The Hill of Trials

"Always remember, it's simply not an adventure worth telling if their aren't any dragons." - Sarah Ban Breathnach

I think I've done more praying on this journey than I have collectively in my entire life. 'If my friends and family could see me now,' I thought, sitting piggyback on Antonio's incessantly backfiring Honda as he wove in and out of the Athens nightlife, treating the city like his own personal playground. Motorcycles seem to have a less formal presence here than they do on North American roads, where they function more as vehicles to which traffic laws actually apply. If there was a wide enough space between a taxi and a moving truck idling on the shoulder, Antonio used it to jump the line at an intersection. Both the street and the sidewalk were fair game for driving - as long as you could avoid flattening pedestrians - and red lights, provided you looked both ways before blowing the stop, were just pretty ornaments against the night sky.

Having been out on the bike with Antonio the day before and again this afternoon, I'd long-since learned that closing my eyes did more harm than good. With them open at least I could anticipate the hard brakes when we were cut off, or when two cars suddenly closed a gap in front of us that Antonio planned to pass through. This wasn't my dad's luxury Harley. There was one flat seat and no handles as an alternate anchor. Seventeen years of English riding lessons will also leave you with the embarrassingly misleading instinct to grip with your thighs when nervous.

I'd become well-acquainted over the past couple of days with Antonio's crazy streak. As it turned out the two of us weren't so different. Besides having a fervent passion for stories, learning, history and cooking, Antonio was also a world traveller and something of an adrenaline junkie. Perhaps because he was a male with the height and build of a professional football player, his adventures were more hardcore than mine. I wasn't sure how many of his stories were credible, but if everything he told me was true, he seemed to have an affinity for getting into trouble. He sought out challenging travel destinations like Pakistan and Cambodia. He'd been mugged, conned, arrested and held hostage multiple times. He'd had several jobs from the army to restaurant kitchens, and was now enjoying early retirement after a prolific career at one of the nation's top banks. His only continuing income came from the Airbnb tenants and couch surfers he hosted on an almost daily basis. Budget travellers were in and out of his house like a cheap hostel. He had no problem inviting so many strangers into his home, he said. Naturally, he enjoyed the gamble. "I make a lot of friends from around the world," he told me. "And if someone steals from me, at least I know I will never see them again."

Antonio bucked the curb around a newsstand, and, ducking to avoid being clotheslined by the awning, I did my best not to think about my helmetless head or the bottle of wine we'd finished less than an hour before, and instead concentrated only on the St. Christopher medallion that was always around my neck.

Earlier that day, after a breakfast of spinach pies, stuffed grape leaves and baklava (all made my Antonio's mother), we'd ridden into the city centre and hiked up to a massive stone monument on the Hill of the Muses. Slightly southwest of the Acropolis, the view from the hill sits eye-level with the Parthenon across the valley, sweeping from the Saronic Gulf to the Argolic Hills. We sat for a while in an olive grove, drinking homemade lemonade and discussing Greek mythology. I found it bizarrely fascinating that Antonio, apparently like most native Greeks, regarded stories of the gods as actual history, more fact than fiction. He spoke about the bloodline of Zeus and his offspring as though it were as much a part of his own lineage as the Macedonians. Antonio, I learned, was just the English name he used for Airbnb. His real name was Adonis, the adopted son of Aphrodite in Greek mythology and himself a god of beauty and desire.

After the Hill of the Muses, we hiked to the Pnyx, to the 'Ekklesia', or ancient citizens' assembly, the rumoured birthplace of democracy. Carved into the bedrock you can still see the 'Hema', the speaker's platform where Themistocles, Perikles, Demosthenes and Alcibiades all made speeches. We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering the hill while Antonio searched for Socrates' Prison, a barred recess in one of the cliffsides. "I know it's around here somewhere," he insisted over and over again. "I will find it."

When we finally got back to the guesthouse, Antonio asked if I was okay with his friend, 'John the Hacker' stopping by for a drink. Apparently John was mathematically brilliant and a techno-genius, but was also a bit wild-eyed and could be something of a loose canon. "I'll be here the whole time," Antonio promised, and I said I felt safe with him. I was beginning to see Antonio as something of a Papa-Bear figure. If anyone tried to lay a hand on me, I knew he could snap them in half like a toothpick, and would. As it turned out, John-the-Hacker was in one of his stable moods, and the three of us had plenty of laughs over a bottle of Antonio's homemade mandarine raki.

Tonight we were headed to a meeting of the international Airbnb community. Normally I avoided being out after dark, especially in a metropolis like Athens, but tonight I was grateful for the opportunity. Athens, like most cities, undergoes a metamorphosis at night. From the rooftop bar of the local hostel where the meeting was being held, I could see the Acropolis lit up by floodlights on an adjacent hilltop, the Temple of Hephaestus equally aglow just beneath it and to the right. It's a sight I believe no one should leave Athens without seeing.

The party dispersed around midnight and we rode to a nearby bar for music and dancing with a couple of New Englanders we'd met. Finally, we got back on the bike to go home, only to find we'd finally killed it. It gave a couple of feeble wheezes, and refused to start when Antonio turned over the ignition. He waited for me to get off, then jogged back to the bar to get help to push. After a few minutes, he reappeared with one of the Americans in tow. "Alexandra," he remounted the bike and pointed down the street, "start walking, and when I come with the bike, you jump."

I decided to spend the next day on my own. When the sun rose over the Acropolis, it carried with it a different light, recollections from the night before that instilled in me an 'I'll-take-it-from-here' mentality. Today I would show myself around. I would find my own food. In keeping with the wild ride that had been the night before, the Honda had finally sputtered and died again a few blocks from the house. We'd had to walk back in the wee hours of the morning. It was a full moon. What happened when we arrived doesn't need full disclosure, but suffice to say I no longer wanted to feel I owed Antonio anything. He seemed to be a very passionate, kind and hospital man who respected my wishes. He was well over six feet tall and probably close to 300 pounds. I was sure if he had malicious intentions he would have long-since carried them out. All the same, I felt more comfortable in my own company.

I listened to my iPod to drown out the noise of the city as I walked through the local flea market in Monastiraki, then climbed the narrow, whitewashed stone staircases of Plaka. Settled by stone masons from Anafi, just east of Santorini, in 1832, this charming village-within-a-city more resembled one of the Cycladic islands than it did Athens, and was a welcome respite from the metropolitan chaos.

I was listening to the Band Perry's "Don't Let Me Be Lonely" when I eventually wandered out of the city centre. "I need a saving grace, a hiding place..." Using my heart as a compass, I fled back into the hills. Women are prey. It's a fact. No matter how independent or strong or scrappy we like to think we are, we are still the smaller, physically weaker of the sexes. We can fight, but more often our best chance for survival is to run and hide. This, I believe, is why more women than men ride horses. We understand the mentality of a flight animal. "Here is a technique through which the weak become stronger than their oppressors," Linda Kohanov, author of the Tao of Equus wrote.

I switched off my iPod as I mounted the wilderness around the Acropolis, where the only sound was the wind in the ancient olive branches. I kept walking until I came to the naked rock outcropping known as Areopagus Hill, literally The Hill of Ares in Greek. Most tourists climbed the modern steel staircase to the top, but I opted for the more precarious ancient stone version on the other side, its curved steps worn to a slippery shine by millennia of Athenians. According to myth, the hill is said to be the place where the Greek god of war, Ares was tried and acquitted for the murder of the son of Poseidon. The trial of Orestes for the murder of his mother, Clytemnestra is also rumoured to have taken place here, and in Classical times it was used as a high court for civil and criminal cases. Today, Areopagus is most famously associated with St. Paul, who delivered his sermon "On an unknown God" on top of the hill, and gained his first Greek convert, Dionysos the Areopagitei, now the patron Saint of Athens. In the side of the rock facing the Acropolis is a bronze engraving of the sermon in Greek.

"The God who made the world and everything in it is The Lord of Heaven and Earth and does not live in temples built by human hands," St. Paul proclaimed. "And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 'For in him we live and move and have our being'. As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring'."

Clambering to the top, I perched myself on the highest rocks and gazed at the urban sea stretched out before me. I could see why this place had been used for trials for thousands of years. Far below, the city continued operating as though someone had hit the mute button. The confusion of it was tempered. Everything seemed more peaceful. From up here, one could view the world objectively. I sat in silence for as long as I felt necessary, letting the wind raise goosebumps on my bare arms. I glanced around at the ten or twelve other travellers up here with me, most of them picnicking or writing postcards. I wasn't completely alone, but I was alone enough.

On my last afternoon in Athens I walked back into the pulsing core around the Acropolis, looking for one man in particular. I'd seen him many times in the days before, pacing the cobblestones with his gorgeous white Lippizaner, offering buggy rides to tourists for the rock bottom price of €20. Even the Crisis has its benefits. I thought I would wander around for a bit. Maybe if I got lucky I would find him again. The minute I crossed the road from the Temple of Zeus, there he was in the main square, his snowy, long-maned gelding standing squarely with his neck in a proud arch, like Pegasus, waiting for me.

I feigned interest as the driver indicated famous sites like the Theatre of Dionysus, explaining their history as though I hadn't already been to them. I pretended to appreciate the pictures he insisted on taking for me, even though I already had plenty. He didn't need to know, but I was in this more for the horse than I was for the tour. I needed the comfort of his grassy breath on my skin, the security of my reflection in his eyes. We entered the narrow streets of Plaka, my favourite part of town, and passed over a mirror image of a horse and chariot painted on a terracotta vase in a shop window. I closed my eyes, the sun brightening the insides of my eyelids, and listened to the music of horseshoes on cobblestone, one of my favourite sounds in the world. Just beneath it was the accordion keys of a nearby street performer. When I opened my eyes to let the light back in, my vision was flooded by the simplicity of green hills, blue sky and white marble as the Acropolis rose on my right. And just like that, the city was beautiful again. The world always looks more beautiful from the back of a horse.