We arrived in Athens and caught the subway to the area our
hotel was in. While on the train, T and
I took some time to try to learn the Greek alphabet. (Luckily it hasn’t appeared to affect my
ability to read Cyrilic. I was worried
my brain couldn’t handle two non-Latin alphabets.) We popped out of the subway and began walking
to our hotel. Once we arrived, the man
checking us in told us that he had us booked in a triple room with one double
bed and one single. “Is that ok?” he
said, looking at the three of us oddly.
“That’s great. Thanks!” Anyway…
We put our stuff in our room and headed out to find some
dinner. Most of you are probably familiar
with the scene from My Big Fat GreekWedding where Tula tells her aunt that her fiancé is vegetarian and she
replies with, “That’s ok. I make
lamb!”
Well, T is vegetarian and that’s about how our search for dinner went.
We walked down the street, reading the menus, seeing that
they had Greek salad and grilled vegetable as their only vegetarian options,
which aren’t real food. We even asked
one owner if he had any vegetarian dishes and he said, “Oh, no.” So, feeling hungry and dejected, we found a
gyro place that had a veggie option so we decided to stop. Really we just gave up, but we were so glad
we did because it was delicious, for herbivores and omnivores alike. So
good, in fact, that we went back the next day.
After dinner, we took a look at the Acropolis all lit up
before going back to our hotel to sleep.
On the way, we noticed that Athens has a lot of police men out and
about. Apparently they are taking a
“we’re nipping anything and everything in the bud” approach to recent events.
I have never seen that many police men
in one place at once (on the up side, they were all young and attractive police
men).
The next morning, with the soundtrack from Hercules playing in my head, we started
out for the Acropolis. Q decided he
wanted shorts and went back for them, but T and I continued up the hill. We walked all the way around and saw two
theatres (the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the Theater of Dionysus) as well as
caves dedicated to Greek gods and the ruins of church. We eventually arrived at the Beule Gate. It dates from 320 BC and is known as the
Sacred Way. It was used for the
Panathenaic Procession, to honor
Athena’s birth. From there you move
through to the Propylaea.
The Propylaea was designed to “instill the proper reverence
in worshippers.” It was supposed to be
the same size as the Parthenon, but during the Peloponnesian War, construction
stopped and was never finished. If you
look to your right before you pass through, you see the Temple of Athena
Nike. It is small and dates from 424
BC. It was built to celebrate peace with
Persia.
From the Propylaea, you get your first view of the
Parthenon. The Parthenon was dedicated
to Athena and was completed in 438 BC.
It is huge and perfectly proportional.
The columns even taper in at the tops to reduce the distortion from
depth perception. It wasn’t the most
important temple (and was sort of a show of might more for the city than
anything religious), but it certainly was the largest.
At the Acropolis, there is another temple known as the
Erechtheion. It is smaller and was
apparently the more holy shrine to Athena.
It was finished in 406 BC and has a porch supported by columns shaped
like women. The temple is said to be
built on the place that Athena and Poseidon had a competition to see who the
city would be named after. Poseidon
plunged his trident into a rock to bring forth water and Athena created an
olive tree. The citizens declared Athena
the winner (an olives are still a major part of Greek society) and so the city
is named Athens.
From the Acropolis you get a great view of the city. We saw
the Temple of Zues and the Temple of Hephaestus from the top. We also saw Filopappou. From the Acropolis, it looks like some ruins
on a giant hill in the distance. T and I
decided we weren’t climbing that. Famous
last words.
We met back up with Q and headed to the Temple of the
Olympian Zeus. It was started in the 6th
century BC but wasn’t completed until 132 AD by Hadrian (that’s over 600 years
later). Today, only 15 of the 104 original
columns are still standing (“but is was completely finished in Hercules,” said T), but you can see the
ruins of all the others and get the idea that this place was huge. It was supposed to be the greatest temple in
Greece, but it was finished just before some barbarian invasions in the 3rd
century and was never really repaired.
Still, it was impressive.
Near the temple is Hadrian’s Arch. While, I didn’t know what it said at the
time, it turns out that on one side it says, “This is Athens, the ancient city
of Theseus,” and on the other it says, “This is the city of Hadrian and not of
Theseus.” Apparently Hadrian wanted to
make it very clear which part of the city he was responsible for.
From there we walked around the Acropolis to the Monument of
Filopappus. From the map in our book we
couldn’t tell that it was on the hill T and I said we weren’t climbing. But, we did climb it. It depicts Syrian prince Filolpappus driving
his chariot. This prince gave so much
money to Athens that the citizens accepted him as Athenian. This hill also has a great view of the
Acropolis.
From here, we continued on towards Ancient Agora. This was the city’s commercial center during
ancient times and was even frequented by Plato and Socrates. The two story Stoa of Attalos II was built
in the 2nd century BC and was reconstructed in the 1950’s. It now houses the Museum of Agora
Excavations, which is full of ancient pottery and sculptures. Surrounding the Stoa are many ancient ruins
that lead up to the Temple of Hephaestus.
The Temple of Hephaestus is the best preserved ancient Greek temple in
the world. It is dedicated to the patron god of metal working and craftsmanship.
From there, our last ruins of the day were at Hadrian’s
Library. It was built by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in AD 132. I don’t know much about it except that it was
large, housed many papyrus scrolls as well as a small cathedral.
Then we started to walk.
We walked down the pedestrian street to find the location of the airport
shuttle that we would need the next day.
Then we took a long and winding route past the Archeological
museum. Apparently all historical sites
and museums in Greece now close at 3pm due to budget issues, so we couldn’t go
in. We meandered back to our hotel to
rest for a bit before heading back out for dinner.
Before going to your gyro place, we sat down in a square
near the Hadrian’s Library and I noticed a stand selling strawberries for 4
euro/kg. That’s 2.2 lbs of strawberries
for about $5. I was sold and the three
of us ate a lot of strawberries. We then
went to eat at our euro place and wandered around the shops nearby. On the way home, as usual, we grabbed ice
cream.
The next day, at 4:30 am we headed out to catch the airport
shuttle so we could fly to Crete J
