(more details later, as time permits)

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On my second trip to Athens, I knew I would have one day free before I had to hop on an airplane for the long, 11-hour flight back to New York City. But what to do, what to see on my day off?? It was mid-November, and while the sun was out, the temperature was chilly; I didn't expect to see any well-dressed young men and women strutting down the main streets in their summer outfits.

I thought I might head down to the Parliament building in the middle of the city, to see what the protesters were up to -- after all, they had been there in full force back in June, and I expected they would still be grumpy about the austerity measures being proposed by the new Prime Minister. But several people told me that the demonstrations were over. "Besides," said one Athens native, "they don't protest on Saturday." In Greece, apparently the revolutionaries need to rest on the weekend.

Of course, I could have gone back to the Acropolis; and I could have found any number of statues, columns, pillars, and ancient buildings to photograph. But I wanted something a little livelier, so I ended up at the Agora Central Market in downtown Athens...

Wow - what an experience: it makes the farmer's markets that I've seen throughout the U.S. look pretty tame by comparison. Along Athinas Street, there's a huge, block-long complex with four long rows of stalls; two of them are filled with every conceivable kind of fish, and two of them are filled with every conceivable kind of meat. All of this is laid out on tables, hung from racks, and presented by exuberant vendors in their individual stalls, shouting at the top of their voice to let the entire world know what it is they're selling. At least I think that's what they were shouting; it was all Greek to me, in quite literal terms.

And it seemed that half the population of Athens had come down to the market to inspect the offerings, and do their meat/fish shopping for the week. I think it may have been even busier during the morning hours, but it was still jammed when I arrived a little after noon. People pushed, shoved, jostled, elbowed, grunted, yelled, and haggled with the vendors. And all around us, in two of the block-long rows of stalls, were sides of beef, rows of steak, lines of chickens and ducks and geese, pigs, rabbits, and strange animals I couldn't even identify. As for the fish, in the other two rows of stalls: I have no idea what most of them were, other than the occasional familiar sight of salmon, octopus, crabs, and shrimp. There were some large fish that looked like trout, and some small fish with incredibly long, pointy snouts. There were teeny ones and big ones, short ones and long ones curled around in a circle, skinny ones and fat ones.

Across the street, perpendicular to the meat/fish markets, were two more lines of vendor stalls, but these were outdoors with no roof covering. Fruits and vegetables of all kinds, along with olives and grapes and eggs were being hawked by vendors who were only slightly less noisy than their comrades across the street.

I spent almost four hours wandering around the market, photographing the food, the vendors, and the customers; as usual, the people were more interesting than anything else. I ended up with 700 images, and after making the first couple passes to eliminate the blurred shots, the mis-framed shots that cut off the head of the person I was photographing, and the frustrating incidents where someone walked in front of my camera just as I was pushing the shutter button ... I still had 150 photos that I wanted to upload to Flickr. But I knew that that would be overkill, so I forced myself to continue editing and discarding until I got down to 70 "keepers."

I'm not sure if I want to return to the Agora market in the summertime, when the temperatures are hot, and the odors from all of those animals get a little overwhelming. But at least in the fall, it's a trip well worth making -- and I recommend it next time you're in Athens!

Early home from work, and enough daylight remains for me to shoot something outdoors for a change...

Unfortunately, I have more of a scrap heap than a garden, but it occasionally throws up some interesting textures of decaying elements such as bicycles and this old rusting tray, covered in detritus from sundry animals and the like.