We wake up exceptionally early: 11:00. PM — body-time. We’re seven hours’ difference and trying to acclimate to the new time. Yesterday’s long day gave way to an exceptionally short night (or so it felt). Hopefully after today, we’ll be fine.

When we began planning this short Athens adventure, we planned the big sightseeing day as our first full day: the Acropolis. We can see it from our apartment; we walked all around its base yesterday evening while exploring Plaka (so many maître d’s inviting us in for dining: street-side dining, rooftop dining — I felt I was continually saying, “No thank you, we already ate”). Today, though, is the day we actually visit the site.

We start with a light breakfast — pastries we purchased on the way back to the apartment last night. The best was the cheese and spinach that K and I shared, the one K mistakenly called chocolate last night to the bemused horror of the shop attendant. I’m sure it went through her head to play along and sell our son the “chocolate” pastry and then imagine the reaction. It went through my mind. We eat on our terrace, which has views to all the antennae and solar water heaters that cover all the roofs.

We’re staying in an older part of town. The taxi driver warned us that it is not the safest neighborhood, but I think she was being the overly-cautious (perhaps somewhat xenophobic — there are a lot of immigrants in this neighborhood) babcia (what’s “babcia” in Greek? Γιαγιά I learn) she was. (A γιαγιά taxi driver? First I’d seen. She took calls during the whole journey, and during each conversation, she sounded like the γιαγιά she clearly was.) When we returned yesterday evening, no worries at all; when we got up, we heard all of them heading out to work like the usually-hard-working immigrants they likely are. I think γιαγιά was exaggerating.

After breakfast we head to the Acropolis: we ordered tickets weeks ago through a third party because the package included a five day metro pass as well as admission to the Acropolis, the Acropolis museum, and a lot more. We reserved tickets for 8:00. When we arrive, the attendant tells us our tickets are for one in the afternoon.

“That’s not possible. We made reservations for 8:00;” we protest.

“But the ticket is for 1:00,” she says pointing to the spot on the ticket that indicated the time: 1:00 PM indeed. So we go from “We’re about to enter the Acropolis,” to “Jeez, what do we do for these five hours? The logical option is just to switch afternoon and morning plans, but our afternoon plans were so loose and free because we thought we’d be coming off the Acropolis, tired, sweaty, ready for something easy and pleasant in the afternoon. Still, what else could we do? So we go to the National Gardens (lovely), then head to the parliament building to watch the changing of the guard, followed by the Panathenaic stadium, the ancient Agora, and modern lunch.

The whole time I find myself thinking about how we made reservations for 8:00 but they registered as 1:00. At first I reason it had something to do with the time difference: “Stupid website somehow took into account the time difference and registered us for 8:00 our time.” But that doesn’t make sense: we’re seven hours different, not five. Where is the difference five hours? Between South Carolina and England, the country that runs the website we used. “That must be what happened,” we reason.

When it’s time to head back up to the Acropolis, we buy more water (we never seem to have enough) and decide to go back via the metro. Unlike the morning, it’s relatively empty, but with the wait times at each station (we had to make two line changes), we end up arriving fifteen minutes after one.

Already riled up, I start muttering under my breath: “If they don’t let us in…” Of course, they do, and of course, we’re amazed with what we see. The main building is of course a temple to Athena, making it sort of the Notre Dame of ancient Greek religion — or rather, the opposite: Notre Dame is the Parthenon of Christianity. Perhaps in a few more millenia, people will be visiting cathedrals like we view the Parthenon now: relics of a bygone time honoring a deity we can’t imagine worshiping. (Are there any who still worship Athena and the other gods? A quick search reveals that Hellenism or Hellenic Polytheism does still exist, but they’re a religious curiosity at this point. Perhaps Christianity and Islam will be the same?)

After our visit, we head back to the apartment to refresh and to relax for just a bit before heading out to dinner. That is, everyone but me: I start working on pictures, which will be especially challenging this trip. I thought I could do everything through L’s iPad, which I guess I could, but I ran into some initial hiccups yesterday and ended up doing all the photo editing on my phone. Long-ish story. It has its benefits: I’m not willing to spend so much time editing on my phone, so I’m more selective, and there will be a lot of unedited pictures I can play with when we get back to the States. But it adds a step to the workflow, and it’s really aggravating working on such a small screen for editing. The second challenge is the new camera, rather its batteries: they take forever to charge, and they die quickly. I’ve never had to be so conscientious of my battery life when photographing. We have two batteries, but we should have brought a third. First world problems — one must keep things in perspective.