Day 8 - June 24/25 - Athens

Athens can get very hot in the summer. Today was hot, I mean really HOT. Like a 115 degrees kinda hot. However, with this being June it should not have been this hot. Athens is in a full blown heat wave, and because of this they decided to close the government down at 10:00 am. Unfortunately, closing the government also means that all the tourist sites are closed as well. So no tourist stuff this day, instead we decided to stay at home and take a much need rest. I stayed in and read and slept all day, while Ann and Nick went to visit some friends. All was going well there by myself until mid afternoon, in the height of the afternoon heat, when the electricity shuts off. Yep – it was brown out and I had no lights and no air conditioning. Luckily, the house stayed pretty cool while I finished up a book coincidentally titled In a Sunburned Country. Occasionally I would open the front door and be blasted back into the house by a assault of really hot, dry air that would literally take the wind out of my lungs. That night we went over to Demetri and Voula’s house and had a sumptuous meal.

The next day, believe it or not, it was even hotter, and once again, the government and the sites were closed. We drove into Athens near the port to go to a gift shop owned by some friends of Nick’s dad to do a little shopping. If I had thought it was hot out where we were staying, it was downright hellish in the middle of the city among all the traffic and hub-bub.

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