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.