H&M swimsuit
Zara shorts (similar)
J. Crew sandals (similar)
RayBan sunglasses
Agape Studio earrings (c/o) (similar)
Location: Attiki – Athens, Greece
There is so much that I love about Athens. I keep finding new ways to express this same idea; the overwhelming, heart-splitting love that I feel for the city. The truth is, it comes down, at its core, to the simple fact that it’s (almost) always sunny in Athens. Everything else the city offers is just a bonus.
If you can accept the premise – and mostly, I do – that we come into the world to learn, then it makes sense, logically, that life teaches the lessons that are most important for us. And it does that by putting us where we need, rather than where we might want, to be. For me, this explains Winnipeg, the central Canadian city where I was born, and now live again, where it snowed on the September day when of my birth. (And has snowed, at some point in history, in every month by July.) It’s not the place I would choose. I’ve been a sun seeker since my earliest days, lamenting to my dad one winter afternoon when I was less than three, “Do you remember when it was summer?” With my limited life experience, that summer might never come again felt like a genuine concern.
Winter is the lesson I need to learn. Or maybe the lesson I need to learn is about survival, about how much I can withstand. I’m still sorting that out. But in the meantime, I continue to seek periodic respite from the opaque white textures of my least favourite season in sunny places, Athens foremost among them.
We took these photos on our last afternoon in the city, between a museum visit and a late dinner on the patio at To Lokali. The moment spent stepping out of the air conditioned apartment into the embrace of the summer heat on the patio was just as satisfying on that sunny day as it was on every other afternoon we spent there. It isn’t just the sun I love, it’s heat, too. I love the feeling of getting into a car that’s been sitting in the unobstructed sun on a hot day, the sensation of walking into a wall of warmth when you step off an airplane in a mediterranean city. There’s an oppressiveness to it, but a good kind. The heat envelopes you, and holds you in.
I know, I know – when I told Ian about the hot car thing, he thought I was insane. But such is the depth of my love of summer warmth, which is part of my love of Athens.
It’s been months since we got home. In the intervening time, I’ve been to London and Dublin. And yet, somehow, the sunny days we spent in Athens still feel like yesterday. I wonder at the fact that the full two weeks we were in Greece seemed to pass so quickly despite feeling so luxuriously long, and even more about how the time since then has flown by. (Wondering where the time went is a prevailing theme of my adulthood… making me just like everyone else.) It felt, when we first returned home, like the photos we took and the stories of the memories we’d made would last forever. But nothing does, everything in life, like life itself, is fleeting. And now, we’ve reached the end. These are our last snapshots from this trip. When you see my again later this week, I’ll probably be wearing a coat.
But my memories of our sunny days in Athens remain. It’s been such a pleasure sharing them, and reliving them at once, over the past several months. In that time, I’ve reflected on what I would do when the shots ran out – if I would continue sharing others, or move on with the rest of my life offline. Every time I’ve truly contemplated making this post a true farewell, not just to Athens but to the years I’ve spent in this space, the universe has given me a little nudge, in the form of a message or opportunity, that says, keep going. This is still meaningful.
So all that I’m saying good-bye to today is another beautiful holiday. I’ll be back on Thursday, and most Mondays and Thursdays thereafter, with more photos and thoughts… albeit much less sunny ones for the next little while.
