Trips

Sunday, 9/27 - Athens

            This morning we visited the New Acropolis Museum.  At the entrance we walked on plexiglas that allowed us to see the ruins below the museum building.  Many of the statues remained safely buried for 24 centuries and were dug up and taken off to museums around the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The Greek government has now taken over the restoration of the Acropolis area and built this wonderful museum, which is spacious and built to withstand a 9.5 earthquake.

        The most incredible exhibits are of the statues and friezes from the Parthenon and the Temple of Athena.  The buildings on top of the Acropolis have suffered disastrous fire, destruction by the Christians, who tried to wipe out paganism making the temple into a church and then a mosque, direct hits by the bombs of the Persians, after which the Athenians buried many statues to protect them, the pilferage and stealing by Lord Elgin who carried off to London much of the remaining statues and marble work on the Parthenon. 

 

New Acropolis Museum

 

New Acropolis Museum - note the plexiglas"sidewalk" in the foreground

Ruins beneath the Museum as seen through plexiglas

 
        We had a fun Greek lunch in an upstairs restaurant in the Plaka area.  The waiter brought out a tray of 12 foods and each table of four people chose eight of the dishes to share as a meal.   We had meatballs, grape leaves with rice, spinach, spinach pie, moussaka, fried eggplant, fried calamari and two sauces with bread and drinks.  It was the best Greek food we have had!

 

 

           We wandered on our own in the afternoon.  We did some shopping in the pedestrian street - I got a souvenir spoon for my collection and some postcards.  We looked at St. Catherine’s Orthodox Church and then went across to take pictures of Hadrian’s Arch (he seemed to need an elaborate arch to enter a city - there was also one in Ephesus) and the scant remains of the Temple of Olympian Zeus. 

 

Hadrian's Arch

 

Temple of Olympian Zeus

            It was a pleasant day and the threatening morning clouds disappeared by noon.  We were smart and went back to the hotel to rest before dinner but there is much more of Athens to see.

            We walked back to the Plaka for our farewell dinner.  We had starters, salad, pot roast with potatoes and gravy and honey semolina cake with great chocolate ice cream for dessert.  The guitar and bouzouki music was nice and it was quite pleasant.  Walking back, George took us down the escalator to the Akropoli metro station.  It is marble and granite with copies of antiquities in showcases and nice music playing.  Quite unlike the Phila. subway!  We said our goodbyes to the group and were happy to go to sleep.

 

Monday, 9/28 - Athens on our own

            We got up and had breakfast at our leisure and then packed and left our suitcases at reception.  We went off for a walking tour on our own and started by climbing Philopappos Hill, also called the Hill of the Muses.  Mousaios was a poet who lived on the hill and was buried there.  From the top at the Philopappos Hill, at the Philopappos Monument, we had a wonderful 360° view of Athens and looked straight across to the top of the Acropolis and down to the sea and the Olympic venues.

Map of Philopappos Hill

Prison of Socrates on Philopappos Hill

 

Philopappos Monument

 

View looking toward Piraeus from Philopappos Hill

Looking to the NE and the New Acropolis Museum from the top of Philopappos Hill

 

Looking toward Piraeus from Philopappos Hill - two of the 2004 Olympic stadiums are in the picture (far left and far right)

Acropolis from Philopappos Hill

Parthenon from Philopappos Hill

 

          We walked back down and wound our way around the west and north sides of the Acropolis taking pictures of old churches and more ancient ruins - a mosaic floor of a Roman House, a stoa, the Ancient Agora, the Roman Stoa of Attalos, etc.  We made our way to the Athens Flea Market in the Monastiriki area.  It was a combination of used items for sale, fire sale items, and shops for locals.  We passed the ruins of Hadrian’s Library, an old mosque, and the Athens Cathedral, which was being renovated.  We ate lunch at a taverna on the square of the cathedral and had a nice piece of spinach pie and eggplant salad that was yogurt and chopped eggplant and was good on our bread.

 

Observatory and Church of Saint Marina on the Hill of the Nymphs

 

 

Fruit seller at the Athens Flea Market

Church of the Archbishop of Athens and all of Greece

Greek Orthodox priest

 

Old meets new - Athens subway tunnel passing through at the north end of the Ancient Agora

 

         We walked over to the parliament building and looked at the Evzone guards at the guardhouses.  The guards are dressed in traditional Greek uniform - tights, skirts, and pompom shoes.

 

Greek Parliament building

Famous Evzone guards outside the Parliament building

 

        Walking back to our hotel, we passed places where ruins have been found, excavated, and covered with plexiglas so you can look down on them as you walk along. Construction in Athens is a very slow process because nearly everywhere they dig, they uncover more ruins and antiquities.

Excavation of a Roman Bath along Amalias Street, a main thoroughfare

 

        We walked back to the Divani Palace Acropolis Hotel and took a cab to our next hotel, the Metropolitan, down nearer the port. We checked in, briefly met the Insight Tour representative, and settled into our room.  Gale washed clothes and Marge reorganized papers and recharged batteries.

        We walked two blocks to Arsenis restaurant for a tasty dinner of Greek salad, moussaka (potato an the bottom, eggplant, ground meat, and a white sauce with egg on top then baked), baklava and Mythos beer.  We are glad there is a nice place to eat nearby.

Tuesday, 9/29 - Athens on our own

            The breakfast buffet at the Metropolitan Hotel is the same as we have seen for the last 30 days - cold scrambled eggs, soggy waffles/pancakes/French toast, same funny cereals, fruit, bread, cheese and cold meat - including uncooked cold bacon.  We are thinking that the Greeks don’t eat hot breakfasts.

            On the way back up to our room, Marge got smacked in the head with a closing elevator door.   She got a giant, blue goose egg on her temple.  We got out my ice bag, got ice from the bar, and kept her still all day.  Hopefully, it will be okay for touring tomorrow.

            I wandered around the neighborhood and checked out the “giant” supermarket (that was fun), tried to get my hair cut (she was booked solid today) - a customer helped interpret for me, went into a pharmacy, showed my medicine prescription to the pharmacist and got more blood pressure pills without any questions asked and it was cheap - 40 pills for 2.5 Euros (about $3).  I stopped at a bakery for bread and donuts and the veggie market for a banana, a nectarine, and green grapes.  We ate lunch in the room for 2.2 Euros.  Room service would have been a minimum of 29 Euros!  I also did another load of wash in our sink.

            We read the rest of the afternoon and met our Insight Tour group for orientation at 7:30 followed by the buffet dinner here at the hotel.  There are 25 people on this tour from the US, England, and Australia.  I don’t think there will be much bonding in this group - it is a short tour.

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