It’s our third day in Athens. V. is just jumping into the shower, and I’m sitting at a small table in the kitchen. I won’t have much time to write, I just want to account for the things we’ve done and seen, afterwards I will add details, impressions, and photos.

We arrived at 3am on Saturday, and despite this got up relatively early in the morning. We had breakfast around the corner, the food was just ok but a bit expensive. Afterwards, we went to the crown jewel of Athens, the Acropolis, on a perfect day for it (overcast and cool). So many impressions, I’ll leave these for later, but I was very inspired by their buildings.

Afterwards we came down to a restaurant recommended by Claude (V. uses AI in strange ways, I’d never use Claude for this, but it turned out its recommendation was good). We let time slip by and, by the time we had finished late lunch, it was already getting dark. We decided to go to an Ikarian music restaurant, but we first had to make a stop at the airbnb. We layed in bed for a bit looking at Michael’s Sugrue’s lecture on Aristophanes but we were both dozing after a couple of minutes, so we called off the live music and went to bed instead.

The next morning we went to the acropolis museum and had early lunch there, overlooking the Acropolis. Food was surprisingly good if not a bit expensive, but given the views and the context it was a good deal. Again, so many things to comment about the museum that I’ll gloss over for now. We came out and walked to the Agora only to find it closing. Google had the wrong times. Then we decided to walk to a place where there’s a cable car to see the sunset, but V. pregnancy impeded her walking faster, and by the time we got there the sun was already coming down, and a rude employee was screaming that it was 15 euros for 5 minutes at the top. The sun had already hid behind the horizon (we could see the shadow over the mountain top as we were in line) so we decided to call it off and had a drink at a nearby place instead.

We then went to the live music place we wanted to go the day before. When we arrived, so many people were smoking! It was a blast from the past and we wouldn’t have minded except for V’s pregnancy, so we asked for a table far away from the musicians, who were the smokers (well, most of the venue was smoking to tell the truth). Dinner was good, food in general is consistently good, and the evening was pleasant.

Today is our last useful day in Athens, and I will treat this entry as a work in progress, as I won’t have much time to write. I wouldn’t like V overlooking me writing on the plane (not that she doesn’t know I have a “secret blog” where I tell her secrets, she always says it’s ok as long as she’s not identifiable, but I sense that if she actually read my writing she might get curious and I don’t want that to happen (knowing that friends ready you would make me change my writing).

V. has come out of the shower and is in underwear. Her belly is unreal. I wouldn’t have written this if I knew she would read this.

Time to jump into the shower myself.

Yesterday we went to the Agora and I meditated for some minutes in front of the ruins of the prison where Socrates drank the hemlock. V. said something along the lines of “this is where he committed suicide” and I said hmmmm I would call it a self-administered execution, he’s very explicit in the Phaedo that suicide is against the will of the gods and but it’s his duty to execute himself. It’s been amazing connecting everything I’ve read about the ancients to the physical spaces where the accounts happened.

After this we went to the National Archaeological Museum and I was delighted at looking at the pottery, art and technology of the preceding Minoan/Mycenaean civilizations. As I was looking at all the artifacts I was thinking how the expressions of civilization go hand in hand, how is it that the Ancients would produce such profound and beautiful architecture, technology, painting, literature. Athens had 100,000 inhabitants at its peak and the genius to population ratio was off the charts. Why?

We are packing up to go back to Madrid today. Still much to write about yet so little time. The glut of experience is difficult to write and I doubt I will be able to capture even a fraction of what I’ve experienced here. I’m very glad to have made this trip despite the costs, which do not come at a good time, but given the stability I currently experience at work, this does not concern me much.

We just came back from having breakfast around the corner and we talked about the uncertainty AI brings into our profession and the segued into the reforms Spain is taking for the housing crisis. V. encouraged me to buy rather than rent and even offered to loan me money to account for the taxes (the government is offering covering the down payment with a zero interest loan). I thanked her but I still doubt this is good strategy for me, given my nomadic ways. The other day I was thinking: there was a time in humanity when having possessions would have been seen as a liability. Mobility would have been more valued than possessions. I’ll have to think about this.