Athens, Greece

July 7, 2010

Our day began early as the boat docked at Athens. After a quick breakfast, we gathered on one of the lower decks, and then hopped on our tour bus for a drive through Athens. Our first stop was the Acropolis and it was packed!! Besides the fact that there were people everywhere, the visit to the old site was really neat. It was amazing just to stand in front of the Parthenon and look up at it. I can only imagine what it would have looked like before it was destroyed. The more I see, the more it makes me wish I could have seen these places in their prime! After walking around the entire Parthenon and admiring it from all sides, we got to see the Erechtheum that has the porch of the Caryatids. Now for you art people, you know what a really cool thing this is. For everyone else, it’s this porch with 6 columns. What makes it so significant is that the columns are in the form incredibly detailed statues of women and these women are pretty well preserved. I had to admire quickly because our time was up and we had to fight the incredible crowd to get back out. What you don’t realize as you are going up is that there is only one way in and that same way out! It was insane trying to leave. I do believe there were several hundred people trying to get out through this one entrance at once. At the same time there is a steady stream of people coming in. I really think someone needs to rethink this whole ordeal. It took us 15-20 minutes to fight through the crowd to get down and a bit worried as we were late and didn’t want to get left by our group. We finally made it down and we weren’t the last ones!!

It’s just amazing to think how old everything is. I did not realize that it was only in the 1600s that the Parthenon was destroyed to the point of its present condition.
Condensed Story of the Parthenon: The Turks had taken over Athens. In an attempt to gain control of Athens, the Venetians sat on top of a hill about a mile away and bombed the Parthenon which the Turks had stored their powered kegs in. So as a result, two major explosions happened to make the Parthenon the way it is. Then a guy from England came and bribed the government to let him come take the reliefs off of the building, so in his attempt to do this he destroyed the building even more. Now one of the British museums in England has the majority of the art and won’t give it back to Athens. There excuse is that Athens has now where to put it. History is funny like that.

They are currently attempting to renovate and restore some of the buildings on the Acropolis, which made it hard to see some things. The Temple of Athena Nike (building to the right of the entrance archway) was completely covered by scaffolding. The Parthenon also had a couple of very large cranes sitting in the middle of it. (I understand their wanting to restore the buildings, but I somewhat wish they would just leave them how they are because the marble is two different colors. You have the older darker portions and then you have the new bright white spots that sick out.) I also didn’t realize there are TONS of pieces littering the entire mountain top. Practically everywhere you look there are pieces of different buildings. We wondered if they are planning on doing something with them, such as organize them, or just leave them scattered everywhere. Who knows?!?

After visiting the Acropolis, we walked on down some back streets of Athens. At some points you never knew who or what might pop out from around the corner of buildings. We also got to see some lovely graffiti. We got to see what life is like in Athens on our way to this cute little café where we had a traditional Greek lunch. I have no clue what all we ate, but it was good! We especially like this meat lasagna type thing with something like ricotta cheese on top.

We then walked on to the Plaka which is a long street filled with tons of small shops. After some time spent shopping, we jumped back on the bus and drove along the coast to the Temple of Poseidon. It sits on top of a hill that overlooks the water. It was really beautiful! We then drove back along the coast to Athens. I loved looking at all the houses as we went. They are so very different from ours, very tall and colorful with balconies on every story.

We are finding that each city we visit has a feel all its own. Some feelings are good, some bad, and some we can’t explain, but city definitely has a different feel about it. Athens had an old, dirty, and jam packed feel. There was graffiti EVERYWHERE. I think about 75% of all the building and public structures in Athens have at least some form of graffiti on them. The houses are very different from what we’re use to. They are very tall apartment type buildings and they are all very close together. Also, every room/floor has a huge balcony attached. There isn’t much vegetation in the city. There are a few short trees in the city parks, much not many elsewhere.

To finish the day we ate dinner as the boat left the dock and began to sail away from the port at Athens.