Vacation it Wasn\'t the Skinned Lamb Carcasses

Vacation

It wasn't the skinned lamb carcasses that greeted me as I walked through the door. Nor was it the short, dark-tanned man with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth proudly showing me the assorted viscera stacked high on his stall. It wasn't even in the next hall where the seafood was so fresh I thought for a brief moment that I was snorkeling. What struck me the most about the whole experience was the narrow coffee shop tucked into a wall in between tripe soup vendors. I joined the old men at their Formica-clad tables, their glares a mix of disdain for my intrusion and curiosity at my boldness. I motioned the grey-haired bowling ball of a lady behind the counter like a pro, and before long I had my coffee in front of me. I'm not a big coffee drinker, to tell you the truth. But I was fighting off some fierce jetlag, and I needed it bad that morning.

I'd come in red eye the day before. The trains were on strike, of course, and our cab driver had duly ripped us off I have no doubt. I'd sworn that vacation would be my last with my parents, at least until I had children of my own. On the first day I had done my duty as any good child would, and allowed myself to be dragged to the Acropolis perched above the brownish haze, at once regal and humble. A museum here, some mezes there and we all crashed hard. Duty done, my vacation had begun. Skillful negotiation had allowed me to have an entire day to myself, free from family, to do as I pleased. My first stop, the market, nearly brought me to my knees. The sights and smells were nothing like home, and that was entirely the point.

The old men had turned back to their conversations, and I looked out into the market. Dense, chaotic and full of life, and little changed I'm sure since the Ottoman days. I gazed upon filthy walls, waterlogged floors and a stray cat eyeballing the fish market like it had never eaten in all its life. A young couple stood in the middle of the corridor, blocking traffic, their guidebook Griechenland announcing their Teutonic origins. An African approached them, smiling like a beam of light. Nothing screams authentic like a Louis Vuitton handbag hawked by an itinerant Nigerian looking for tourists in the middle of the central market. They politely declined, and he moved on.

I returned my attention to my shot of pudding-thick Greek coffee and downed it without ceremony, as if I'd done it a million times before. I stood, leaving a euro on the table, and walked out, every bit the seasoned veteran as all the old men around me, ready to tackle my first trip solo, as an adult, right, ready to go wherever the streets of that proud and ancient city wanted to take me. I grew up a lot that day, that trip, with the trouble I got into, but somehow I still always want to go back. All it takes to feel that alive again is just to close my eyes.

Description

The descriptive elements of the paper can be found embedded throughout, but especially in the opening paragraph, with the setting of the scene. The narrative elemensts can be found throughout, but certainly describing the anecdote about the tourists and the trader, and in the first two sentecnes of the last paragraph.