2/2/09 You're Up: Athens II

I slept really well last night, although the guy that was in the next bed over had horrible breath and snored and was facing me so I had to turn and face the wall. Other than that, no complains. I woke up at 8 and after taking a cold shower, went downstairs and had some tea and toast with butter and Nutella.

I walked up to the Acropolis and sure enough, I didn’t need a ticket to get in. I just had to show my ID and they let me go, saving me 12 Euros. The first think you see in the huge amphitheater build in the 100s by the Romans on the right. They still use it (with new seating).

Next you come to the gates which are mostly covered with scaffolding. This would be a reoccurring theme. To the right of them is the Temple of Athena Nike, which we learned about in Art History. Completely covered in scaffolding and you couldn’t get near it. Huge bummer.

I walked through the gates and on the right was the Parthenon. It’s huge.

I always wanted to someday walk around it and see what it was really like. Unfortunately you couldn’t actually walk through the building, being under construction. I might as well get my rant out of the way now. They are doing a lot of work on the place, and on the Parthenon they are adding new material to weakened places and areas to fill it out. I completely 100% object to this. I feel it cheapens the whole thing. You are looking at a fake (ok so like 10%) but still. You can tell where they fixed it, which I suppose is nice, but it just ruins the whole structure. It’s not authentic anymore. I’m all about preservation, but reconstruction doesn’t work. On the Erechtheum they removed the statues holding it up and replaced them with fakes. They’re doing the same with the Parthenon relief. I’d rather have them crumble than see a fake and have the real ones in a museum. Museum pieces are out of context and lose so much by not actually being in their location. What makes the Acropolis buildings so cool is their age, that they’re over 2,000 years old and amazing, even for now. I’d rather see the weathering of 2,000 years than fakes. I can see fakes anywhere.



Okay, I’m done for now, although I wish I could run for some sort of Preservation Czar role and be in charge of saving all these buildings. But I think I’m probably in the minority on this one.

That said, the Parthenon was incredible. Even though there was scaffolding and cranes and fakeness, it still wow just a ‘wow.’

Unfortunately my rechargeable batteries gave out about then so I walked down the hill to the hostel and back up to get new batteries. I got to spend some quality time up there, a couple hours, looking around at all the buildings. The Erechtheum wasn't being worked on much so you could get much more of a feel for it.



I just sat down on the wall and hung out. The weather was incredible, about 60 (especially for a day with record snowfall in London) so I dropped my coat off when I went to get the batteries and just wore a long sleeved v-neck and a t-shirt.

After spending a lot of time up there I decided with the school groups coming through I’d leave for a while. I wandered slowly down the Acropolis Hill, stopping at historic sites on the way, including ancient caves. The coolest thing was at the bottom, the Theater of Dionysus. It’s relatively well intact and you can go sit down on the ancient (it’s amazing that ancient here isn’t a phrase but a time period) seats. They have big carved marble seats in the front row where the priests sat to watch the performances. Here many of the Greek tragedies were performed for the first time. I was really impressed with it.




Since I was in the area, I went to the New Acropolis Museum, which they’ve been making a big deal about. I was excited to see the rest of the Parthenon statues and relief that the British Museum didn’t have. Unfortunately, they just shut it down again in preparation for its complete opening. I was pretty bummed, I guess it gives me reason to come back.

Then I decided to go to Agora, the old city center and marketplace for Athens. Socrates and Aristotle and Plato used to roam these parts. Now it’s almost all just small ruins and outlines of buildings. The best preserved, and rather impressive Temple of Hephaestus. The frieze is still intact, and the building looks nearly perfect. I don’t know how it managed to stay so nice. It was used as a museum as recently as the 1930s.

I walked though the Agora Museum in the completely reconstructed Stoa of Attalo and looked at some statues and artifacts from the Agora. Not the best, but it was ok.

I walked across the street to the Roman Forum and Temple of the Winds. I was the only person in it other than a worker and a family of dogs. It was really nice to be all alone there, I could really envision the place better. And it was like having history all to myself.



I walked back up to the Acropolis and sat around, mostly to rest after running around all day. It was a lot quieter now than when I was there before, and the sun was at a different angle and made it nice to just sit around and look at the ruins.

They kicked me out around 2:30 so I went to Filopappos Hill and the first site I saw was the Prison of Socrates where he was put to death. Supposedly. There’s apparently some debate over where that was the actual place or not to the point that on the sign it’s named in quotes. But it was still cool.

I walked up to the top of the hill where there was another 2,000 year-old ruin that you can see around the city. This was one of the best views of the Acropolis I saw, so good that this is where a shell was fired from and hit the Parthenon that put it into ruins in the 17th century. The hill went out for a ways toward the water. It was really gorgeous.

On my way down from the hill I stopped of at Pnyx, which is literally the birthplace of democray. The first congress was held here ever. It was another rather ruined area, but somehow this placed clicked with me, maybe because I could see the orators talking to the masses from here somehow.

I walked back through Plaka and stopped at a store and bought a messenger bag. It was listed for 25 Euros but I got it down to 22. I was really happy with myself. I like the bag, it’s not too fancy/pursey and it seems like it’ll last. It made carry things around a lot easier.

I decided to walk down to the National Archeological Museum and I stopped and got a cheese spinach pie (sort of a letdown, too cold).

The museum was incredible. They had things from 3,000 years old, including basically half of my art history book. The Kouri were a huge part of my class and they had the exact ones from my book. I was exited. We spent weeks learning about the evolution of Kouri, and they even had the one that bridged the gap to the Classical style.

The displays were set up in chronological order and it was very interesting to see the changes as time went on. It was among the best museums I’ve been to. I got back to the front and tried to go back in the other way and the guy asked for my ticket. I didn’t buy one, so I just left. I basically stole 7 Euros from the museum. Whoops.

It was getting dark and I was beat to so I went back to the hostel and rested for a little. I managed to steal some wifi from my room so I did some research and I think I’m going to take a ferry ride to Aegina tomorrow, I’m excited.

I went out to dinner, I had the place all picked out. I got stuffed tomatoes (one of the best things I’ve ever ate) fried feta, pita (Coney Island’s is better), bread with some sort of butter/oil on it that was great, and a Nescafe, which I read I had to have in Greece, but was just like a chocolate coffee. I’m for chocolate, not so much the coffee. But in all, it was one of the best meals of my life.

I went down the street to a café I’d been eying and ordered baklava with ice cream. Way overpriced and not as good as the night before. But it was probably the greatest view I’ll ever had at a restaurant. I sat outside directly across from the Agora looking up at the Acropolis light up. It was worth the price just for that.

I came back and firmly decided I’m going to Aegina. I’m getting up at 7:30 and going to do some last minute Athens stuff before I get down to the ferry. I figure I’ll spend about two hours down there before coming back for my 10 pm flight.

Don’t know if I’ll get to update until I’m back in London. We’ll see.

Just heard back from Brian at RedEye, said he might publish my column tomorrow. Crazy. That'd be really exciting if he did, but how weird would that be if I it happened while I was in the Mediterranean.