Sun­day is flea mar­ket day in Monastiraki–every side street is crowded with buy­ing and sell­ing, the goods rang­ing from antiques to plumb­ing sup­plies, to, as Suzan­nah mem­o­rably noted, oil paint­ings of Adolf Hitler.  Athe­ni­ans and tourists jos­tle side by side, pok­ing through the wares, hag­gling with the ven­dors, drink­ing cof­fee, peo­ple watch­ing, doing what peo­ple do in mar­kets.  A few steps away is the his­tor­i­cal site of ancient Agora, the com­mer­cial and admin­is­tra­tive cen­ter of Golden-Age Athens, which slum­bered under lay­ers of sed­i­ment and sub­se­quent hous­ing for a cou­ple thou­sand years until being exca­vated in the 20th cen­tury.  Most of the place is rub­ble, except for the tem­ple of Hep­haes­tus, which is the only Greek tem­ple that still has its inte­rior walls and part of the ceil­ing.  Then there is the Stoa of Atta­los, pic­tured above, which has been recon­structed and is a wel­come refuge from the mid­day sun, as my son Sam demon­strates.  In the ancient period, this place would’ve looked quite a bit like the Mona­s­ti­raki flea market–full of Athe­ni­ans and for­eign­ers buy­ing and sell­ing and argu­ing and eat­ing and tak­ing advan­tage of a bit of shade.  Going from one place to the other, as we hap­pened to do this Sun­day, a straight line is formed, 25 cen­turies long, and all these mar­ble mon­u­ments come to life.  This is not, of course, news to any­one who lives here, but I am con­stantly amazed to see direct con­nec­tions between life in the time of Per­i­cles and our own, per­haps less Golden, age.

At my favorite neigh­bor­hood bar/soccer watch­ing venue, “Old Fash­ioned Since 2004″  Note the 0–0 score in the background.

here we are in thorikos, the second-oldest the­ater in greece (the old­est is at knos­sos, in crete, but 6th cen­tury bc isn’t bad…)

appar­ently it is still under construction.

a bit of wind reveals the inner medusa dur­ing our acrop­o­lis tour

As I was walk­ing home from din­ner last night, I found this writ­ten on a con­struc­tion fence, along with a bunch of other polit­i­cal slo­gans in English–I won­der who the intended audi­ence is…maybe me?