Day 0158

Got up uncharacteristically early and hit the Acropolis before the tourist hordes. Powered on to the ancient agora, then Keramikos, Hadrian's library and then collapsed for the rest of the day in the national archaeological museum. Ten hours straight of imbibing Greek culture, and I loved it.

Highlights include the tortoise wandering around near the theatre of Dionysos, the stoa museum at the ancient agora, the oleander everywhere, falafel, freddo cappuccino, the heat, the quiet of the museum, the cycladic sculptures, the Santorini wall paintings, the Marathon boy bronze, and above all the Antikythera mechanism.

Utterly exhausted, museum fatigue, but thoroughly happy to have had such a rich day. It makes a huge difference seeing the artefacts in the country they are from. It is not common property (the feeling you get when you see the same stuff in collections all around the world), it came from a very specific place and from an immensely advanced civilization.

Birds flying through the temple. Gives different perspective. Statues and stones shouldn't be imagined in air-conditioned boxes in isolation, but outside in the Mediterranean heat, interacting with the world.