BelkBlog: Athens

Athens

So we land in Athens. This was an 'inflection point' in the trip. There was Asia, the transition to Europe, which was Rome and the lead up to the cruise. The cruise had a connection with 'home', as our friends and their son joined us. Then we landed in Athens, spent an evening with our friends again, then they headed back to the islands. And it was the Belk's alone in Europe, beginning our seven week European sojourn.

Athens was an inflection point in another way. We put ourselves down in Athens (per schedule) for four nights. But EVERY guidebook, every website, and everybody we spoke to said that 4 nights in Athens was about two too many. See the Acropolis, the museum, and get out of dodge. So, when I could get on line, before trip and during, I looked at other alternatives. Making our way back to the islands for a few days. Which island? How to get there? How much time to get back and forth? What about the Peloponnese (the area below Athens)? What about the beach resorts around Athens? As good as we have gotten at trip logistics, we could not sort this one out, as the fact that there are five of us, not highly mobile, seemed to continuously nix various alternatives. So we land (dock?) in Athens, get a lesson in bad queuing theory, as it took over two hours to even be allowed to get off the boat (lots of grumpy people) and end up at a very nice hotel that was NOT set up to handle huge numbers of folks arriving simultaneously, and had another example of bad queuing theory. My wife made a good point…since the check in was on a computer, why didn't the hotel just send someone to the cruise ship and check everybody in while we were waiting. It's a five star hotel, they should have been able to figure this out, as the cruises come in several times a week, dumping dozens of folks at the same time on the hotel (Hotel Grand Bretagne, Athens). And of course, none of the rooms are ready, so we check our luggage. That's fine, part of the game…. BUT, as you will learn below, it was HOT in Athens, REALLY, REALLY hot, the hottest in recorded history at this time of year…and this FIVE STAR HOTEL tells us we can either leave our computers, documents, etc sitting next to the concierge desk in the lobby, or carry them all day in 100 degree plus heat (38c that day, then it got hotter), which we ended up doing. My wife and I had to carry our backpacks, plus lots of water, all day, over what ended up to be a memorable day. Cool in visuals and experience, blazingly hot in all other dimensions. And it is pathetic that a five star hotel can't figure out how to secure belongings, nor deal with an influx of visitors that they get EVERY week!

So, we ended up in Athens. It was hot. Really, really hot. We did not know if we were spending one, two, three, four nights. And, in a surprise to the tone of my intro above, we spent four nights, and had a really really good time! It was a classic example of making lemonade out of a bunch of really, really hot lemons.

The first day. Gotta remember on this one we got up at about 6:30, were ready to get off the boat at 8:30, and got off the boat about 11am. By the time we 'hit the road' in Athens with our 10 kilo packs each, it was about one. We wandered around the streets, surrounded by ruins, and noisy chattering Greeks. We went to the ancient agora, and saw amazing ruins, less dramatic than Rome, but much older. I forget the name of this Temple, it was to one of the biggie Gods, but my memory is of a Japanese looking gentleman, my guess actually an American architect or student, with a sketchbook of staggeringly good illustration of this temple. Really old, and the Turks did not blow it up trying to piss off the Venetians (more on this to come).

The ancient agora, which somehow had the trains running all along and below it, had a cool little museum. One of the good things about Athens is that they had the summer Olymics a few years ago (another of our ongoing stream of Olympic cities that we seem to be stumbling on this trip), so a lot of the museums and exhibitions were relatively new, in good shape, and were ready for international visitors (read English speakers, yeah!)). So, the Agora had a great museum, complete with ancient kids toilet. I'm not kidding on this one, as they had a photo of a 'modern' kid sitting on this contraption (see top right).

The had examples of various 'voting machines' of early democracy. And they had explanations on how this all worked. I'll skip the photo of the 'machine' but include the explanation, which in my book falls into the 'the more things change, the more they remain the same (la plus ca change, la plus le meme chose, don't know how to say it in Greek though)).

In spite of the heat, there were RAMPANT Tournamis flowing through the city. This was Tournami "X28", probably preceded by Tournami X27 and followed by Tournami X29.

So, we get back to hotel about 3:30 (remember, we have a four year old that got up at 6:30am…), get to our rooms, very nice, it IS a nice hotel. Click on the television, and it says, Mr. Belk, you have a message. OK, let's take a look. "Mr. Belk, due to a Strike, the Acropolis will be closed tomorrow"… Yikes, better finally drop off the backpacks and trek off to the acropolis. Too bad that it is about 110 or even 120 degrees up there.. ..on Strike (still don't know the reason), gotta go. So off the Acropolis we went. You get dropped off at the bottom, and start trekking up the hill. At least we were not stupid from a fluid standpoint, as we still had backpacks, but now they contained more of the 11 liters of liquids that we consumed that day (two adults and three kids).

The Acropolis is MINDBLOWING. I'm not a student of architecture, nor a painter of sculpture. I can read about the perfect dimensions of the Parthenon, the lines, the history. But I really don't get it, but viscerally understand that this is something special. And it was relatively intact until recently. I.E. the 1600's, when the Venetians were fighting the Turks, and the Turks (or the Venetians, who knows) were using the top of the Acropolis to store munitions, and the other guys were lobbing in shells, and surprise, surprise, KABOOM, the whole thing went karplooie, and the Greeks have been trying to put things together again for the last four hundred years. It is a challenging task, as in the 1800's and 1900's a bunch of British and German folks, and who knows who else, took chunks of the best remaining parts of the Acropolis for safekeeping in Berlin and London. So the best remaining chunks of the top of the Parthenon are in London, the "Elgin Marbles" although Lord Elgin was not born until thousands of years after the suckers were carved. I've seen them in London, they are really cool, but they do belong in Greece. Lord Elgin can stay wherever he is buried in England. So we down bottle after bottle of water and PowerAde (or as my wife calls it, the Elixer of life), and wander the Acropolis in 120 degree heat.

This is one of the other temples, of the goddesses with the headaches. These are actually replicas, as the originals (very cool) are in the Acropolis museum, and another of the originals is in…surprise, surprise, the British Museum. I've heard of having the world on your shoulders, but having the temple on your head, that's another story.

The Parthenon keeps on being rebuilt, and I hope that they get further along before some idiot or group of idiots decides to blow it up again…

The next day was really, really hot, about 45C (do the math, 9/5 + 32 or 113 degrees Fahrenheit), so we decided to not be stupid, like going to the Parthenon when it was even hotter, and we went to the Greek national archeology museum. I know I say amazing a lot in my posts, but this was just as, if not more amazing than the other amazing things we have seen this trip.

Two photos from my wife's "Foot Series", the sandals on the bronze was very cool:

The following was a bronze that was found underwater, and recently restored. This is a HUGE growth area for archeology, as you don't need to stop construction projects, or take down buildings. This one was staggering on a lot of levels, especially after seeing how the arts degraded in Rome (and Europe) after about 450 AD. This is a low res photo, but you can get a sense of the detail of the face, and the musculature of the legs and body.

These guys are making wine (yippee!), which my kids have learned is a constant between antiquity and modernity…

In another timeless theme, I took a picture of this goddess with the party god Pan. Then my wife, the ever present seer of shoes, saw the whole story, as the goddess was about to bop the Pan on the head with her shoe. The description proved that Kim was right again!!!

One of our ongoing learnings is how the god Eros, who was not what you would think, ultimately became Cupid. Too long for a blog, but one of many things you learn about how religious themes often do not have the origins one would expect. On a more serious note, the whole purpose of the Acropolis and the Parthenon was to be the home of the Temple of Athena, the patron goddess of Athens. The Parthenon was built in her honor. Inside the temple was a giant statue of Athena which is described in many texts of antiquity. But the statue was lost / destroyed along the way. This is the best likeness of the statue, a Roman copy of the statue of Athena in the temple. Imagine this tens of feet high, really big, painted, covered in Jewels and Gold!

Somewhere along the lines of our 'lemons to lemonade' four day tour of the Athens area, we adopted a local taxidriver named Constantinatos (or so he said). Prada eyewear, Mercedes AMG Taxi, one ringtone for the wife who he would argue with, another phone for someone else that he would speak with more tender tones, Constantine helped us deal with the heat. He suggested, at probably more than reasonable profit margins, that we visit the Temples of Poseidon about an hour or so south of Athens. It was a great job, and a hauntingly memorable place. It is the middle of nowhere today, so one can only imagine how much in the middle of nowhere it was then.

My kids, doing the obligatory statue pose. Note how we had to fight of the massive groups of Tournamis here (not!):

Graffiti is not just a modern problem, some were sailors, some were the likes of Lord Byron, who did not help the cause of keeping these sites pristine:

The last day, Constantine took us down to a beach. Great day at the beach, great lunch at the local Gyros place he recommended, even though the area was blacked out due to the sweltering heat. The beach was fine though, the kids loved it. The four days exceeded expectations, and on the next to last last night, we ditched the kids in the hotel room and went upstairs to the rooftop restaurant. The Grand Bretagne was in our good graces again. The view from dinner (albeit with a good zoom!).