Athens

Tuesday we visited the Acropolis. It was full of other tourists but I still enjoyed seeing the ruins, along with the other sites there. The Temple of Athena Nike was off to one side as we went up the Propylaia. There were tons of people standing on the steps taking pictures. Up top, the stones were pretty slippery to walk on. We saw the Parthenon, which was completed in 438 BC. and had doric columns (the most simple ones). A large chunk of the side of the Parthenon was pretty much destroyed and men were working on the rest of the structure. The pediments and friezes had been restored/reconstructed. The best bits of the building are actually in London at the London Museum. Lord Elegin took them in 1801 and they’ve been protected/on display since then. We walked around the back of the structure and then over towards the Erechtheion, which I think I might have liked more than the Parthenon. It’s a smaller temple and has ionic columns on one side of it. On the other side, there is a small porch-like area where caryatids held up the roof. (Now plaster casts of the originals are in their place.) A caryatid is a column in the form of a figure (these are female), which serves as both decoration and structural support.

We descended from the Acropolis and entered the Theater of Dionysos which was built between 340-330 BC. It’s located on the hill just south of the Parthenon. We could actually see it when we sat on a wall next to the Parthenon, which is above the city and could be seen from a distance. The theater wasn’t particularly remarkable, so we didn’t stay there too long. Next, we went to the Temple of Olympian Zeus which was begun in the 6^th century BC. Hadrian’s Arch, located just outside the temple grounds, was completed in AD 131. The temple only had a few columns standing. These were, however, really tall: about 17 meters. One had been toppled and was in slices. From here, we had a great view looking up towards the Parthenon. Getting here was a bit of a challenge because crossing the street in Athens takes skills. They traffic lights are clearly designed to favor automobiles. People are barely given enough time to run across four-six lanes of traffic before the light changes. If there is an island in the center, you will be stopping there. No question about it; there’s no way you have enough time. You could sprint, but it’s 95ºF by 10 am, so that’s out of the question.

We wandered through the tourist-kitsch-filled streets to the Roman Agora, located on the other side of the Acropolis (closer to our hostel). It was a kind of forum like space used during the Roman time period, hence the name. We didn’t bother going inside because we could see the whole thing from outside the fence, and really it just looked like a bunch of rocks. We did, however, enter Hadrian’s Library, which was pretty cool. It was a series of buildings. The scrolls were stored towards the back flanked by two mini-auditoria. This is according to the reconstruction drawings on signs because there wasn’t really much left for us to see.

Our final site was the Ancient Agora, Athens’ marketplace and civic center. They had reconstructed the Stoa of Attalos which was a long, narrow building with two rows of columns in front of it. It housed a small museum of assorted vases and objects found at the site. The “museum” was very well air-conditioned and it explained how the site had been used over time. There was an 11^th-Century church on the grounds. We also climbed a hill to the Temple of Hephaestus which was from ancient times and really well preserved. The rest of the Agora was a jumble of rocks, all of which were labeled, but you had to use your imagination to see what they used to be.

On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at a market to pick up food for dinner. The produce at our local grocery store was terrible: moldy carrots, dead-looking tomatoes. We breezed through the meat market, where men held up lamb heads for us to see. They tried to guess where we were from. I was generally ignored, but Jess was told she was from Singapore and Kazakhstan. From the market we headed up the street towards Omonia, a central transportation area and large square. There were people setting up for an anarchist protest. We didn’t hang around because there were police everywhere: streets were closed off, police vans were parked and there appeared to be riot gear ready to go. Our hostel was only a few blocks away and we could hear some drum banging later on that evening, but the protest seemed peaceful (or at least we didn’t hear about any backlash.

On Wednesday we tried to go to Delphi, but we had missed the bus. Instead we went back toward the Acropolis and walked around a few blocks filled with religious shops. Jess’s dad really likes Eastern Orthodox icons so she was looking to buy him one. The shops were all the same: store owners sitting inside, looking rather bored, and smoking a cigarette. They were somewhat confused as to why two American girls would be in their shop. She didn’t buy anything and, instead, we went to the New Acropolis Museum. The building was finished this year and the museum had only been open for five weeks. It was built by a New York based architect, who designed the building on top of some ruins. Large areas of the floor were glass, so people could look down at the ruins below. You entered in the bottom of the museum and walked up a slight incline, meant to represent the walk up to the Acropolis. That walkway was inclined and lit by natural light from the glass floor and ceiling of the third story of the museum. The second level was full of sculptures, including the originals of the caryatids (except for the one in London). These were really interesting to see up close because no two of the six were identical. Their hair was all done differently, and their clothing was slightly different as well. Up on the third floor, we watched a movie about the Parthenon. This floor had been constructed with the dimensions of the Parthenon in mind. The room where the movie was shown was meant to be “inside” the Parthenon. On either side exits lead to a glassed-in room which had the originals (and plaster casts of the parts taken by Lord Eligin) of the inner and outer friezes. The pediment statues were also at either end of the O-shaped room. I really liked the way the ruins had been displayed because it gave visitors a way to experience the friezes as they should have looked.

Leaving the air-conditioned (we were actually cold) modern building, we headed towards the tourist streets to find some lunch. I had grilled octopus and feta cheese. The octopus had been sliced vertically instead of in rings. It was delicious. Jess had orzo and lamb in a light tomato sauce which she really liked. Then we tried to go sit in a park and read but that didn’t work out because people kept bothering us. One guy actually followed us when we tried to switch benches. There weren’t many people just sitting around in the park. There were some people walking through it, but the only people “hanging out” were really sketchy-looking, so we left.

That evening I went to Carrefour for some groceries and a Priest was speaking in the center of Omonia. There were police again, but far fewer than had been patrolling the previous evening.