Day 26: Pyramids.

I spent the bulk of my day with the Ahmets. Ahmet number one is my driver, and an Egyptology and tourism student, and alleged former Olympic medal holder (100 meter dash, Moscow.) Ahmet number 2 is my pyramid guide, and a Bedoin. As in, nomad, and tents, and he has traveled the 2-month journey on camels across the Sahara from Egypt to Libya. They are both characters. Ahmet 1 will not stop talking about Egyptian aphrodesiacs, despite the fact that I keep changing the subject. Ahmet 2 is a big fan of American rappers- he things Eminem is ok, especially after he saw 8 Mile, but he thinks poor Tupac was just beautiful.

Giza is only 11 miles from Cairo; in traffic about an hour. A harrowing hour, in fact- it's not so much that people aren't following the rules, it's that there aren't any. I watched a 7-lane-across merging free-for-all this morning, on a road with no lanes marked at all. People weave and tailgage and play chicken. Pedestrians? God bless them. They just sally forth into traffic, no matter how many lanes or what speed, as there is no other way to cross. Cars don't actually slow down for them, but they do swerve, so that's good. I tested all this out this afternoon and there's no combination of signals that makes it ok for pedestrians to cross. There's one with a blinking yellow light, in the center of two other blinking yellow lights on a different rhythm- I have no idea what that means. Then there's the pedestrian green light complete with the animated walking pedestrian- that one just seems to make the cars angry as they speed through. Red means 30 seconds of "drive like hell," so that's insane. Your best hope, really, is just to step our into moderately-paced traffic. And gridlock.

Anyway. For this and other reasons, I went with the tour offered by my hotel: $50, car and guide for the day, Giza-Saqqara-Memphis. I didn't ask if it included my entry fees; no, but that's fine, I was happy to pay the 30 pounds, about $6, to get in. Another travel surprise. As we approach Giza, Ahmed 1 starts giving me detailed instructions- on how to deal with the camel guys.

I stare back blankly for a moment and say, "That's ok, I'll just walk." Because who, other than a dazed tourist, would actually do the camel thing? I had no intention whatsoever. Ahmed informs me that it's the only way- the complex is 12 km and I'll never see it all if I don't go on a camel. But if I'd rather have a horse I can do that instead. Again I say, "Can't you just walk? I thought camels were just, like, you know, tourist extra." And he says, "Trust me. And anyway, you'll never ride a camel again, so why not now? But when you are talking to the camel guys, don't say anything about money. They'll rip you off. I'll deal with that."

Next thing I know I am seated on a bench, and Ahmed 2 is gesturing at a wooden map of Giza and telling me my Camel Package Options. I go for the big one- ride up a big sand dune for pictures, and see all the pyramids, and the Sphinx. And, contrary to every intention (not to mention the promise by Ahmed 1 to help me,) I am haggling for a camel.

I confirm later on that, yes, this is a racket. And you can indeed drive directly up to the pyramids, and just walk around, for 1/10 of what I paid. However, and this is a BIG however, that would have been a tragic mistake. I did briefly get involved in the tourist crush to get an up-close picture of the Sphinx, and that part was a nightmare- jostling and herding and lots of hassling by people selling things. 10 minutes of that was plenty, and if I'd driven in, that's all I would have gotten. Instead, I climbed onto a camel. complete with festive traditional camel headgear. (Camels, for the record, are way, way, taller than horses.) I got to ride in through the back entrance and across a really nice stretch of Sahara. From way off in the distance, the blowing sand made the pyramids look hazy and misty, and you couldn't see any people. There was a stunning view back down into Cairo.

We did ride up a giant sand dune, high enough to take some great shots. Ahmed made me do a tourist photo shoot- you know, mock leaning on the pyramids, one foot up in the air resting on the pyramid, etc, and though I would normally object to such shenanigans, they are hilarious, particularly the one of Ahmed and me doing "Walk Like an Egyptian." Then we got closer, much closer, and finally close enough to stand on the base of the biggest pyramid. Crazy, they look smaller as you get close because the perspective looking up is all skewed. Ahmed told me that Napoleon is responsible for most of the damage; the story has it that he spent 2 weeks shelling the pyramids to destroy them but never made much headway and eventually gave up. Went down into the crowd to see the Sphinx, exactly as enigmatic as I would have guessed. After that, I parted ways iwth Ahmed 2 and went with Ahmed 1 to Saqqara.

Again, as luck has it, lots of the monuments were closed for repairs. There are enormous, enormous excavations everywhere- it looks exactly like the scenes from Raiders of the Lot Ark with the frantic digs. Lots of these deep wells, way out from the base of the big pyramid there, contain stairs and secret doors- hidden passages into the tomb. The pyramid here, a stepped one, the Dzoser's tomb, is the first pyramid; this stepped one gradually led to the development of the rest.

Ahmed led me into some smaller tombs, where people are studying the heiroglyphics and wall painings. The most exciting: there's a small pyramid onsite, which really is crumbled to the point it looks like a sand dune, that you can enter. This is another thing I had no plans to do, having read that it is brutal on your back and knees todo the crouching walk down the steep ramps to get into one of these things, and neither my back or knees are up for anything risky. It was a short climb in, though. The ramp, fortified with steel square tubing for footholds, is at about a 45 degree angle, and you have to do it crouched forwards as far as you can get, holding onto the rails so you don't pitch forward face-first. You can briefly stand up at the bottom, then you enter a long stone passageway about 3' high. You just have to duck and go for it, and it's uncomfortably long. Another brief respite, another stone passage, and you're in the tomb room, with a high vaulted ceiling covered in stone stars, and some really well preserved wall paintings.

It was all pretty mind-blowing. It has not sunk in that I stood on the base of a pyramid today, or saw the Sphinx, or rode a camel through at least a little bit of desert. I came back and looked in the mirror, and for the record, I looked a complete mess. But I really, really liked what I saw. My hair was all frazzly and tangled, and my cheeks were sunburned, and I was covered in sand, and my clothes had holes in them in two places. (And not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm pretty sure I smelled like my camel.) But my hair was a mess from the Sahara breeze and not an all-nighter, and my cheeks were pink from a few hours out in the Cairo sun and not pale from weeks at my desk, and I was covred in ancient sand from eroding pyramids instead of graphite and zap-a-gap. Even with the camel aroma, I'm calling it a major improvement.

Day 25. Cairo.

I am watching Looney Tunes in Cairo. One of those "best-laid plans" situations- I got a phone call, in my cab, from my carefully-researched pension, telling me I was staying somewhere else tonight, and moving tomorrow. I'm not sure why- I was struggling with my cab driver's bluetooth thingy- but, when you get cab phone calls of this nature, really, you just go with it. Plans of an evening to re-group, do laundry, catch up on correspondence- on hold. This place is super sketchy. The streets around me are pitch black at 6 pm, and I'm looking at the back side of a giant row of billboards onto a superhighway. Thank heavens I have earplugs. I made it as far as the corner store for water, and some kind of sweet flaky unidentifiable bread. I am a relatively bold traveler, but striking out from this particular locale, in the dark, is a Bad Idea.

The great news? I have 378 channels. What are the odds, really, in a place that doesn't have a sign on the street? I mean, faucets are dripping and I just heard an epic catfight, actual caterwauling, from the airshaft below me, and it's a "provide your own towel" kind of place. Again I say, 378 channels. Now, I wasn't born yesterday, and I know that even in a foreign language, 300 of those channels will have nothing decent on. But still- I am simultaneously watching Looney Toons, and the Simpsons Movie, and old Bradley Cooper/Jennifer Garner movie, and about 6 soccer games. I have BBC, CNN, and an Arabic MTV, where fully-covered women are doing solid-gold dances. I have both Nickelodeon, and Al Jazeera Child, which looks like a version of the Muppetts. Al Jazeera itself has just done what can only be described as a loving and sentimental tribute, in English, to the New Orleans Saints and the passion behind their Super Bowl win. I have TV Korea, TV Jordan, TV Saudi. And I'm not making fun, really, but so far there are 3 channels of camels.

I feel sure there's a B-movie or two in my future*- our most mediocre films, the kinds featuring Vin Diesel or the Rock, seem to be showing up a lot here. But tomorrow: Pyramids, Memphis, Saqqara. More soon!


*addendum to this post, immediately after writing I flipped to a Billy Baldwin movie. But I settled on Once Upon A Time in Mexico, because who doesn't love a good shoot-out involving Johnny Depp and Antonio Banderas?

Day 24. Last in Athens. Overuse of the word "lovely."

5:15 am arrival in Athens; harrowing dreamlike trip back to hotel on 3 trains, one bus; total 1 hour and 45 sleep-deprived minutes, including a 20-minute walk through the dark Port of Piraeus. And now:

Lovely lovely hotel let me check in at dawn. Sleep till 1:30 pm. Lovely lovely rainy snack and Greek coffee in the Plaka. Later, lovely lovely fish dinner with Kristen H's lovely lovely Greek friend Ellie. Lovely lovely evening channel-flipping in my hotel. Hair clean. Clothes clean. Legs shaved. Packed for Cairo. All is well.

Day 23: Labyrinth.

I am pretty seriously amused right now. I have just toured the Palace of Knossos- home of the ancient Minoan civilization, on the island of Crete. We studied this place in school, with it's off-kilter upside-down columnst and lustral basins and ridiculously intricate floor plan. For some reason, as I was paring down my list of must-sees along the way, I just couldn't drop this one off, as long as it was within striking distance of Athens.

"Striking distance" is actually a bit of a stretch, depending on your definition. Because of the off-season ferry schedules, there was no painless way to get here and back, so I've committed myself to two consecutive overnight ferries. Arriving here in the dark at 6 am. Returning tomorrow to Athens at 5 am, doubly painful because the subway doesn't run until 5:50, and my hotel check-in is at 2. So, this was work. I figured that when a boat big enough to have goth a swimming pool and a night club comes ashore at dawn, someone would have coffee brewing somewhere- not exactly. Because I am just that smart, I also managed to store my Heraklion map in my luggage, locked up at the hotel in Athens. So, having no better option, I went with the "walk uphill" tactic hoping to find something promising in the dark. Other than a stand serving french fries (??) to cab drivers, the streets were dark.

6 am dark, though, isn't as scary as, say, 1 am dark. For starters, you know the sun will eventually come up; also, it's not like there are drunkies stumbling out of bars around you or something. Wrong again: 6 am and the music is still thumping, and bouncers are still camped out in their doorways from last night. Two women, I'd say early 50's, sail out into the street dressed as pirates. Thankfully, about 15 minutes uphill in the dark, there were signs of life- coffee and a 24/7 internet cafe, full of adolescent gamers before dawn. Good place to pull up a map, at least, and watch the sun come up.

All that aside, I made it to the Palace. Frankly, it's mostly rubble. You can at least trace the massive web of foundations around this giant complex. The most fun, though, is the re-invented areas. I'd say "re-constructed" or "preserved" but those are pretty far off the mark. At some point in time, a guy from Oxford got involved with this place and gained permission to excavate. In his day I don't think his methods raised any eyebrows, but by our standards of historic preservation, he took some giant liberties. Because the crumbling sparkly gypsum foundations were so badly weathered, he thought concrete reinforcement might be a good idea. He pieced together some rooms here, some corners there, with a good dose of both imagination and European flair. He painted things. He built things. He detailed faux wood grain in paint on the concrete beams, for effect. He vividly described "lustral basins" as sacred ritual pools, although there's no evidence they actually held water. He named one reconstruction the "Piano Nobile," as if this were a Venetian Palazzo. He conjectured "tri-columnar shrines" and made up all kinds of purposes for rooms, which he lovingly re-imaged with a combination of original stone, concrete, and liberal paint. It's as if a 12-year old were given a set of legos and an hour, and you said, "GO! See what this might have been."

And it is, after all, really interesting. Seeing it in person, I think this man was at least a little nutty, if not downright Quixotic, but his handprint is everywhere, and you can't help but like him. The bright colors do bring the place to life, a little, and lustral basins seem as plausible an explanation as any other, and who's to say that wasn't a throne room, after all? In some places, sure, he was way off (faux wood-grain concrete, for example) but he did make some sound educated guesses about Minoan architecture and culture. At some point I went from, "Hmm, interesting foundation patterns," to "this guy is a combination of Indiana Jones and the Mad Hatter and Walt Disney." It's worth a trip.

The real reason I came, I confess, wasn't for the Palace at all. It was for the myth of King Minos and the Minotaur, because I am seriously just a big kid. I know, academically, that there wasn't really a labyrinth here, if "here" is actually the origin of that story as rumored. If you look at a floor plan, you'd just have to describe it as "labyrinthine," because that's just how those cagey Minoans built. Probably it did keep people from barging into the king's throne room, as there's no direct way to get anywhere. Even so. I wanted to see the seeds of that story, and traipse around the labyrinth. And I did. I feel a little like I did when I went to Loch Ness years ago, and tried really, really hard to see the Loch Ness Monster. And I'd do it again today. I know. Unlikely on every level. To try and spot one of these mythical creatures defies all logic- but really, deep down, don't you want to believe that you could?

Day 22. Acropolis. Contains both ranting, and gushing, about architecture.

Woke up to another gorgeous day- perfect Acropolis weather, cool and sunny. Surprisingly, it's a very short hike to the top, for all the talk about the importance of the processional route. I was kind of expecting an epic journey. The Acropolis was good; it's really a huge construction site, with a multi-decade restoration in progress. It's not really a "Look out for the wrath of the gods!" experience, so much as a "Look out, here comes that guy with the bobcat again!" situation. I have lost count of the major monuments I've visited shrouded in scaffolding- so it's really no big deal. I can't tell how extensive this restoration is- it looks like they're inserting placeholder stones, so I don't know whether they're just rebuilding key spots, or rebuilding major sections? The Parthenon, more than anything else, is in ruins because the in the 1600s it was occupied by the Ottoman Turks, who used it for munitions storage. It was hit by a bomb from below and the munitions exploded, causing the major damage we see today. There's a big historical lesson embedded in here somewhere....

More impressive than the Parthenon to me, though, is the Erectheion. There is something so graceful about the way it negotiates the change in grade and changes each face to accommodate a different function. I love the famous caryatid porch, although all the original caryatids are down the hill in the museum. It's tiny, compared to the Parthenon, but really lovely. The temple of Athena Nike is completelyenclosed in construction, so I didn't see that. The Propylaea was pretty cool- as intended, I was so dazed winding up the stairs and seeing the full framed view of the Parthenon that I kind of missed it, and had to go back in and look for the transition points, and the way it re-orients you and captures the view after climbing the hill.. Spent a couple of hours up there and came down to re-group and find food- fiercely hungry. I needed to re-energize before tackling the museum.

I also needed to come down and adjust my attitude, as I was by this point irritated with people at major world monuments on cell phones, and general crowd behavior. "People," as Seinfeld says. "They're the worst." I've somehow managed to stay out of sync here; show up at Hadrian's Library and the Ancient Agora, only to be turned away because they close at 2:30. (Why?? Why 2:30??) No problem- hike to the temple of Olympic Zeuss- sorry, we closed at 3. Meanwhile, I was also working up to a pretty good architecture rant, some of which I'll re-create here, as it relates to the view in all directions for miles and miles from the Acropolis. Athens, apart from the ancient monuments and the really lovely pedestrian Plaka at its feet, is egregiously unlovely. My friend Jessica R, correct in this as in all other things, had told me that a day in Athens itself would be plenty. To be sure, some of the wonders of the ancient world are here- the Acropolis alone was reason enough to make this a non-negotiable stop. But outside the historic district- offensively bad 60's brutalism, concrete buildings ringed in shabby motel-style porches and walkways, or struggling to support crumbling faux-Corb bris-soleils. From the Acropolis to the Port of Piraeus, which I've traversed twice, is about a 10 mile avenue lined with strip clubs and car dealerships, interspersed with mottled concrete messes of multi-story something-or-other. To further put it in perspective, the fabric out past the old city is more or less on an architectural par with Jakarta. At first I registered all this as anger, but I realized today it's more architectural despair- because if ATHENS, birthplace of so much in terms of democracy and philosophy and culture that we hold dear, can let this happen, then what does that mean for the rest of us? If the primary avenue from the ancient Acropolis to your major maritime port of entry into the city, for crying out loud, has deteriorated into a XXX version of Raleigh's Capital Boulevard, what hope does, say, Cary have? or my beloved Raleigh, or really, Anytown, USA? Where were the designers when this happened, or the historians and preservationists, or even the neighbors? NOBODY looked at this atrocious concrete mess at the foot of the Acropolis and said, "We can do better?" This is all so depressing.

Rant complete, and it's not entirely a fair one, for sure, but this was my frame of mind as I grumbled off from all the closed monuments and approached the New Acropolis Museum. At which point my attitude underwent a radical reversal.

The Museum. It looks modern from the outside- and yet, not jarringly so. You come down a set of stairs from the street, only to look down and discover you're standing on glass floor panels. This whole museum is built atop ancient archeological digs, and built so you can peer down into them and watch people work. Parts of the excavations, sheltered by a large overhang, are wide open. The digs are about 20' below you, so it's a tiny bit dizzying- but the glass is printed with small black dots, for traction and visual orientation.

Upward into the museum- you pass through a ticket gate and onto a gentle, wide, sloping pathway, like the climb to the Acropolis itself. More archeological sites underfoot. As you climb you see a giant pediment come into focus on the floor above, orienting you to the hall of statues. Halls of statues, actually, usually make my eyes glaze over pretty quickly- other then a few standout masterpieces, I have a hard time breathing much life into them. These are really elegantly displayed, though. Many of them are fragments, so they're sometimes pieced together with plaster inserts, or held in proper alignment, with the negative space left to your imagination, with stainless steel supports. A fragment of a capital, for example, is displayed on a fan of stainless steel bars- implying, but not replicating, the missing fluted column on which it sat.

More loveliness- the east and west sides of the gallery are shaded with a gentle screen. The statues are deliberately displayed in daylight, as intended by their creators. The screen, though, cuts down on the glare, and- even better- abstracts the decidedly unlovely fabric of contemporary Athens into a dynamic silhouette. In this light, even the rows of satellilte dishes and bris-soleils look like a united, coherent urban fabric; a modern chapter of this continual city.

Top floor: flawless. You step off the escalator onto the Parthenon level, where freizes and sculptures are displayed around the perimeter. It is so subtle at first that it takes a minute to register- these sculptures are in their exact positions around the gallery, which itself abstracts the marble columns in slender stainless steel, but maintains the proportions of the Parthenon perfectly. As you walk around the gallery, you get frequent glimpses of the actual Parthenon, just out the window and about 200 yards uphill. You also realize that, at some point since your entry, the museum has made a subtle transition to align itself perfectly with the orientation of the original, so you can compare each piece visually with its location on the hill. Then, my favorite detail- you step out into the center of the top floor gallery, onto more glass panels. Here you look straight down, through the strolling visitors on the lower two floors, and back down into the archaeological digs, 80' or so below. Simple but unmistakeable metaphor: looking from your current spot, back through layers and layers of history. Nice? Very nice. Hope renewed. Faith restored.

Note to the British Museum: Athens wants its marbles back - and their place is much nicer than yours. Lord Elgin was wrong. Cough 'em up. It's time.

Day 20: Santorini. Woah.

Apparently I have a thing for volcanic islands. After Indonesia, an entire volcanic archipelago, I am in Santorini. Those of you who have been here will laugh at this, but I had read references to "the caldera" and "hiking the caldera" in guidebooks, so I had visions of driving to the volcano and maybe hiking around it a little. I didn't realize until I got to the top of the island and looked down: Woah. This whole island, and the smaller ones out in the bay, ARE the rim of the volcano. The caldera? The entire bay. This is a giant, giant thing- looking at a map, it's vaguely noticeable that these islands form kind of a circle. Standing here and looking down on it, though, the situation is really clear. These precipitous jagged hills I'm staring at are so obviously the rim of a volcano, and I'm looking 1000 feet down into it's crater. When this thing blew, 3,000 years ago, it shattered the rim and the Aegean Sea came flooding in. There are a couple of burned little islands at the center of this bay- still smoking. Technically these might be the cinder cone? Or, at the very least, the volcano's way of gradually rebuilding itself from the inside out? The volcanic sea floor here is unstable; over centuries, ephemeral islands have risen and sunk out there. And submerged near the core is supposed to be- wait for it, my friends- ATLANTIS. I think that is super freakin' cool. The last time one of these islets emerged, and slowly submerged again a couple of hundred years ago, they actually found evidence of Roman buildings on it. Again. Woah.

I have spent the day with my rental car, driving Santorini from end to end. It's not very far, maybe 15 miles, but with enough twists and turns and side roads and villages to keep you busy for a day or so. Santorini, unfortunately, is closed. And I mean, whole villages right now are ghost towns this time of year, except for the occasional construction site where guys are futzing about with wheelbarrows. Ia, at the north end of the island, is where I think 95% of Greece's postcards and tourist images originate. I invented a new game in Ia called, "Try to Take a Bad Picture." Seriously, I dare you, try it. Can't be done.

Architeture detour, those of you whose eyes glaze over at this kind of thing, feel free to skim. The architecture, aside from the caldera view, is why you come here. The steep side of the island has all these zig-zag stone walkways you'd typically negotiate with the help of a donkey- and seriously, I saw 3 today, and there are no tourists here, so it's real. The thick walls make sense against the summer heat, or the winter chill; the close-knit fabric and the high walls had something to do with defense against pirates, historically, among other things. It all seems pretty dicey in light of the seismic situation, though. Stone ceilings and walls are not what you'd want in the event of a tremor. A percentage of the island's buildings are still in ruins from the last major event, in 1956. Lots of people moved in lieu of rebuilding, and it's surprising that, given the value of this real estate, you can still pick your way through rubble in spots, 50 years later. The buildings are woven so closely together with lanes threaded through in all directions that it's difficult to tell what is public walkway, and what is someone's front porch. And, a detail I just love, there seems to have been a consensus early on about what colors everyone would use, everywhere. The whitewashing, I suppose, was a purely practical decision, especially to reflect the summer sun. What makes it splendid, though, is the blue. Mostly it's cobalt, on doors and gates and domes; a few have gone wild and used cerulean, or baby blue, or a splash of turquoise. Against the unbelievably blue water, and the bluer sky, it is stunning. There are a few freckles of green, on stray fence posts. Anything that's not white, in terms of the walls, is ochre; washed in shades from butter to almost canary yellow. Everything is a little sunbleached. Glorious.

And, glorious, but empty. Wandering Ia this afternoon, there was one shop open, a handful of construction workers, and two other tourists. Everything is padlocked, and the padlocks are bubble wrapped, then strapped with duct tape for good measure. Same with the street lights. Windows are papered over. This place is lonely and windswept, in a way I haven't seen since I visited the Bronte house on the moors of Yorkshire, years ago. And people, that was the setting that inspired Wuthering Heights, and there were still street festivals and people everywhere. This: quiet. I drove back to the main village, Fira, and found a cafe which housed about 4 people- quite the crowd. I had a sandwich out on the balcony, and the wind blew the tomatoes off my sandwich before I closed it and weighted it down. This is, unquestionably, a tough time of year here. The guy who rented me the car today told me that people here work 14 hours a day all summer, and sleep all day during the winter. "People? There are people here??" I wanted to ask. And there are a few. And they are all giving me funny looks. I feel like I have shown up very early, or very late, for a party. But when I did that last year at a dessert party my dear friends John and Andie threw, showing up an hour early by mistake, they were fabulous- they offered me dinner and let me play with their adorable baby and help arrange the cheese tray. Here: awkward.

So, to end on a happy note: I got here on the ferry last night, too late to go very far on foot before the daylight ran out, but far too early to call it a night at like 5 pm. I was feeling blue for the first time since I left home, mainly because I was not in Istanbul, and fresh off an 8 hour ferry ride, and it was the first time in weeks I'd gone for more than an hour or two without a conversation, and I had a scratchy throat and a cold. (I am not actually complaining about any of this- my cold and I, after all, are in Santorini. But it sets the scene.) I was finding nothing other than the stray convenience store open, and dreading the long dark walk back to my guest house, when- as it seems to happen these days- a cozy little corner cafe lit up out of nowhere. There were little blue chairs on the patio, and real live people inside, and a huge chalk sign written in English that proclaimed: CHICKEN SOUP. Oh, thank you thank you. Giant bowl of homemade soup with fresh herbs on top, mounds of chicken, and a good handfull of rice.

I keep looking for evidence, lately, that things will turn out as they should, and that the world is inherently safe and good and kind. This is mainly because I have to go home and job hunt during a recession, which is kind of terrifying, and it was a leap of faith to take this time to travel, not knowing how long I'll be unemployed when I get back. There are a couple of sayings rattling around in my mind these days. The first is something like, "Luck is where preparation meets opportunity," and I am trying to trust that we've all done the preparation part, and the hard work to get us where we need to go. The other saying is, "Leap, and the net will appear." I don't know about nets, really, or jobs; but I do know that chicken soup will, when you have a cold, or streets full of lamps, when you're lost in the dark, and beautiful things, at just the right moment, and fabulous friends, too. Things have been appearing lately, unbidden, exactly when I need them- anyone else finding little bits of serendipity everywhere?

Day 17: Leaving Istanbul

Last day in Istanbul. Visited a couple of Sinan mosques, but mostly walked all day- my pedometer (I am a complete travel dork) says 9.6 miles. Nothing is worn out but my ankles, though, from climbing up and down all these lovely steep cobblestone streets. On the advice of Jessica C, who wisely told me that if I didn't buy one of those lovely hanging lamps, I'd regret it as soon as I left the city, I bought a lamp. I drank tea on the rooftop terrace upstairs, took the tram one last time, and did my favorite walk back across the bridge to the Spice Market at dusk, and I drank a glass of fresh-squeezed pomegranite juice, which is the reddest thing I have ever seen.

Despite all the theatrics in the street, and all of these very entertaining Istanbul men feigning heartaches at every turn, the truth is this: the only heart actually breaking as I pack to leave Istanbul is mine. Sigh.

I am depending on Athens and the Greek Isles to cheer me up. I have started reading Ovid's Metamorphosis to prep me for being in the land of Mt. Olympus and all the stories that go with it. Much busier travel week ahead- planes and ferries and a couple of islands to visit, not to mention the Acropolis. Miss everyone back home! Send news!