The excellent Ying Quartet performance [on Jan. 10] at the UGA Performing Arts Center graciously offered to the Athens community made me happily wander back in time.
So many times had I enjoyed chamber music at the Lincoln Center or Carnegie Hall in NYC, right after work as a diplomat at the United Nations. After each show, still a one and a half hour drive back home, often in ice and snow; here a mere 10 minutes in below 60! temperature.
It has been two years now, that we loaded our horses from our home on the Greenwich Riding Trails and that we headed south, to Georgia, to Athens.
Though many visits to Athens, Greece, privately and professionally when appointed by NATO, did not prepare me well; ignorant that there existed yet another Athens, classic in name and honoring antiquity and the goddess of wisdom and of the arts and crafts.
Once definitively retired from our functions and no longer coerced by our jobs, a luxury in our eyes, my wife Beth and I selected this undiscovered Classic City, neither by destination, neither by fate, rather by elimination.
It took us more then six months and a list of fifty properties picked from the Internet all over the Southeast, meticulously categorized according to our parameters and requirements. Visiting most of them in person and a rational approach had to lead to the best place under the southern sun for our family and our future endeavors.
And sure it did! Our methodology has not deceived us. This blooming university town and vibrant community have not relinquished in showing us their wonders and beauties petal by petal. Every day still I discover amazing grace and the purest gems in unpretentious and understated display.
We are grateful to find our younger children - 16 and 9 – in the best care of wisdom and development. Our dressage horses and Irish terriers have well adapted on Angel Oaks Farm and we were blessed to establish our Bed&Breakfast, The Colonels, in Athens’ greenbelt just before football ruled town.
Thank you, Athens, for being this generous and giving us more than we expected.
Colonel Marc
The Colonels
1 comment:
Thanks so much, Marc for contributing to our blog. Too often, we miss the beauty right in our "own backyards." What a wonderful thing it is that so many Athenians are so conscious of what a rare and wonderful place we call home.
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