Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Last night I went to bed at 9:30, got up once during the night, again at 5am, couldn’t fall back asleep because of birds tweeting right outside our window, finally getting up at 6am.

I left the apt just after 8am and walked to Parva which had just opened for the day. I had to wait a couple minutes for them to set up the tables. I texted Marcos letting him know I was there early if he could possibly come early.

I won a game against Troyclough in 19 moves increasing my rating to 1587. I might reach 1600 yet.

The Madrid to Athens flight I thought was $600 is now $648. I’ll track that daily now to see if it changes. I was starting to look at hotels close to the wedding site outside Athens when Marcos arrived. We were looking at Madrid to Athens flights when Jerry arrived. I think he thought we were meeting today instead of tomorrow. Marcos and Jerry got caught up on their lives up until now and how they ended up in Medellin, and Jerry’s wife and Marcos’ girlfriend. Jerry left after we agreed to meet here tomorrow at 9am. I paid Marcos the 109mil I owed him for the tea he bought for me before he left.

I started creating a more detailed itinerary for our trip. The plan is we’ll be staying 2 nights in Madrid, 3 nights in Athens relatively close to the acropolis and the monasteriki (flea market), 2 (expensive) nights on the Athenian Riviera close to the wedding location, 2 nights in Athens closer to our cruise point of embarkation, 3 nights on a tour of the Greek islands, 1 night near the Athens’ airport, 2 nights again in Madrid before flying back to Medellin. A google search revealed that Athens’ hotel costs are on average $50 a night for an inexpensive one and $85 on up for a luxury hotel. Hmm, not sure how old that information is. One challenge that came up is it appears we need visas to enter Turkey (a cruise port of call) but so far it looks like it might be only $20 (each) or so. Lots of work still to be done but I’ll get there.

I left and stopped in Ara on my way back for carrots (they had) and milk (they didn’t have). I’m not getting in line just for carrots so that will have to wait until later.

I left the apt about 2pm and walked to Los Porteños. I was having a latte when at 4pm a downpour started. I looked at the Accuweather app I had recently downloaded and it said, “rain to start in 3 minutes”. A couple minutes later I looked again and this time it said, “no precipitation for the next 60 minutes”. 😊 About 15 minutes later it lessened but 5 minutes later it started coming down hard again. About 5pm I left in a light but steady drizzle.

I was about to enter Ara when a high school age kid came out wearing a Chicago UIC t-shirt. I said, “Chicago”, as he passed then he started talking to me in English. Something about basketball and he was curious as to how good I thought his English was. Pretty good!

I bought 2 bags of milk and half a dozen carrots in Ara (no line) before returning to the apt.

I downloaded a new free version of Stockfish (15.1) to Windows (C:) > Program Files (x86) > Common Files > ChessBase > Engines.uci Sorry, folks, this chess note is for my future self not for you.

Another downpour in the evening but it stopped by bedtime.

 

Today I got in 3,158 steps.

 

Regarding Adulthood