While resting at the Hotel Adams and between adventures roaming the streets of Athens, I drew this simple line drawing of my dad blogging on his laptop computer. I like the still, almost meditative quality to the piece as my dad sits, lost in thought.
On my second day in Athens I finally got over jet lag enough to start painting. My first painting was the ruins of Olympian Zeus. The site was closed at the time but I found a comfortable spot to set up shop just just outside the fence. Using a Molskine watercolor sketchbook, I first created a line drawing in ink and then finished it with watercolors.
Climbing up the Metro steps at seven-thirty in the morning, I have finally arrived in Athens. At the top of the stairs, I glance back, waiting for my dad to catch up. Bags in hand, we exit the station at Syntagma Square, stepping into a sprinkling of rain from a dark sky promising more. Several hawkers crowd around, hoping to sell us umbrellas, but we politely decline and venture into the damp city.
After arriving in Athens my Metro early in the morning and searching for a place to stay, we finally settled into the Adams Hotel in Plaka, the oldest continuously occupied little city in Europe. Our second floor room is old but clean, and has a partial view of the Acropolis, which is conveniently located a few blocks away. Setting down my backpack, I pull back the curtains revealing a shallow balcony complete with bistro table and two chairs. Fortunately, the rain that welcomed us to Athens has stopped, but its presence can still be seen as water drips from the balcony above. I slide open the door and step outside just as a motorcycle whizzes along the narrow street below, leaving behind a faint smell of exhaust. From this view, the Acropolis towers above the city, a fortress embedded in a mountain of rock.
Our second floor room was old and full of character. I guess it was important to have the sink centered below the window at all costs.
For our first evening in Athens, we settled into an outdoor cafe for an early dinner. I ordered an open faced gyro, starting with a Greek salata: ripe tomatoes, tangy vinaigrette, red onions, kalamata olives, and a slab of seasoned feta. While I was enjoying my salad, a little girl, maybe eight-years old, approached us from the street carrying an accordion. She played a single note on the instrument and said in English, “Money please.†When we shook our heads no, she turned, without a blink of an eye or expression of disappointment, to the next table and repeated. It was very amusing.
Mary Shelley, who wrote the book Frankenstein, regularly visited her mother’s grave in the St Pancras Churchyard in London. Mary never had a chance to know her mother as she died of septicaemia a few days after Mary was born in 1797. Although her father remarried, Mary despised her stepmother for favoring her own children over her, and the peacefulness of the graveyard provided a welcome escape from the tense atmosphere back home. Mary would often pack a lunch and spend an entire afternoon at the grave eating, napping and reading her mothers books.
On occasion, Percy Shelley, Mary’s future husband, secretly met her at the gravesite. As their affections grew for each other, it was here that the two confessed their love for each other. Percy was already married, with one child and another on the way.
While on a layover in London on my way to Greece, I had just enough time to visit Ms. Goodwin’s gravesite. While there, I wondered around the churchyard and imagined Mary’s peaceful afternoons. Sitting next to Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin’s grave as Mary had done so long ago, I created this drawing in my Moleskine sketchbook.
Although Mary Goodwin’s remains were later moved to Bournemouth, England in 1851, her original tombstone still remains.
With only a few minutes to spare before we had to head back to the airport, I had about one minute to sketch the old hotel where I use to work. Memories of the place flooded back to me while I drew. This hotel was one of the craziest experiences I’ve ever had, even to this day. I keep telling myself that one day I’m going to write a book about my experiences there and maybe someday I will.