent hot water and an effective system for stopping water going onto the floor can coexist in one shower is finally proven.
Greengrocers are cheap and plentiful, the success rate for mandarins is high, and bananas can almost be relied upon to be edible. I have finally stopped reading '[phi]apmakeio' (pharmacy) as 'mapmakers' at first glance. (Those common letters. Back in Athens I had three or four moments of thinking, 'Ooh, what an interesting shop to find, no wait'. This despite the green LED cross all pharmacies have here). I can still say hello and thank you and not much more in Greek, and this has still never really been a problem; the phrasebook I carry goes unconsulted. Now we're back from Crete it is no longer necessary to buy bottled water, though many of us still do, preferring its flavour to the hotel tap stuff. I disliked all water here for the first days in Athens, and have now got used to it - or perhaps it was my general jet-lag weirdness I was disliking. It will be interesting to get back to NZ tap water. A dinner staple remains gyros, veges meat chips and tzatziki in a pita wrap - everywhere we've been some shop has turning vertical skewers of pork or chicken waiting to serve us. Very cheap. No food poisoning yet.
In the tombs of Mycenae there's a most amazing echo. Huge buried cylinder of stone, gravel on the floor, and every footstep snapping back and forth across the space crisply, as though each disturbed stone of the gravel was speaking individually, as though one was very important or was being paid very close attention by something. A perception I will use sometime in a story for being looked at by a god. Now I have come home from a twenty-first birthday dinner, with nicer food and a greater quantity of spirits and wine than has been the usual, so I will post this without further details - and go to bed.
