I’ve started a four-week trip to Europe with a painting workshop in Greece, with Susan, Jenny and a dozen other students from Larry’s painting classes. We spent the first few days in Athens visiting ancient sites and museums. 

Thursday, 17 August – getting to SF

The Airporter, my usual ride to the airport now that I live in Marin, doesn’t run early enough, so I spent the night before my flight in the city. Anne gave me a ride to the Larkspur ferry, which dropped me off at the Ferry Building, and I rolled my suitcase, full of art supplies, down Market Street for several blocks until I found a working escalator. (The elevator was out of service).  It only worked for one flight, so I had to carry my luggage the rest of the way down to the BART platform. From Glen Park I hailed a Lyft ride to Susan’s.

Friday,18 August – flight to Athens

Our plane departed SFO at 6:00 am, and after a 3-hour layover at JFK, we landed in Athens at 10:30 am the next morning. (Greece is ten hours ahead of Pacific Time). The second, 9-hour, leg was in Premium Economy, much more spacious than most of the flights I’ve taken. Noise-canceling headphones helped, though I still wasn’t able to sleep much. We were lucky, our flights were on time and our luggage was not lost.

Saturday, 19 August – Cultural Center

We caught a taxi to our hotel, dropped our luggage, and took a walk. Susan bought a pair of pants, we visited Pandora, a gallery with interesting contemporary art, and ate an awful lunch at one of the many outdoor restaurants catering to tourists. We checked into our room, a nice one with a small balcony, took naps and showers, then met up with two other students who were already here, Cleo and Jeanette. 

Cleo speaks quite a bit of Greek, which she learned from her Greek grandmother, and directed our taxi driver to the Niarcos Foundation Cultural Center. There were no performances today, but we enjoyed the views and saw “Return to Sender” an art installation by The Next, an African art collective, focused on increasing awareness of textile waste. Many discarded clothes are sent to Africa where they end up in landfills.

Sunday, 20 August – National Art Gallery

Breakfast is included with our hotel, and it’s quite yummy: perfectly cooked eggs, spanakopita, olives, feta and other cheeses, fresh OJ and other juices, meat, rice pudding, a little fruit, lots of dry breads and pastries, …

We learned that Jenny didn’t get to the hotel until 1:30 am after flight delays and changes. Her luggage is still back in Amsterdam. She is the fourth student whose luggage is missing. 

Jenny, Susan, Jeanette and I took a taxi to the National Gallery, renovated and expanded a couple years ago, and spent a delightful three hours viewing three floors of post-Byzantine Greek art, ranging from the renaissance on the ground floor to contemporary on the top. Though dozens of taxis passed us when we exited, none would stop, so Susan used her Uber app to hail one for us.

Back near the hotel, Jeanette led us to a nearby restaurant, To Katiamo, where we had a nice leisurely lunch. The wait for our grilled Bream fish was well worthwhile. Susan and I had to change rooms since the ones included with the workshop are smaller than the room we had the first night. 

We met the group at 4:30. There are 15 students, five of them.  Susan, Jenny, and I are the only ones who haven’t attended a travel workshop with Larry previously. Our dinner, in the hotel atrium, was delicious; I had salmon, salad with very tender chicken, veggies, and dessert. 

Monday, 21 August – Acropolis

I slept until 4:00, an improvement over yesterday. We met in lobby at 8:30 and walked to the Acropolis, perched on a hilltop overlooking the Athens urban area, which has about three million inhabitants, almost a third the population of Greece. 

 We met Fotini, our delightful guide, near the entrance and she led us up the slippery marble steps; with skip-the-line tickets we bypassed part of the crowd. Though young, she was very knowledgeable and able to answer our many questions. This excerpt from the web sums it up: “During the past 2,500 years, the Parthenon … has been rocked by earthquakes, set on fire, shattered by exploding gunpowder, looted for its stunning sculptures, and defaced by misguided preservation efforts. Amazingly, the ancient Athenians built the Parthenon in just eight or nine years. Repairing it is taking a bit longer.” During one invasion, columns were pulled down so the lead dowels between marble blocks could be melted and formed into bullets.

It was hot, 96^oF (36^oC), so we stopped often in shady spots to listen to descriptions about Athena’s temple and the Erechtheion, the only temple with maidens for columns, known as the Caryatids (these are replicas, the originals are in museums). On the east side is was windy and dusty, and while the original plan was to wander around and sketch, a half dozen of us chose to head down for a cold beverage at a shady restaurant instead. We reconnected at the Psaras Tavern, where we enjoyed lunch on a shaded terrace. 

Drained by the sun, many of us skipped touring the Ancient and Roman Agoras and instead opted for gelatos and showers. Susan and I met Jeanette in atrium/dining room where I made my sketch-of-the-day, later Jenny joined us for cocktails on the roof, with a view of the Acropolis. The heat was more bearable sitting in the shade. After a bit of online research, we learned that the dessert served after dinner was kataifi with cream on top, yum. 

Monday, 21 August – Acropolis Museum

Yeah! I slept until 6:00 am, my best night sleep in weeks. Susan was craving real coffee so we headed out early for a walk to a coffee shop, encountering Jenny along the way. She was getting distraught about her missing luggage. She and Jeanette headed to the airport after breakfast and while the rest of us were touring the Acropolis Museum we received a WhatApp message letting us know their luggage had been found, yeah!

The museum is built over an old neighborhood with ruins visible beneath. Inside, we saw many of the remaining Parthenon sculptures and caryatids, other than ones at the British Museum. After lunch at the museum, I joined the majority for a short, hot walk to the Olympieion (a.k.a. Temple of Olympian Zeus). One of the largest temples in Greece, it originally contained 104 of the tallest columns in Greece. Most of the 15 remaining ones were surrounded by scaffolding.

Anna, Meghana, and I met with Susan and Jenny in the hotel lobby and the five of us walked over to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, which focuses on political and social issues, such as climate change, border walls, sexuality. Hot and tired, we only spent an hour and didn’t have time to see every exhibit, which included many videos.  

Wednesday, 23 August – Jewelry Museum

With a couple hours to fill before our bus ride to the port, Anna and I toured the nearby Lalaounis Jewelry Museum. Ilias Lalaounis was a Greek metallurgist who specialized in jewelry influenced by ancient Greek designs. He later got inspiration from a variety of civilizations and nature creating an impressive variety of art pieces. The museum also houses pieces by contemporary artists and jewelry-making demos.

We rejoined others in the lobby and boarded a bus which took us to the port for the painting part of our workshop. It was a good time to be leaving; a couple fires started outside Athens yesterday and there was smoke in the air.