* I'll be in Greece from Aug. 9th thru the 18th *

Chris OConnor

* I'll be in Greece from Aug. 9th thru the 18th *

I'm giving everyone a heads up so they don't wonder why I'm not responding to either emails or posts on the forum. Our weekly casual chats on Thursday the 11th and Thursday 18th are still scheduled and you ought to try to be there if you can.

Oh, and don't forget our chat with Victor Davis Hanson on Thursday the 25th of August and Susan Jacoby on Sunday the 18th of September. Expect to see a chat with Massimo Pigliucci sometime in October.

I'll be posting between today and the 9th, when I leave for Greece, but this message needed to go up at some point. Better now than forget completely.

Chris

Edited by: Chris OConnor at: 8/6/05 3:58 pm

Chris OConnor

This is copied and pasted from our Home page.

We leave in a few hours!

Today is an exciting day for me folks. For the first time in my life I'm traveling internationally. Oh, I've been to Canada, but does that really constitute international travel? I think not. And that was long ago, when I was a child, and only for a short excursion into Canada from New York.

Now don't get me wrong, Canada is a gorgeous country that I hope someday to fully explore and appreciate, but it just doesn't cut it as an international destination. If you don't fly across a big pond you're still traveling domestically.

For the next ten days my girlfriend and I will be in Greece! Not grease, but Greece. We leave at 2:00 p.m. today and should arrive in Athens, Greece by 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. We'll spend several days enjoying ancient Greek architecture and history, which to me is the highlight of this trip. Samuel, one of our active members, had suggested a few dozen good books on ancient Greece, but I regret to admit that I didn't read a single one. The past few months have been hectic with big changes in all aspects of my life. Time just wasn't available for extra reading it seemed.

Fortunately, I've read several books and taken a handful of college courses on ancient Greek civilization. So I'm not going into this blindly. And I do have two books in my carry-on luggage for devouring during the long flight. One, entitled "Greece: Athens & The Mainland," is especially informative. The other, deep in my suitcase, is going to be more for use during the actual tours. It has flip charts or overlays so that we can readily see how each famous building or structure compares now to how it was thousands of years ago. I'm excited people.

After a few days in Athens, which people are telling us is a rather dirty city (like all huge metropolitan areas), we'll be taking a commuter flight out to the beautiful island of Santorini. Here we will relax for a full five days. Gorgeous volcanic beaches, incredible Greek cuisine, and the most beautiful sunsets imaginable await us. I suppose we'll rent either a car or a two-person scooter so no corner of Santorini goes unexplored.

After our stay on Santorini we'll head back to Athens on a high-speed ferry or hydrofoil. From what I've heard these trips are five hours or more and rather bumpy. We were supposed to order tickets in advance so we could get good seats, but we disregarded this advice and will order right at the port. I'm a bit nervous, as several web sites have said the ride to and from the islands gets plenty of people seasick. We shall see.

As long as our digital cameras operate properly we'll be taking hundreds of pictures. I'll be sure to post some right here on the home page for those that appreciate such things. Ten days is a long time, so I'm making this post to keep everyone in the loop. I'm not abandoning BookTalk!

Please don't forget the numerous upcoming live author chats. Check out the upper right margin on this page for the current list of guests with the associated dates and times of the chats. Mark your calendars now, as these chats are what make BookTalk the best book discussion community around.

I'll see everyone after August 18th! Be well.

Chris