Athens - WOW

The Athens part of the trip was going to be the part that we wanted  to spend just a couple of days in because of the city's reputation as a dirty, hot place.  It's hot, for sure, but not as hot as a good hot day in Australia.  We both think the sun has a real bite in Oz, but here, it's a warm, unrelenting heat.  No cool changes, no blows to cool things off.  And yeah, it is dirty, but that's not all there is to this place.

  We've been here for about five days now, waiting to get onto a ferry to head down to Ikarea.  The earliest one is Monday so tomorrow night we climb aboard at 9.30 PM for a long eight hour voyage across a dark, placid sea.  But I am getting way ahead of myself here.  I have to talk about Athens and show you some photos.  This is an incredible place.  The history redeems everything else....the grimy streets and the tattooed buildings...I tell you, if there weren't people rebuilding the Acropolis every day, that venerated building would be festooned with graffiti.  There's nothing sacred in or on... any ancient wall, old wall or new wall.  It seems that any surface is open season.

This old house is probably a couple of hundred years old by the look of it.

On our first exploration of our area (we are in the city, to the north side of the Acropolis area) we came across a square with a woman making loud announcements over a loud speaker in Greek, naturally, (sorry) with police lurking around.  We saw the cause of the excitement shortly after when this procession came marching up the road to meet under all the flags.  Apparently they were taxi drivers, on strike because the government wants to make their profession open to operators other than their own club (sort of).  The idea is to make the service available to independent operators as in any other city in the world.  The cabbies will have none of it.  Five days on they are still out and the streets are relatively quiet.

Now for the Acropolis!

No, not a crop of this....the ACROPOLIS... but first you have to walk up the sides of the plateau, coming up with views of Athens through the trees.  At last, you reach a huge impressive building that takes you  through to 'gloriia'!

No, that aint it either...that's the  Erechtheion with the Caryatids holding the roof up.  They're actually made of plaster, not the real thing.  The figures themselves are being restored in the Acropolis Museum.  Now for the main event:

When we saw this it was such a powerful experience, of walking through the Propylaia  Gate which is the original approach to the Acropolis and seeing this incredible building.  I have cheated a little bit because the first sight you see is the other end, which is covered by scaffolding.  When you walk around it though, the area itself is arresting because you are on a plateau that has incredible views all around it at Athens city within the circling hills and out to the ocean.

We were early ...  had got to the ticket office just on 8 a.m. to beat the crowds, and that was a good plan as it turned out.  After only half an hour of being there the mobs ascended.  We got off the plateau and headed down....to see the theatre, which was closed for preparations for a concert and then on to the Acropolis Museum.

We weren't allowed to take any photos inside, which was a shame.  The place is full of the sculpture taken from the Acropolis and the buildings on it.  The Elgin Marbles are spectacularly missing though and the Brits just have to give them back or be an international pariah forever.

After the Museum (wonderful modern building) we walked to the nearby ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which was the  largest temple of the Greek world.  It took 700 years to complete, begun by a tyrant whose name escapes me now, but not completed due to his extreme unpopularity and subsequent death....over 700 years I guess that's  fair enough!  Finished at last by Hadrian.  

The size of the columns that are left is an indication of just how huge this place was.  The columns are17 meters high and 1.7 meters across the base.  As you can see most of the temple is not there, the stone removed over the thousands of years by people using the stone for other projects.  The last column that fell over, shown, had fallen in a storm during the early 19th century.  Some storm!

After all this incredibility, we kept walking though the hot day over to the ancient Agora, which is where the original living city was, at the foot of the Acropolis.  It is there that the original idea of having popular elections and representations of all the people through ballots happened - the first democracy, and Socrates sat extolling his philosophies to his students.  This place is a slope, littered with ruins and levels of ancient houses. with Socrates bath somewhere amongst the stones.

The Agora

More to come of Athens....there's still a lot to tell you.   Love to you all.