I walked the streets of Athens and felt history breathe.
The air was heavy with sunlight and memory — that kind of stillness that makes you lower your voice without knowing why.

I laid my hand on the stones of the Acropolis — smooth, warm, impossibly alive — and bowed my head in quiet awe.
Not in worship, but in gratitude.

Because here, the gods are not gone.
They live in the patience of the marble, in the laughter rising from narrow streets, in the way an old man offers you an olive branch
and says something kind in a language older than time.

Athens does not boast its greatness.
It simply is.
It stands — cracked and luminous,
carrying the intelligence and grace of those who built before belief had names.

The scent of honey and roasted almonds drifts through the markets.
The sea breeze climbs uphill like a prayer.
And somewhere between the hum of life and the hush of stone,
you realize the divine never left.

It just learned to live among us.