Saturday 19 May Athens, continued
You never know what to expect when you’re going to see something so famous, that you’ve seen photos of your whole life. You’re excited to see it in the flesh so to speak, but will it live up to expectations or be just so-so? Nothing so-so here, it was ever-so-much-huger than imagined and also surrounded by mounds of marble that they haven’t put back in place yet – piles of rubble with this overwhelming but proportionally perfect building rising out of it. Excellent!
I’ve mentioned pillaging of ancient sites, and the Parthenon pillage was the most extreme & perhaps public of all. while Greece was under the Turks, the ambassador from England was lord Elgin, who took a shine to all the statuary on the pediments etc and asked the Turks if he could have them. They wanted to stay in England’s good graces, and besides what did they care about that crazy Greek building, so they said help yourself. And he did. Took almost all of it. It’s ended up in the British Museum, along with other similarly snatched antiquities from all over the world. This is getting to be a big deal FINALLY, with some museums returning some antiquities to their originating countries, but it seems that possession IS 9/10ths and after so many years the Brits get to keep what are called “the Elgin marbles” regardless of how many times the Greeks ask for them back.
There are more ruins up on the acropolis, the main one being the Erechtheion, which is the location of the famous caryatids, monster statues of women used as columns to hold up a porch roof. Well, in Texas we would call it a porch, it probably has a technical name. One of the big ladies was stolen too, by … guess who? Elgin. So only 5 originals remain. In a way this is the most sacred spot on the acropolis, since it’s where Athena & Poseidon had a contest to see who would be the main god in these parts, with humans deciding who gave the best gift. Athena presented an olive tree, and Poseidon hit the rock with his trident & brought forth a spring of water. Athena won & had a big-big-big statue in the Parthenon & the city named for her too. Greeks have been kinda queer for olive trees ever since. I read that the planting of so many trees has contributed to bad soil erosion throughout the country because they don’t have a spreading root system that holds the soil in place.
By the way, most of the things I’m writing about were built during Greece’s “golden age,” about 500 BC.
Along on the tour was a cute French couple named Georges & Marie-Therese, about 80. They kept heading off in the wrong direction & Nick would go corral them back. There were only about 10 folks on the tour, all English-speakers except them – Georges spoke enough to follow along, but his wife none at all. He explained to Nick “She doesn’t understand all the English talking, so she gets bored & wanders off.” Nick took to watching out for them & they took a shine to him too. He’s obviously a good boy!
After the tour we went to our hotel, which is modern & recently renovated, yet a couple of blocks from the ancient area that includes the acropolis, agora, and theater of Dionysus. So it’s real handy for trudging back & forth, also easy access to the Plaka neighborhood, winding streets & restaurants & junky souvenir shops, everything a tourist needs.
Sunday 20 May
Delphi
First thing this morning we leave for a trip to Delphi, one of the most impressive ancient sites in Greece. This is where people would come to ask advice from the virgins. (Whoops that just reminded me of a great line in the movie Clueless – the friend says, “Why should I listen to you , a virgin who can’t drive?” and she pouts & says “that was WAY harsh!”) Well, back to prehistoric Greece. NO first, the chaos with the bus.
Our piece of paper said 8am pickup, but the bus driver showed up at 7:25 and insisted we were wrong. We being me & Nick (not ready yet) and a couple from Shreveport (he wasn’t ready either). The hotel people sided with him (!?!?!, I guess we’re there a few days but they have to get along with the tour agencies forever. Anyway there was a lot of indignation on both sides until I went to the room for the paper, when the driver said Tell you what do we a favor cuz I’ve got to go to other hotels – meet me in 30 mins at the corner of this & that street, so it worked out in the end. Nobody got left.
By the way, street signs in Athens & road signs throughout Greece are in yellow in the Greek alphabet, transliterated immediately below into white Roman letters. So someone can say “Go to Papadopoulos street & you will find it even if you can’t read Greek. It will say Παπαδωπουλος then underneath Papadopoulos. Handy. Same for road signs to different towns. Δελφί then Delphi.
Right, Delphi. First off, Zeus released an eagle from each side of the world & they came together here, so he declared it the center (bellybutton!) of the world & put a big rock here to mark the exact spot.
Meanwhile, Apollo left Delos on the back of a dolphin (delphi in Greek) & came to this place, killed the then-current head god, a serpent called Python, son of the earth mother Gea, established a new order of reason & balance & nothing-in-excess, etc etc. So everybody came here to the temple of Apollo to ask what they should do about this or that, after sacrificing an animal of course. And after standing in a long long line waiting their turn to listen to the mumbles of the drugged-up virgin, who had chewed on laurel leaves, drunk from a sacred stream, and sniffed the gases escaping from a hole in the ground to get ready to sit on a tripod & pass Apollo’s’ advice along to humans. Her mumbles were interpreted by temple priests, who always put the answers into a form that could be interpreted several ways (and seemed to sound like Yoda talking too – succeed you must etc), so they were never wrong.
Well folks were so pleased with the good advice they got that they had celebratory statues put up, cities raised buildings called treasuries filled with well, treasures, etc. the one remaining kinda complete one (minus treasures of course) was put up by Athens after their victory at Marathon – you can just hear them now, “We’re number 1, we’re number 1!”
The site also had other temples, a gymnasium, a stadium, & a theater. After a tough day waiting in line, sacrificing, listening to mumbles & trying to figure out what it all meant, you could catch a show or hit the sauna.
Speaking of the line, it was interesting that the people from the island of Chios didn’t have to mess with the line, they could cut right in up front because they paid for the altar. There’s even a notice on the corner of the altar that says the ancient Greek version of “Chiotes can take a cut, the oracle says so.”
The remaining statues & bits of columns, treasures, gold silver & bronze items are in the museum, which was excellent. There is a room full of stuff from the treasury of Sifnos, the island we missed, all fabulous stuff. But the most famous piece, because it’s amazingly complete, is a bronze charioteer – his chariot & horses are gone, but he’s standing tall & elegant. He gets a whole room to himself.
That night we wandered around Plaka, scoping out the tourist shops to find some odds & ends to bring home (no more icons, no more jewelry). We ended up at a café called Xenios Zeus (or something like that), whose proprietor snagged us by saying “Very good food. Good view. You’re from US? My restaurant 26 days in USA Today.” What for, we never found out. But we ate Greek salad, tzatziki (yogurt, garlic, cucumbers, dill), fried potatoes Pablo Neruda (we had to get that in honor of the Chilean poet, who mentioned them in a poem or something (fries, garlic, lemon juice, sprinkles of cheese), eggplant & zucchini croquette things, and bottled water. We rolled out, rather than walked, alongside the bottom of the acropolis hill back to our hotel.
Monday 21 May
Around Athens
This is our day “at leisure” in Athens, so we have to get a lot done. Nick is up & out early to get to his final/certification dive in a town south of Athens called Glyfada. I take the opportunity to sleep late, get up about 9:30 and start writing about the trip. I’ve been wanting to do this for days, but have just been too busy. He comes in about 2:30 and we head out to see some more rubble around the city.
First, the theater of Dionysus. You may (or may not) recall that theater, plays, etc originally came from the worship of the wine god. Turns out this is the oldest extant theater in Greece, at the base of the acropolis & about 2 blocks from our hotel. It was amazing to sit on the benches where the plays of Aristophanes, Aeschylus, Sophocles & Euripides were first performed. Right here, right where we are sitting. Wow. In front of the regular bleacher seats are the ones for the VIPs, with backs on them & their names engraved in the marble.
Next, the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, just across the main drag from the acropolis. This was the largest temple with any parts left standing, and the scale of it is amazing. It took several hundred years to build (ran out of $$ in the middle of the project, as so often happens in real life), & was finally finished by decree of Hadrian, in about 180 AD, when worship of the Olympian gods was kinda on the way out.
Then off to see the agora, the Athenian marketplace where everybody hung out doing retail therapy & visiting. The place to see & be seen. The best parts here were the Temple of Hephaestus, the most complete remaining Doric temple (that means the columns are plain up top, not like Corinthian temples, which had columns with fancy tops of acanthus leaves); a 10th c church built on the agora grounds, and the restored Stoa of Attalos, which now holds the agora museum. It was late in the afternoon by this time, so the shadows were long & the light getting soft. Good photo ops! They had to run us out.
At these ancient sites there are guards wandering around whose job it is to keep people out of they shouldn’t be, off of the stones, on the paths, etc. If hollering doesn’t work, they blow a whistle at you. Not that I would know from personal experience of course.
We chose this as the night for our celebratory dinner, since we’ve got another tour out of town tomorrow & also will have to pack. A cab is picking us up to go to the airport at 3:30 am for a 630 am flight, & we want to get a couple of hours of sleep anyway. So we made reservations to go to a restaurant called Kalokerinos, which was recommended by a coworker of Nick’s. In addition to dinner they have a show with traditional music, singing, dancing in costumes, belly dancing, what have you. It’s a bit expensive because the show is included, so they get you either coming or going, probably both. We enjoyed it though, until they got to the part where they were dragging people out of the audience to dance on stage with them – it got a bit tedious watching clumsy people shouting Opa, so we left just before the end (you knew it was the last number cuz it was the Zorba song, the crowd-pleaser) and wound back through Plaka to get “home.”
Tuesday 22 May
Mycenae & Epidauros
Today we went to a site discovered by Schliemann, the non-archaeologist business guy with tons of $$ who found Troy in the 19th c because he thought it was historic while everybody else thought it was just legend. To have a matching set he had to find Mycenae too.
Why? Because the big fighters against the Trojans were the Myceneans, the House of Atreus folks whose family started the whole expedition cuz Menelaus of Sparta lost his wife Helen to Paris (not Hilton, but the prince of Troy – Orlando Bloom in the movie), so he called on his brother Agamemnon king of Mycenae to help him kick some Trojan butt. While they were at war 10 yrs, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra had an affair & with her lover Aegisthus killed him when he inconveniently showed back up, then their son Orestes had to kill his mom to right the wrong, got chased by the Furies, etc etc going on & on, one of the huge sagas in Greek mythology – or was it really real instead of a myth? If this is Mycenae, it probably was. Even if it’s going over the top to say “this is Agamemnon’s tomb,” etc, still the circumstantial evidence looks strong. The site dates from at least 1500 BC, which is when it’s thought the events of the Homeric epics Iliad & Odyssey “happened.” It’s very primitive but quite dramatic, high up on a mountain & surrounded by walls built of huge stones. When unearthed it was still full of gold masks & bronze weapons (now in the Athens Archaeological Museum), despite centuries of … of course, pillaging.
It was a beautiful day to be there, very sunny & hot but with a nice breeze. Afterwards we went to Epidaurus, site of the worship of Apollo’s son Asclepius the healing guy, folks came here from all over to get cured & to take in the theatrical performances.
We skipped the rubble at the temple area, but went to the theater, which is the best-preserved from ancient Greece and has perfect acoustics so that you can hear everything on the “stage” from even the very top row. No microphones needed, even though it’s open-air, no top to hold the sound in, can even hear a coin dropped. (Good place for the commercial “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?”) It’s preserved because the Romans respected the acoustics & decided not to turn it into a place for animal shows & other Roman please-the-crowds tomfoolery. As we got there a group of French were singing the Marseilles, we spoke a few words, I sang a bit, then a bunch of Germans showed up who took all the fun out by quoting at great Teutonic length from books they brought for the purpose. Aeschylus translated into German or some crazy thing. Nevertheless a fabulous experience to see this theater.
Got “home,” wandered about the Plaka a bit more for final touristy souvenirs, ate dinner & decided to just go to bed & pack in the morning, get up at 2 instead of 2:30. Dinner in Athens is like in Spain, you don’t start it till 9 or 10, so it was about midnight when we fell into bed. In the morning, packed up & took a hair-raising ride to the airport – the cabbie took advantage of the empty streets to go 160-170 kmph, which translates to about 100 mph. Got shut down by a Porsche though.
I’m writing this at airports & on the plane, will close down now before the battery shuts ME down.
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