K day-tripped to Delphi today, 3+ hour bus ride out. I thought I'd take the day off and give my body time to recuperate. Do some laundry, some writing, maybe even some hotel bookings if I could just get myself started (yes, the last month is still, um, unbooked). I was going to check out the Central Market and visit E. K can take pictures and tell me about Delphi when he gets back. Maybe I'll visit whenever we're back in Athens again, if I'm thus inclined. Those were my thoughts at noon, when I was writing and waiting for my laundry.
By the time the laundry finished and I packed away all our clean clothes, it was 2:30, so I quickly headed out to the market, which closes at 3pm. Market buys: bananas, tomatoes, oranges, cherries, apricots. With the exception of the cherries, everything else was great. I was quite peeved about the cherries. I'm used to picking the fruit I buy myself. So, if I buy a bag of cherries, every single one of the cherries is entirely yummy. In Greece, I've found that they get a bit upset if you touch the fruit, giving you dirty looks and so on. With the cherries, they just scoop a bunch into a bag. The other day, there were only a few bad ones. But today, it was horrible! It was partly my fault; I didn't look close enough at the quality. Only a handful of the cherries I ended up with were any good >_<
The fruit and veges were on one side of Athinas street and the meat and fish was on the other side. The meat and fish part was pretty organized. Meat seller after meat seller, the ones selling the same items being adjacent to each other. All the meat sellers were men and I got my dose of what it was like being a young, non-local woman walking through it. Most of the men were fairly polite, but there was this one group that accosted me, and one guy in particular who would not keep his dirty meat-hands off me. Argh >_<
I then picked up some souvlaki sticks to go and ate that plus my fruit back at the hostel. I only ate half of it, and left the other half for dinner.
Headed out to E's a little before 5. When I called E to tell her I was in front of her apartment, it turns out I wasn't -- I was on the wrong street, a block off, oops.
Just thinking about seeing E was exciting. We met one crazy teenage summer in Baltimore, when I discovered there was so much more diversity out in the world than my little bubble in NJ, and when I had the best roommate from Greece anyone could wish for. I saw E again twice after that, once at my house, and once in Boston, but we managed to stay somewhat in touch, and here I was, in Athens, visiting her at her house, shortly after she had just given birth ^o^
Stayed at E's until after dark, catching up on this and that, and learning little tidbits about life in Greece and about taking care of a newborn. She had just started nursing her 12-day-old newborn when I arrived ^-^ Her main advice -- don't listen to any friends or family who try to tell you what you should or should not do with the baby. The advice they give is usually based on the very few babies (or one baby) they've taken care of and every baby is different. It's funny -- I'll probably be having my first when she's having her second!
Got back to the metro without any wrong turns. K was already back when I returned to the hostel.
We left around 1am to go to the airport. 4:15am flight to Warsaw.
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