Here we sit like frogs on a lily pad...

... waiting for the bus to come. The next phase of our tour involved getting from Athens, Greece to Istanbul, Turkey. It doesn't sound that difficult, right? To forestall any Greek transit strikes, our bus was coming for us from Turkey. Word on the street was that the bus ride would be about 14 hours, or 12 hours, or 18 hours... so we tried not to worry about how long we'd be cooped up in the bus. Instead, we got our bags packed and lined up outside our hostel by 7 am. Did I mention that I hauled them down 4 floors? Yeah, well... I did. And if you ever want to see some challenging "spiral" stairs, visit Europe. Anyways, we got our luggage ready for the bus. 

 

And waited...

Looking longingly for the bus...

... which finally came around 11 am. We loaded up pretty quickly, but we didn't head out of Athens until shortly before noon. The drive was pretty nice and actually went rather quickly. I have no clue what I did on the drive... read my book, probably. Oh, and I bought an over-priced can of Pringles at one of our stops and downed almost the entire thing before we stopped for dinner! I was craving salt on that drive for some reason. 

Dinner came after many hours of driving-- it was probably around 8 or later when we stopped-- in a beautiful coastal town whose name I didn't write down.

The sunset was beautiful

This was how I felt about the bus! I probably should have taken a picture to show how happy I was to be standing and walking around... but this one is far more interesting. 

Moussaka for dinner! I preferred this one to the one I had in Athens. It was more flavorful. 

The sweet restaurant where we ate. They had nice bathrooms too. 

Night lights on the harbor

So we loaded back on the bus and drove some more hours to the border. We had to pass through border patrol to leave the country, which we didn't quite realize at first. They collected our passports and checked them, but we didn't have to get off the bus. After they returned our passports, we kept driving. And then stopped at the Turkish border. 

We took our passports and all exited the bus, as requested. We also forked over the money requested: $20 US or 15 Euro. No, they do  not take Turkish Lira. Why? I don't know, but it's an interesting way to handle things. We ended up waiting almost an hour at the border, sometime around 1 in the morning. After we made it past the checkpoint, the bus drove to the  rest area.

This is how we feel about the hassle of getting into Turkey.

This is how we feel about being in Turkey and closer to our destination! Ok, so there's not much change in expression, but we were tired of being awake and tired of driving and tired tired of delays.

Guess where we're at! Yup, we're at the lovely Adela Hotel in Istanbul and it is 6am. 

We are so checking in and going to SLEEP. It was quite the day of bus travel. It was so great to get to my room and sleep... on the pull out couch. You know what? It was clean and softer than the floor. And I could stretch out, unlike on the bus. Blessed day for beds, for an elevator, and for an easy day of the festival so we could get some sleep!

The day of July 8, 2010

Tourists, let it be known that on the day of July 8, 2010, you were out-walked, out-pictured, and out-toured! Joni, Nikki, Sarah and I powered through Athens from morning till night, visiting everything from the Acropolis, the Theater of Dionysus, the museum, and local vendors to the ancient Agora, the tomb of the unknown soldier, and Hadrian's library. But don't let me bore you with words... here's some pictures!

Sarah and I were twinners for the day! It was kind of planned... I saw Sarah wearing her shirt and decided it would be fun to wear mine to match. Thankfully, she didn't mind. 

Theater of Herod Atticus. It's been modified and is still used for various classical music and ballet and dance performances. I just love how modern Athens abuts the ancient sites, too. 

Joining the throngs of people headed up the Acropolis. We slept in and got there around 10:30 am so it was a bit more crowded. The extra sleep was worth it, though.

Temple of Athena Nike. Obviously we couldn't go in and see around this building, but it would have been so cool to do so! If you're wondering who Athena Nike is, think of the statue called "Winged Victory." 

The Propylaea. This is one of my favorite shots. 

The Propylaea: this is the main entrance area for entering onto the Acropolis. When I walked through it was hard to believe that this incredibly well-preserved building was built thousands of years ago. Those Greeks knew how to make lasting monuments.

Looking away from the Acropolis, through the Propylaea. As I work on my photography skills, I'm going to remind myself that it is worth it to take the time to line up the shot you really want, not just take what you can get. This looks so much cooler when shot from straight down the middle. 

The Parthenon. Let me rephrase that. THE PARTHENON!

I was there!!

 West side of the Parthenon 
The pediment used to contain statues depicting the contest between Poseidon and Athena for patronage of the city. Obviously, Athena won. Athens, Athena... you get the idea

Parthenon, East side
The pediment on this side had statuary showing the birth of Athena

Detail of East Pediment
The horses are pulling the chariot of Helios, sun god

East side, Parthenon

Caryatids, South porch of the Erecthion

Erecthion, viewed from the west

Aeropagus (Mars Hill) as seen from the Acropolis

Theater of Dionysus
This is where theater began!! Early writers like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, and Euripides had their works performed here

Sarah, Nikki, Joni, Erica

We're still going strong! And keep in mind, this is all pre-lunch.

Temple of Zeus

Temple of Zeus

Temple of Zeus, with partial view of the fallen column

Corinthian column, Temple of Zeus

Sarah and I are so excited to be in Athens at the Temple of Zeus

Erica, Sarah, Nikki, Joni

Our feet...

At the changing of the guard at the Parliment building. There are 400 (?) pleats in the uniform, representing the 400 years they were under Turkish rule. I need to double check that number, though.

View of the Acropolis from the North side, near the Ancient Agora

Somewhere in the Ancient Agora, Socrates committed suicide. Go hemlock

Temple of Hephastus

Nikki, Joni, Sarah, Erica

What a long day!! We left the Ancient Agora, caught the metro, and went home. I don't even remember if we ate dinner or if we just had ice cream. Either way, it was good!


And that was our epic day of sightseeing in Athens.

My Hat is AWESOME!

We have this dance we do called "El Cumbanchero." We don't very much like it, so we decided to add some enthusiasm to our performance of it by dubbing it the "My Hat is AWESOME!" dance. It helps. 


We did this dance a few times on tour, once in Athens and at least once, maybe twice in Istanbul.  What you see below is the final pose from our Athens show. What you do not see in this picture is how bad the dance was! Our band, much as we love them, never once played this song correctly on tour. Here at our Athens show I could tell the music was getting off and subsequently it threw off my dancing. Having only learned this dance last year, I tend to cue off the music for certain parts. Not being able to do so resulted in some extremely mushy footwork on my part, most likely a strained smile, and my fabulous ending pose.

El Cumbanchero, Athens 2010

In case you can't tell, I'm in the back on the right. Yes, I am just pointing off into space, not making a "gun" like I'm supposed to. Trust me, you'll forgive me athat once you hear how I ended this mess. So, we're fuddling through with moderate success to the end of the dance, with the band presumably oblivious that they are not at all with us in the music. To end we do a ripple, then pop into the pose you see above. Amy starts the ripple in front. As she does so, she shouts "we're done!" to the band, who is not near the ending and not really close to an ending phrase either. The ripple comes to the back row and I do the hop around and hit my ending pose, on my knee, shooting out to the side. OH WAIT. That was my pose from last year and now I'm in the back and should be standing when I'm actually kneeling... I popped up and hit my correct pose for this year, and thank goodness Fez didn't take this picture until I did so. I haven't seen any film footage of that performance but I'm sure it would be ridiculously hilarious to watch now. We had to hold the pose for a few bars while the band finished off...

El Cumbanchero, Athens 2010
Amy, Erin, Erica, Jenny, Emily

I bet you thought this story couldn't get any better, but it totally does. Our director decided to have us open one of our segments at the Kucukcekmece Festival with this dance.  Remembering the mishaps of our last performance, we practiced with the band to make sure they knew the order of the sections (ABA and tag twice) and to make sure that synced with what we were doing in the dance. We ran through it in parts a few times, and then did it all through. We even did it a second time for good measure. No way could we go wrong.... Well, ignoring the fact that it started raining right as we were supposed to get on stage, we were ready to show this dance who was boss. The rain was light, so we opted to just dance through it. 

The dance was going so much better! We were on with the music, yep, still together, wait a second.... the band was off. Somehow. Bless the wonderful band, but they were WRONG! It wasn't as bad as the first time, but we most certainly were not on with the music. We could hear them coming to the end, and this time they were going to finish before we were done. In a stroke of genius, Amy shouted to go straight to the ripple, meaning we would skip a step (about 16 counts, if you count it fast). We hit our position and instead of going into the step, Amy started the ripple. I don't know if we all heard and understood what was going on or if we just knew to follow what she was doing, but we all went straight to the ripple and ended the dance with the music. I don't think anyone except us and the band realized that something was up and that we had skipped a step. In the end, we left tour without ever having done the dance right (with the music), since we didn't perform it at the second festival. What an adventure, and what awesome hats! 

Pictures from Greece

I got back on Tuesday from my wonderful trip to Athens and Istanbul, and now it is picture time! I took over 1000 pictures, although some have gotten tossed because of bad lighting or being fuzzy. There are so many beautiful sights over there, and I'll try and share as many as possible without boring you. And I'll try to fill in the stories with the pictures too. But really, you kind of had to be there because it was AWESOME!

Fliers at the LDS church building advertising our Athens show

Theater of Herod Atticus and Parthenon on the Acropolis

Standing on Aeropagus (Mars Hill) with the Acropolis in the background. The building hidden in scaffolding is the Temple of Athena Nike and the one on the far left is the Erecthion

Sarah and I on the ferry to Aegina Island

With the local delicacy: octopus. No, I did not eat any.

Swimming in the Aegean Sea!

Some of our team in the Aegean Sea

Boats in the harbor at Aegina

What a beautiful sea! It was absolutely gorgeous to spend the day there. It was almost as lovely to sleep the entire ferry ride back.

We ate most of our meals at the street cafes in Athens. After our island trip, we changed and stopped by Gods' Restaurant. It was a lot cooler before we noticed the placement of the apostrophe. Oh well, the food was great!

This sweet old man herded us off the street and into Gods' Restaurant. I imagine he's the owner... and somehow he seems like a perfect image to represent his restaurant. This is our island/dinner group of me, Sarah, Jen, Riley, and Miranda.

The next day, we had our shows. After the children's show, we went to a nearby park to get food and relax. We also did some advertising for the evening show. I went over to this group of guys to invite them. It was pretty intimidating to walk over there, but I took one of the guys in our group with me for moral (and physical) support. Just in case. They didn't go to the show, but they did come over and watch the band play for a while.

The missionaries used the band music to help contact people and invite them to the show. Maybe they even made some legit missionary contacting. I hope so! That was part of the reason we were there... help build interest in the church. It wasn't official or anything, but it was really great to be a boon like that in a country where missionary work is very difficult.

The band had a fun jam session, and a few of us got up and danced too. Fun times!

This was the view of trees from the park. It seemed quite pretty at the time.

And those are the first set of pictures from Athens! I have a lot of pictures just of the day we spent touring the Acropolis, Ancient Agora, etc, so those will be in a different post. It's good to be back!