Wednesday, April 13. We got up after a crappy night of sleep which, considering that in Eastern time it was from 4 PM until 1 AM 24 hours after we arrived, was predictable and expected. After breakfast, we met our guide who walked us over to the Acropolis and showed us around.
I probably haven't made this clear, but I came into this trip knowing very little beyond the logistics that I'd arranged. I have a basic knowledge of Ancient Greek history, like why Athens is named Athens, but once you start throwing dates around, like understanding the apparently very important difference between what was going on in 480 B.C. versus 450 B.C., I would not have retained it without weeks of study. So I can't tell you any of it. What I can tell you is that the Acropolis and especially the Parthenon are truly very cool and it is not mysterious why people want to visit. We came in past a Roman amphitheater, which is still in use for mostly music performances of all sorts (opera? yes, Elton John? yes, Megadeath? maybe not) and climbed a surprisingly gradual hill.
Before I go on, I think "climbed" is a really awkward word and there needs to be something like "clumb" to be the past tense of climb.
As we clumb, the guide explained what all the things were that we were passing and passing through. As we approached the top, she explained that at one point (don't ask me exactly when) the entire city of Athens was on the top of the hill in a fortress, hence the name Acropolos, literally the city at the top. Eventually we reached the gate to the Acropolis, which is properly called the Propylaea. It's actually more of a gateway, because there are five gates for multiple types of entrants, from the rich and powerful to the animals heading toward their sacrificial end.
Once you come through the gate, there's the Parthenon in front of you. If, like me, you've seen lost of pictures but never really thought about the structure that much, you may be taken aback by the size of the thing. It's huge and for me at least, a bit breathtaking. I am not going to go into architectural detail because I don't know any, but it's a cool and impressive thing. And the history is complex, because the area was ruled by Turks, Venetians, Turks again and then the Catholics, each of whom had their own uses for the site.
We heard about all of the uses the Parthenon had over the years and what's become of the original frieze- as in, some of it is intact and exhibited in the Acropolis Museum and a lot of it was purloined with questionable legitimacy by Lord Elgin, who took way more than he was authorized to take (by the ruling Turks) and eventually sold them to the British Museum which will never, ever, ever give them back, stolen and inappropriately displayed or not. Arrogant fucks.
The other thing up top is called the Erechtheion (spelled like it sounds), which features 6 incredibly beautiful (replicas of) statues as columns called caryatids. Lord Elgin carted off one of them, which is in the British Museum, but the other 5 are in the Acropolis Museum.
Thanks to the Turks thoughtfully storing all of their gunpowder supply on the site, when the storeroom was hit by a Venetian cannonball it all exploded and collapsed large parts of the Parthenon and gods know what else. Therefore, much of the ground is covered with big blocks of marble that are in the process of slowly being identified and added back into the structure. Where parts are missing they have filled in with marble from the same quarry used back in the day to build everything.
On the way down we stopped to see the theater of Dionysus, which was the original Greek theater that could hold most of the population for performances. Very understated an beautiful, as opposed to the Roman theater, which was grand.
After a brief rest, we went to the Acropolis museum, which was full of many original statues and artifacts found on the site, as well as the five remaining caryatids, which have been cleaned very carefully and are strikingly beautiful. On the top floor, the remaining pieces of the frieze are displayed above on walls the same length as the Parthenon, along replicas of those that were stolen. There were other reliefs that wrapped around the site, many of which were severely damaged by the Church, which objected to anything displaying the Greek gods. It's a fantastic museum and it's built on top of the ruins of a settlement they found when they were excavating the site, which you can now view through the floor of the museum and later can get a closer look.
This was, unsurprisingly, exhausting and along the way we lost a lens cap, so after resting in the hotel for a while, we found a camera shop where we could buy a replacement and walked down to the corner to get a taxi.
One thing with taxis in this part of Athens, they do not want to enter the Plaka, because it can take 20 minutes to get out after going a half block in, which was where the hotel was. There's a massive boulevard at the corner, and when we got a cab he refused to take us because we were going in the other direction and it's apparently next to impossible to turn around, so we crossed the street, got to the shop and got our replacement.
Then dinner time. We did not have plans, so we started strolling around the Plaka. Eventually, we found ourselves in an area where we had walked yesterday, near the Roman Agora. There was a taverna on the corner so in we went.
It was not totally expected that as we ate our dinner at the taverna that we'd be singing along to Hava Nagila at any point, and yet there we were. The people at the next table were Israeli, but they didn't request it from the duo that played without a break for the hour and half we were there, so it must have been the people behind me who were heavily involved in the music at all times.
Then we walked back to the room, bring the day's total walking to 7.2 miles, according to my phone. I guess we collapsed when we got back. I don't really remember.
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