Athens.

I decided I didn’t want to go to the Acropolis.  
I know that it and the Parthenon are important things in human history, but - 
I've found that I just don't enjoy looking at Old Stuff that much.
I could take a picture of some thousand year old columns, that 
Look like every postcard sold in the tourist trap shops nearby...
Or I could wander.
I don't mean to downplay the impact of getting close to something ancient and beautiful, my friends raved about hiking up to the top of the hill and experiencing some epic history.
I just wanted something else.

I turned down a cobbled street and met Yannos, a Greek hipster who runs a little shop with indie art and loves Kurt Cobain.  He was thrilled to hear I’m from near Seattle and that I had been to Aberdeen once-  and lit up, telling me about seeing Foo Fighters at the Odeon last year.  The place was built in 51 AD, and renovated in 1950, so Dave Grohl and friends had to get a special permit from the Central Archaeological Council of the Greek Government to be the first band to rock it.  He said he closed his shop for the first time ever for that concert.
The shop is called "Flaneur".  

I sat on a rooftop bar, listening to a small band of Greek musicians play the exact song you knew would be playing at a rooftop bar in Athens.  There’s an oboe and a tambourine and a beautiful brown woman in a flowing and slightly tattered skirt dancing with them, passing the hat.  The others are wearing jeans and t-shirts and everyone is having fun.  Some old pillared ruin crumbles on the hill above me.  The white city on the other side of me glitters, and I find it strange to think that way over there, reflecting the sun's intensity at me, that’s just someone’s house.  

Yannos suggested that I check out a free concert that night, and I'm so glad I did.
Some Greek millionaire decided Athens didn't have enough parks, so he built one.  
Opera house, library, pond replete with free sailboats you can sail on it...
And amphitheatre with a 360-degree view of all of Athens.
I wandered in to find a lovely woman singing with her guitar, accompanied only by a cello.  
I enjoyed the lovely view of the city and stars, and was struck
When she covered Leonard Cohen's "Bird on a Wire", which he wrote while living on the Greek island Hydra.
I knew it from my Dad singing it to me as a kid.
It was such a perfect moment: the view of an ancient city and the song from my childhood.
I loved every minute.

Made my way home that night, singing Bird on a Wire all the way, 
"I have tried/ in my way/ to be free."