Summer in Greece: Travel Guide

I have a great writer friend named Chris. We met in Idaho and became fast friends while playing with a life sized chess set in a natural hot spring in McCall. He's traveling to Greece this summer and already has a few hilarious articles on his adventures thus far: here are the highlights:

Hello All,
On Sunday I woke up early and went on an excursion with some other members to the acropolis. Along the way we made a few stops.

First we popped over to the Greek Parliament building to watch the changing of the guards. They attract quite a crowd, and for good reason- the guards look hilarious doing these large birdlike steps back and forth in their uniforms, which wouldn't scare a child if not for the riffles crooked under their arms and the gravity in their faces.


The New Acropolis Museum was our final detour. No pictures allowed inside of course. Come for the artifacts, but stay for the architecture of that building if you ever get the chance- but don't wear a skirt because the glass floors that let a person see all the way down to an excavated village go all the way up to the top floor. Artifact-wise, the old tablets with writing on them came to life for me- something about stones with bad handwriting made me feel connected a bit more to the past- though the weird grinning archaic sculptures unsettled me. Google them. It's as if they're saying, "Yeah, I'm pretty old and somebody bashed off my nose, but when you're my age you'll be lucky if your bones aren't dust."

Finally, we made it to the Acropolis. I paused at the base to take in the theater of Dionysus- both the underwhelming remaining Greek foundation stones of the back part and the better known Roman stage right above it. Also at David Crespy's (the playwriting teacher's) request I read the first speech of Oedipus with him off his iPhone- which I acknowledge is exceptionally dorky. But you should see my hat. Look at the "Hi Guys" picture. Dorky.




The acropolis, of course, had incredible views. But here are a few things I would like to share:
-Athens is practically swarming with stray dogs, and I saw quite a few on the stones of the acropolis
-The Acropolis is under renovation so one of the most recognizable ruins in the world is currently surrounded by construction equipment- I'm also curious how far they want to take the renovations, it's not the first ruin that I've seen where they fill in the various gaps with new marble.

-A poem I composed called "On the Acropolis":
Athens, Athens, Everywhere.
And not a single Greek.





Yours,
-Christopher Ryan Chan