Athens Part 1

I'm going to have to use the same method for Athens as I did for Ephesus because there are just so many pictures, I think. When we began looking into cruises through Greece, I was surprised that the majority of them did not stop in Athens. There was a special sailing, though, with Royal Caribbean that added this port on an extra day, and it aligned with our plan of cruising in the middle. Now I understand why many ships don't stop. First, Athens is a 40 minute drive from the port of Piraeus, which is just a commercial port in a not touristy area. Secondly, Athens is insanely crowded in July. I imagine it's very crowded at other times of the year as well. Lastly, and this is more current events oriented, we were given a little safety speech about street demonstrations and how the might impact excursions or independent ability to get to and from Athens.

Nevertheless, I'm so glad we went. It was amazing to see and be in this place.

Most of the ports have a church very nearby with a chapel that is dedicated to St Nicola (not to be confused with Santa Claus), who is the patron saint of sailors. These chapels are usually white, and sometimes have a blue roof.





Like London, Piraeus had these little gated parks.


This is a bitter orange tree. Our guide pointed out for us that the main uses for these oranges are to make marmalade, and to throw them at police during street demonstrations.


And this is a pistachio tree. It's a little blurry because we were on a bus. but you might be able to make out small clusters of nuts.



Between Piraeus and Athens is this other bay. It seemed more touristy and had beaches. Unfortunately, we were on a bus and couldn't go here.


That's ok, though, because we got to go here. This is a marble staircase that was covered in water to make it extra exciting. It leads up to the acropolis. We learned that "acropolis" just means "the highest point in a city" so there are actually hundreds of them throughout Greece.


This is the front of the Odeon theater. They still do productions here today.


And this was taken a little later in the day, but this is the 'inside' of it.



We walked across more slippery stuff, and then had to wait here for our guide to get our group tickets. We waited for about 15 minutes for this to happen and were a little annoyed. Then later, we saw the line of individuals buying tickets, and it was at least an hour wait. Then we felt immature and bratty.


This is the temple of Athena-Nike. Nike is victory, and it celebrate how Athena granted victory to Athens in a war. To make sure that she would not fly to other cities and help them as well, the myth goes that they cut off her wings.


When we signed up for this tour, we were told to wear good walking shoes because we had to climb steep, slippery steps. These are what our guide was wearing.


Very similar to how there were cats everywhere in Ephesus, there were dogs around the acropolis. Instead of euthanizing stray dogs, the city gets them vaccinated and send them up here. The guards and employees care for them, and at night they act as watchdogs. This is at least the story we were told.



The view up the hill.


The view out from the hill.


I don't know if you can see it really, but there is a walkway between the pillars leading up to the top. This was a narrow gate, designed to make people slow down and contemplate what they were entering. I think to some degree it is lost on people today, because the narrower gap makes people look more closely at the ground to make sure they don't lose their footing.


I have a few pictures that are an example of the restoration work. This is the other side of Athena-Nike's temple. Most of the wall is still made of the original marble. However, they had to patch it in places to support the structure, but marble doesn't get yellowed like that until its been exposed to weather for hundreds of years. So you can see the new marble patches.


Walking through the narrow entrance.


Our first glimpse of the Parthenon.


It loses a little with the scaffolding.





I really appreciate it when someone takes a picture for us, but sometimes I want to say "I'm with Dane all the time, and while it's nice to have a picture of us, please include Greece in it."


The way the marble is crumbling looks really cool. It's probably too hard to see the fine lines and veins of color in this, but it's there.


There's something geometrically impressive about the way the Parthenon is built. There are no straight lines, and the columns are slightly hourglass shaped and lean in to the center. A computerized model showed that if the columns continued upward, it would eventually make a pyramid.


As far as we can tell, they are using these pieces of marble in the restoration process. Again, you can see the contrast of the old and new.


This patchwork was the most amazing to me. They have filled in the missing portions of the columns.


Can you see the 'seams' between the drums of marble hat make uh the columns? There is no binding agent used between them. Rather, there is a hole bored through each one and wooden dowels laced through them to hold it steady.


The reason that I m in all the pictures is that Dane was sure I was going to wipe out up here. Between how slick the marble is and how uneven the ground is (sometimes there was a rock jutting 2 feet up out of it in the middle of a path), the odds were good. I'm happy to report, never, that I did not fall once. This is the other side; the first photos were of one frieze on one end, and this is the opposite. We actually got to see the original friezes because they are in the British museum in London. It hadn't occurred to me then that the British had basically stolen them to put in their museum, and Athens is trying to get them back. Lastly, see my hair? I'm not whipping my head around, it was just really windy up there.


I'll wrap up this post with a few final pictures of the Parthenon. There was a lot more to see, and I will post the rest of the pictures in part 2!








- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad