April 18th: Athens

Athens

The Parthenon with its crane. 

We started our day by climbing to the top of the Acropolis to see the Parthenon.  The Parthenon was kind of a mixed bag of emotions for me:  awe at the site of such an important and ancient building, disappointment that the trip back in time was squelched by the crane and scaffolding in front of it, and extreme interest in the fact that they are in the process of “rebuilding” it.   

Apparently, the poor Parthenon has been through quite a tough time after its initial glory days.  Sackings by the Romans and others, systematic destruction by Christians to destroy anything pagan, eventual conversion to a church by the Christians, time as a mosque under the Ottoman rule, and a “bomb” in the 1600’s, not to mention a bunch of earthquakes and a couple of bad restorations.

All of this left it in quite a state of ruin.  It seems that they have decided to help rebuild parts of it and are using new marble in places where the old has been destroyed.  The team has been working on this for 30 years and has had to take down whole columns that were reconstructed in the 1800’s using the wrong pieces.  It is a bit of a jig-saw puzzle.  

What the columns look before restoration

The Erechtheion

I like it though.  I enjoyed seeing the old marble with the new marble and being able to get a glimpse of its former beauty but also see the ancient ruins as well.  This continues in the smaller buildings atop the Acropolis as well.  My favorite building is the Erechtheion.  It has a porch with female statues acting as pillars to support the ceiling.  It was the first time the Greeks had combined art as part of their architecture.  

We took a meandering climb down from the Acropolis to the ancient Agora, or market place, below and took a tour of it.  This was the hustle and bustle of Athens in ancient times with markets, temples, and even their theater.  That might have been the most amazing to me--to be able to look at the ruins of the theater where the great playwrights like  Sophocles and Aristophanes had their plays performed.  Now how cool is that!?!  

The Temple of Hephaestus

The Agora as seen from the Parthenon

Next was a traditional Greek lunch which was fun.  We got a mixed platter of lots of different things to try and it was all quite good.  Our favorite though was Tzatziki, which is a yogurt, cucumber, and garlic dip.  I could not help but think that the British cucumber sandwiches were very similar.  The bread that you used for the dip was much better than regular bread though!

After lunch we had an adventure getting to the National Archeological Museum.  Our first attempt to get there was by metro--but it was a no-go as the line was under repair there.  Next was the bus system (as we had already purchased our metro/bus tickets.  It was a no-go also as the correct bus never came.  Finally in desperation, we decided to take cabs (we needed two as there were five of us).  Meg and I jumped in the first one with Anne, Kayla, and Lauren to follow directly behind us.  We did not anticipate any problems as there were tons of empty cabs going by....

Meg and I made it fine but unfortunately, Anne and the girls did not come right behind us.  We waited and waited and waited!  Finally, they showed up.  The had “lucked-out” and gotten a very “thoughtful” cab driver that just wanted to avoid all of the traffic and took them on a bit of a scenic tour.  :~)

The museum was good and we got to see the Mask of Agamemnon, which was pretty neat.  My favorite part though, was frescoes that were from the Minoans.  They were beautiful.

The Mask of Agamemnon

Minotaur 

Small replica of the Athena statue in the Parthenon

This Statue of Athena is a small version of the statue that used to be in the Parthenon.  The orriginal statue was 42 feet tall.  To give you some perspective, the small statue of Nike that Athena is holding was 6 feet, 4 inches tall.  She was gilded in 1,500 pounds of gold and painted and studded with real gems to make her look life-like.

Minoan frescoes

This is an example of how the Greeks would paint their statues.  We are used to seeing the white marble, but in reality, they were painted to look life-like and were very colorful.

Delphi

Sunday, April 17th:   Delfi

We hit the road early this morning as we had a long drive to get to Delphi, home of the Oracle of Apollo. Well, Helen threw a big hissy fit and would not find any satellite signals, nor would she find small places like Delphi or big places like Athens. Basically she was a no-show.

So, heading out in what I felt was the right direction, off we went.  I made it into Athens, but somehow could not find the highway leading up to Delphi. Instead, I found an obscure mountain pass going up and down, back and forth,  through and around the mountains (after I narrowly escaped with my life from the drivers of Athens).

Well, after we played musical chairs trying to keep Kayla and Megan from getting too car sick and an extra hour or so later due to the road we took, we finished our five hour drive to Delphi. It was worth every moment of harrowing driving we had experienced and those yet to be experienced.

It is not an exaggeration to say that it is easy to see why the ancient Greeks thought this was a holy place. It was. And it was absolutely stunning. I LOVED it.

It was rainy again today as we drove up, but stopped while we visited the ruins.  It allowed us to see them in the cool mountain air with the clouds still swirling around the mountain tops and adding a lot of charm and beauty to this place. Don't come her in July.  April is a wonderful time. The flowers are blooming everywhere and it is so green.

The ruins are built into the side of the mountain and you climb 700 feet in elevation to see all of the ruins. Did I mention the travel tip of: *Don't wait to you are retired to travel!*   If not, take it to heart and travel now.  You (and I) are not getting any younger.

We had an absolutely wonderful time going through the ruins and then the museum afterwards. We had a nice Greek lunch in the town of Delphi (which was moved from the site 150 years ago to a location about 15 minutes away.  How do you move a whole town?) and it was a super cute town.  After our lunch and short walk, I barely squeezed our car out of the parking lot (don't ask!) and we headed down the mountains to Athens....and it started to rain.

Anne and I got the car turned in without a single scratch!  Helen begrudgingly helped us into Athens, if not to the airport itself, where we gladly dumped her and the car and then made our way to our hostel.

It is a studio apartment with a living room, kitchenette, bathroom, and a bedroom with bunk beds that is only for the five of us. It is a fabulous location (basically at the Acropolis metro station and the Acropolis itself and we are quite pleased with it.

Ancient Sites.....

Saturday, April 16th:  Epivardos and Mycenae

Today was a wonderful day. We drove to the town of Epivardos and along the way, stopped to take a look at an old bridge from the Mycenaean age. Right after we finished, along came a man with with his herd of goats down the road. Now the roads are barely wide enough to handle two way traffic and are very curvy with steep embankments on the down-hill side. So it was with quite some amazement that we watched this herd of goats meandering down the road.   After the man got to a bit of a wide spot, he herded the goats off to the side and let all the buses and cars go by before he took them into the street again to make their way to...better pastures? :~) Anyway, we were charmed.

Next was the ancient theater of Epivardos, the largest intact theater in Greece from the Classical Age. It was huge! It has perfect acoustics, kind of like the pyramids at Chitzen Itza, so that if you stand in the center you can be heard all the way to the top. I tried to get my girls to say a poem or something, but they wouldn't.  With no other choice, I climbed down to call for Megan's sweet Romeo...."Romeo, Romeo, where art thou Romeo!"  After all, how often does one get to perform at an ancient greek theater in Greece?

Next we went on to the ruins of Mycenae. This is when we started to have problems with our GPS unit. We had, unfortunately, decided to be cute and name our GPS Helen, as in Helen of Troy. Well, Helen apparently did NOT want to go to Mycenae. Whether it was Menelaus or Agamemnon she did not want to see, we are not sure, but go, she would not.

Well, after asking for directions a couple of times, we eventually got close enough to follow the signs to the site. It was really great. I loved the ruins, the famous lion gate (did you know that they think the heads probably faced out towards the visitors and may have been of gold or some other metal as there are rust marks on the marble), and the landscape of the area. It was just special to see something that we have studied in person like that. Of course that has been true of most of the trip, but this made it really seem like Greece to me.

Unfortunately, they closed the site early and we did not get to go to the museum, but the site was the best part anyway. The funniest part was when we climbed down 99 steps to the water cistern in the dark. Anne, Kayla, and Lauren really wanted nothing to do with this, but Megan and I kept encouraging them on. None of us really knew exactly what to expect when we got to the bottom, but all the way down Anne kept saying that this was a "really bad idea".  And honestly, from a practical point it was. It was pitch black, stone steps, wet steps, wet walls, slippery steps, uneven steps....well, you get the picture. But Megan and I were in it for the adventure and down we plunged leaving the others little chance to turn around and still save face.

So it was with some horror that Megan and I flashed our camera (our light source) down the steps and what showed up was a stone wall. Yep. A stone wall. I was not quite sure what to say to Anne, since we had essentially forced her to risk her neck on this adventure, but before I could figure out something to say, Megan happily piped in that there was nothing down there. Well, the cat was out of the bag and the rest was not pretty,....so I will move on......

The weather today has been rainy. I was quite worried that we would be too hot here, but that was not something I should have worried about. However, I am not complaining about the rain. It rained on the drive to each place, stopped long enough for us to tour the site, then started raining again on the way to the next stop. After we got back to our hotel, it really rained, but we had left overs, so we just stayed in and got a little extra rest.

Oh, and just to let you know, Helen was happy to leave Mycenae and happily took us back to Nafplio..... hmmm......

Friday

Friday, April 15th: Greece

Ahhh....Greece. I cannot believe I am in Greece. After a hectic evening last night, a very early flight this morning, a little trepidation about driving here, we made it to Nafplio, a small coastal town that is SO cute and so...so....well, Greek!

Greece looks (so far) just how we thought it would. Rocky hills and mountains, green grass and olive trees, white houses with red tile roofs and lots of flowers blooming everywhere. Pretty much anywhere these plants can get their roots in, they grow like mad!

Our hotel is Fabulous! It is a quaint little place; a two bedroom apartment with 3 sleeping upstairs and Anne and I downstairs. (Kayla's very good friend from college, Lauren, joined us this morning in Athens.) The hotel is built into the hillside. From the large patio, we have a beautiful view of the sea and over look the town below. Behind us are the ruins of an old fortress, part of which was built in the 3rd century b.c.e. It was heavenly with all the flowers and vines climbing over the ruins.

The town is super cute with lots of tiny restaurants and shops. Kayla, Lauren, and Megan climbed up to the top of another fortress on the hill for two gorgeous views of the sea on either side and the town below. It was around 850-1,000 steps. Anne and I took a nap instead! (Little did they know that we can actually *drive* up there! LOL!!!!

I do not think I realized how tired of Italy I was until I got here. The art, food, history, and wine are wonderful. So is most of the landscape. But the people were not very warm and in the cities, there is a lot of people pushing or cutting you off to get to where they want to go, motorcycles and cars zipping everywhere, large lines and crowds, etc., and that gets tiring. I honestly think it would be miserable in the summer heat (it is plenty warm now) and the increased crowds (again, more that I would wish for). I would never come here in the summer!

Greece so far has been quite pleasant. We were greeted by our host, shown our room, he drove our car for us to the parking area (thank goodness as the streets are so narrow where the hotel is!) and then offered us some freshly squeezed lemon-aid from their lemon trees while we overlooked the sea from the patio. How is that for service? :~) The people in town are happy to go out of their way to show you where something is and actually seem to like us. I feel like Italians as a whole are kind of like the French, without the polish that the French believe that they have. I do know that part of that is that people in cities do not seem as nice as their less rushed, rural counterparts, but overall that is my feeling on Italians from this visit.

If I was doing this trip again or just a trip to Italy, I would fly into Rome, see the major sights and then get out and spend a lot more time in Tuscany and Venice with a few days in Florence to see all of the art. Might as well finish up with the charm of Venice! :~)

The Vatican.......

Thursday, April 13th--A Day at the Vatican.

Today was our visit to the world's smallest country, Vatican City. We started outside the city at Castel Sant'Angelo. This castle started off as a tomb for Emperor Hadrian and later became a prison and then a fortress for the pope. It was built around 139 c.e. and in 590 c.e. the Archangel Michael appeared over the mausoleum to Pope Gregory the Great and it became know as Holy Angel.

As Rome was sacked at different times, it became a wonderful fortress for the popes and eventually they built an elevated walkway from it to the Vatican.

Next we went for our tour of the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. We were all *very* glad that we had booked a tour as the lines were tremendous. A guy at the airport said that he did not get in because the line was a five hour wait! Yikes! Regardless of whether it was that long, the amount of people was astounding.

Our tour was very good. It really took us to a lot of places in the Vatican although I think it would take days to see it all. The overall of effect of it all was incredibly rich; full of masterpieces and rare collectables, so many in fact, that they almost looked like they were crammed in and should be spaced out more....

The most important parts of the museum to me were seeing the Sistine Chapel and the Raphael rooms. The Sistine Chapel ceiling that Michelangelo painted was a surprise to me as I was able to see the paintings very clearly and I really expected them to look quite small. We also saw his Last Judgement which was quite amazing as well.

A couple of interesting notes are that when the pope died, the new pope thought that the Last Judgement was very inappropriate because of all of the nudes. So, he hired another painter to come in and paint drapery to cover certain parts of the anatomy.

Also, Michelangelo had a bit of a sense of humor. One of the saints had been martyred by being skinned. So that saint is holding his skin which has the face of a gruesome looking Michelangelo. Another scene has the gate keeper of hell with the face of one of Michelangelo's critics, who was unhappy with the nudity. So Michelangelo made sure the privates of this man were covered----by the head of a huge snake about to take a big bite there!!!!!

Also, this room was restored about 10-15 years ago. They took off all of the soot and dirt from the many years of use, especially from all of the candles. They left one tiny square the color that things used to be and I am SO glad that they did the cleaning, even though it was quite controversial. The difference in colors was astounding--kind of like the difference between black and white and color. It was really dark!

Also this is the room where they pick the new popes in, so we got to see where the famous chimney goes during their conclave.

Raphael's School of Athen's, one of my favorite paintings, was also great to see in person. This was frescoed onto the walls of the pope's apartments (he has a new palace now) and was quite large and extremely impressive. :~)

We saw a model of Vatican City, and that was very helpful. It showed the layout of all of the buildings and gardens, the helicopter pad and train station (now closed due to security). The gardens are quite extensive. Our guide explained that Vatican City was not officially its own country for about 50 years after the Unification of Italy in 1861. Seemed kind of funny to me since it has been its own power for 1,600 years.....

Because it is its own country, they have their own mail system (which is WAY better than Italy's), own euro (each country gets to mark the euros the way they want to), own police force, etc. There are special guards for the Pope, called the Swiss guard and they still wear the same uniforms that Michelangelo designed. (Poor guy! All he really wanted to do was sculpt and people kept making him do other projects like painting and architecture. And, speaking of which, Michelangelo played a big part in the building of St. Peter's Basilica's dome!)

After the museum, we were taken down into the first church of St. Peter, where the popes are interned, unless they are beatified like Pope John Paul II is about to be. Then they are interned in the church above, St. Peter's Basilica.

It is said that Peter was crucified (upside down) on the very hill that the church is built on. Early Christians buried St. Peter there and then started to use the hill as a cemetery. Then when Christianity was legalized in the 400's by Constantine, Constantine built the first Church OVER the cemetery, where St. Peter was buried. (St. Peter apparently got moved around a bit because his remains were at least temporarily at a couple of other places, including out on Apian way at the catacombs, before he got buried again in the cemetery.) In the 1500's, the pope decided to build the largest Christian church anywhere in the world, so he built the new St. Peter's Basilica OVER the old church. So, if you are following this, we are not down in the cemetery level where St. Peter is buried, (that takes a special permit) but in the level above it where the popes' tombs are now.) You can actually look above you and see people walking over the grates above. After viewing these tombs, we ascended into St. Peter's Basilica. On the floor, just in case you didn't realize that it is the biggest church in the world, it has markers showing how far St. Paul's in London would fit, etc. It is amazingly opulent. The best part to me was Michelangelo's Pieta. It is magnificent. :~)

Rome continued......

April 11th and 12th

Tuesday we started our morning at the Borghese Galleria. It was formally Cardinal Borghese's home and was and continues to be a show-case of beautiful art. There are three pieces there by Bernini that are magnificent--truly, truly magnificent. They are the Apollo and Daphne sculpture, the Pluto and Persephone sculpture, and Bernini's David. I could not fathom *how* Bernini was able to carve the marble so thin and yet still strong enough to stand out perpendicular to the floor without breaking. The Apallo and Daphne sculpture is my favorite. It is phenomenal! Look it up since I cannot send you a picture of it. One of the things that they found out when the restored it a couple of years ago is that the leaves ring like crystal if you strike them. Why anyone would strike them, I do not know but it is still interesting.

We walked around the outside of an old Roman bath that would hold up to 3,000 bathers at one time. Wow! Last was the National Museum of Rome. It was full of old Greek statues and Roman copies of these statues. The best part though was the upstairs where they had whole rooms done up with old frescoes to give you an idea of what a room would feel like. They were amazing. One was a garden scene and you could just feel yourself relaxing in the peaceful atmosphere of the "garden". This really helped me understand what their homes must have been like. I want frescoes in my house!!!!!!

The afternoon was mostly free time. We went grocery shopping, had a big lunch and made it to an internet cafe. I cannot believe how hard it has been to get internet here. I got to finally talk to Mark and that was the highlight of my day!

Wednesday- Appian Way and St. Peter of the Chains.

Today we took a wonderful tour of the Appian way. This is the area of Rome where people were buried, both Christians and Romans. It was against the law even for emperors to be buried in the city walls, so tombs and mausoleums were built along Appian Way. We started by seeing some of the larger mausoleums and taking a tour of a catacomb. Romans preferred cremation while Christians wanted to be buried. Apparently it was a myth that they buried the Christians in secret as there were Roman seals in different parts of the catacombs and the Christian catacombs were connected to the Roman's cemetery.

It was quite interesting. The ground here is made of a type of volcanic rock called tuff that is very soft and easy to dig into, but that hardens to stone when it is exposed to air. The Christian graves were stacked on top of each other like very, very, shallow bunk beds and over 100,000 graves were in this catacomb alone. They estimated that there were over 27 of these sites at one time but only a few still remain.

They are built layer under layer and at least 3 levels deep. After they wrapped the body in linen, (like Christ) they put it into the side of the wall and then covered it with marble or stone, usually with their name and the name of the emperor at that time.

At the other end of the upper level, was the Roman cemetery. It was interesting because they had quite elaborate rooms with a gate closing off the tomb. Inside were several levels that all held the urns of different family members. You could fit hundreds of family members in these different rooms and then just keep digging down if you needed to.

It was quite the contrast to the Christian ones. They were small, cramped places (not even sure how they got the bodies in such tight spaces) to hold a full body whereas the Romans had spacious rooms to hold their urns. I guess bodies just take up a lot more space! Anyway, Anne and I like the idea of a family crypt. ;~)

Ancient Rome

Monday, April 11th---Ancient Rome

Today was our first real day in Rome. First, let me start out by saying that we totally lucked out with our trip here. It is cultural week here and almost all of the attractions are free! The other great thing about this is that it makes the lines much shorter as no one has to buy tickets.

So our first stop was the Colosseum or Coliseum in English. I really enjoyed it. There was a lot more to it than I had thought there would be. I had expected more of just a shell, but we went in and up the stairs to be able to look down on the different levels. At the ground level were the seats for important people and as you went up, the seats were cheaper. Expensive seats had your family name engraved in the marble.

There was a canvas awning that covered about 1/3 of the seats, the cheap seats actually. So the common man sat comfortably in the shade while the emperor roasted in the sun.

Speaking of which, we are having lovely weather on our trip. A couple a cool mornings, some hot afternoons, but overall, very nice. I would NOT want to come here in the summer. I have heard so many people say that they were here last time in the summer and how miserable it was. One lady will not go back to Venice because she was so miserable. It is not hard to see though, as air-conditioning is rare here. So are dryers. People have washers, but no dryers. The laundry just hangs out the windows.

Back to the Colosseum.... They are building a floor right now over part of the arena to give people an idea of what it looked like back then. The rest is open to the elements but you can see the maze of tunnels that held animals, prisoners, and gladiators.

They had about 80 trap doors in the floor allowing them to use elevators to bring people and animals up to the stadium at almost any point. You were never sure where your threat was coming from. They used these games to execute their prisoners. Often the prisoner would have to act out a play in which the death of the character was their own death.

Next we climbed to the top of Palatine Hill where the emperor's palace used to be. This is one of the seven hills that Rome was founded on. The ruins were interesting to see but what I thought was the most interesting is that basically where we stood, was about 25 ft. above ground level at that time. That is true of most of the city. As parts got old, they just built on top of it. Another interesting fact to me was that the ceiling of the throne room was seven stories tall. That must have been quite impressive!

After Palatine HIll was the Roman Forum. The Forum was the political, economical, and religious center of the city. We saw the ruins of temples, triumphal arches, and even the place where Julius Caesar was cremated and Marc Anthony gave his speech. Generals would return from victorious battle and parade through this area. What astounded me the most is that there is SO much marble just laying around that people are free to use it as a bench to sit upon. Somehow it felt a little wrong to me, but as I was hot and tired, that cool marble under the tree felt very nice. :~)

After the forum, we decided we need a cold drink and a bite to eat. After looking around a bit and seeing there were no other options, we got 3 sandwiches and 4 sodas from a vending cart. Imagine our surprise when the man said we owed him 33 euro (about $50). While feeling like I just got robbed, I had to admire his entrepreneurship! The good news is that we have been grocery shopping and eating fairly cheaply AND we had just saved 48 euro on tickets, so we did not take it very hard. ;~)

Feeling refreshed, we climbed up to Capitoline Hill, another of the 7 hills of Rome and the center of government for 2,500 years. We saw a replica of the wolf with Romulus and Remus, and the ancient equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. Michelangelo was responsible for giving this area a face lift and making it more modern. He did a great job. :~)

Next was the Victor Emmanuel Monument. All I can say is WOW! It was built for the 50th anniversary of the unification of Italy and it is magnificent.

We continued on to see the Pantheon, which has been constantly in use since ancient times. Once honoring all of the gods, it now only worships the Christian God. It is a magnificent building. It is all marble and the dome of the ceiling if continued down as in a globe would fit perfectly so that the bottom of the sphere just touched the bottom of the floor. A perfect circle within a perfect square and you have the perfection of the universe.

Next were a couple of minor stops in churches to see art. First was Michelangelo's Christ Baring The Cross and the other was a false dome painted on the ceiling of a church. Apparently they ran out of the money that they needed to build the dome, so instead, they painted an optical illusion to look like the dome. It does to some degree, but it was dark, and with our modern lighting, it did not look quite right.

We had dinner in Campo de Fiori, a market square, and then took an evening walking tour. First was the Four Rivers fountain. It was designed by Bernini, one of my favorite sculptors and it depicts four of the major rivers known at that time. One thing neat about it is that the river Nile's head is covered as they did not know yet where the head of that river was.

The next stop was Trevi Fountain. It is absolutely AMAZING. I truly loved it.. It had 27 different fountains of water pouring out of it in all different directions. The fountain is the width of the building behind it. Our last stop was the Spanish Steps--not so much to look at in my opinion, but then after Trevi, it would have been hard to impress me.

It was a long, long day, but it was great to do Ancient Rome today