When visiting a cultural or natural site, many rush past, some look, few see. A humble waterfall in the centre of Athens' National Garden is a favourite spot of mine as you just can hear soothing water sounds in ultra stereo mode while relaxing on a strategically placed bench. Tourists, couples, small groups, and the occasional horde just pass - they have seen real waterfalls after all - while locals jog or ride by or let their dog-on-a-leash take a quick bath in the stream. But today a family with two very young children stopped and got fascinated - the father kept saying to the boys "find out where the water is coming from, go find out!". The children started searching with such frenzy that both parents started chasing them. Their thirst (pun intended) for knowledge seeming sincere enough, I did a mental pause, got up and intervened: "Hello, I just heard you ask where all this water comes from, and the answer is ....it comes all the way from Mt. Hymettus, via Peisistratos', the mighty Tyrant's, Aqueduct, which is still working 2,550 years later! (it still supplies water for the whole National Garden and parts of central Athens - details here). The family was thrilled by the history trivia and the father politely acknowledged this. A cynic would have remarked that "all fresh water comes from some mountain and goes to some sea". But if you are a cynic, why travel, everything is the same, no? If you are not, it is always worth investing in a knowledgeable local guide, or if you are fortunate a local friend, to explain what you are looking at - there are at least a thousand words behind each mental image (interpretation increases inspiration) and AI is still (and hopefully will remain for some time) a long way from matching an enthusiastic human. (A thought that brings us to another one, a major question, to be explored in a future post: how many tourism & leisure jobs will be lost to AI...). Without knowledge of a destination's history and politics it is also hard to understand what you are looking at - how old is that red graffiti and what does it really signify? Each place is different, it has its own characteristics and traditions but they also keep evolving fast. While I was filming the waterfall, 8,000 km to the west, in New York, a uniquely strange event was taking place: Elpidoforos, the Greek Orthodox Archbishop of America was receiving and had a televised pleasant conversation with the General Secretary of the Greek Communist Party, Dimitris Koutsoumbas, and even appeared to be in agreement on various issues. Koutsoumbas also let the Archbishop know that his grandfather was a priest and a member of the Greek resistance against the Nazis, who had him killed these April days in 1944.  There are unfortunately no subtitles in the video but anyone with a basic grasp of modern Greek history, the civil war (1946-1949) and the right-wing military dictatorship (1967-1975), may understand the event's significance. Once more: Travel + Knowledge + Interpretation = Inspiration