Photos of the Perplexing

Every trip, I take a few thousand photographs. I say to myself, "bits are cheap", an update from "film is cheap", relative to the cost of returning to a place to recapture a moment which can never be regained. Which isn't to say I am only taking pictures. There are so many photos I wanted to take, mostly every time there was a break in the verge growing beside the highway--the mountains and the water in a constant state of visual transformation--but time, location and safety would not always allow those photos.

That said, I did get a lot of pictures of things that left Randall and me wondering, "Why would someone do this?"

In Athens. Everything on this sign is in English, so.... And we were never able to get a photo of the combination of stores of "Ritual Tattoo" next to the bridal store, and wondered if this was a one-stop-shop.


This was a two 'fer on our way to Dikteon Andron of bizarre museums--Homo Sapiens Museum (left0 and Greek Mythology Thematic Park (right). I just couldn't bring myself to go.


These are just some unusual parking jobs. Left: sidewalk in Athens; Right: intersection in Heraklion. We also saw, but were unable to photograph significant parking in rotaries, especially in Nafplio, where there was plenty of free parking at the port just another 100m away!

Do we follow the stop sign or the stop light???



Fences were often the bane of my existence in trying to access a site, but here are some examples of stupid fences. Left: fencing OVER the ruins. especially where there is a perfectly good space about 12" away. Right: DOUBLE FENCING, especially where the interior (white) fence tracks the line of the excavated wall.


  This one is a little sad, and we have seen this repeatedly, especially since our last visit, but people will leave unwanted pets, particularly large dogs (or perhaps that is what survives) at temples and highway road stops.  I've seen bags of food left at these sites as well, and the animals that we have seen on this trip appear to be in good health, but they have also become a bit of a nuisance.  They lay in the road, unperturbed by traffic.  This dog plopped down on the warm pavement in mid afternoon on the main road into Delphi, about 300m from the entrance.  By this hour, most of the tour buses had left, but still there was a fair amount of traffic which simply drove around the dog.

  Ah, yes.  It seems each of our trips to Greece has accompanied some interesting event.  This was the election.  Here, we see a bunch of talking heads, however, two are notable.  Woman in green, who is so obviously reading something on her iPhone and otherwise completely disinterested in the discussion.  But you may miss this detail of the guy in the lower left whose background is of the TV showing the broadcast of him...showing the broadcast of him, and so on.  And there is the added detail of the "Exit Poll" notation as if this needed to be translated for a Greek election!?!  And the website "kalimera@gkal.gr" giving further evidence for Randall's comment about how the internet has affected non-Roman alphabet-based languages.  

The roads and how Waze/Google maps work will be a separate post.