A Date with a Wonder of the World

So as sad as we were to leave Poland until next year, Sophie and I were incredibly excited to jet off to our next filming adventure in Greece. We rolled off the tarmac in Warsaw under cloudy gray skies and were whisked away a soda and magazine later to touch down in hot sun-drenched Greece. Even before we left the plane the sheer "Greekness" everywhere hit us-- rows of airplanes from Olympic Air, complete with a bastardized Olympic Rings logo (how did they EVER manage that legally?) on their tails, a heat haze shimmering off the dusty nearby hills. Stepping into the Greek air, my lungs heaved with the heat. It was then we realized the word of the day-- every day-- for the next 2 weeks-- would be rivulet. As in try and ignore the rivulet of sweat running down my back and focus on the task at hand... We were only staying in Athens one night before flying off to the small little-known island of Skyros at 7AM but Sophie and I made the most of it. We checked in (great hotel right at the airport) and then got down to studying the subway map. Sophie and I have collectively and individually travelled all over the world and we both agree that there's just nothing like taking mass transit in a city to make you feel a part of a place. It gives you the panache and vernacular of a local. From "Gophertown", the underground world of stores selling everything from cigars to wigs to bras to tomatoes in Warsaw's central subway station, to the efficient cool of minding the Gap with the rest of the Brits on London's Underground-- nothing beats heading down into the bowels of a city and emerging one train ride later like curious mole people... So we studied our map, loaded up our backpacks with gear and went off to the Acropolis. To say that hiking up the hills of the Acropolis and passing through the temple gates to gaze upon the Parthenon is a life-transforming experience, well, that's just an understatement of god-knows-what magnitude. We filmed and photographed for a couple hours, breathed in the wonder, walked on ancient stones of the cradle of Western Civilization. All in our creative quest for our new documentary film on an ancient rare breed of horse. The Skyrian Horse. The Horse of the Parthenon. Of course most of the Parthenon friezes are long gone-- worn away by time and war or taken by Lord Elgin a few centuries ago to reside in that most wonderful of human cultural repositories, the British Museum. But the well-worn fragments that remain are awe-inspiring. And as we climbed back down in the dusk through the olive trees and returned to the subway tunnels, we lamented that the friezes weren't here to film or photograph. Or see. And then-- directly across from us on the subway platform-- the Parthenon friezes. Okay okay, so they were a copy but a damn good one. And in the dim oily light of the tunnel Sophie and I high-fived each other and thanked our lucky stars and our wisdom that we always explore by subway. Tomorrow we would be off to Skyros in search of horses...