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Published: October 12th 2005
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Had to get up at some ungodly hour to do a city tour. We went to the Acropolis first (which literally means the highest point) where we had a local guide. She explained that the Pantheon was naturally fortified by its location. It was built in the 5th century BC. It took 9 years to build, which they did using marble blocks from the mountain 45km away, it would have been a mammoth task!
They have been restoring it for the past 500 years. In the restoring process many years ago they made a terrible mistake and instead of using steel in between the marble slabs which form the pillars as the original builders had done, they decided to use iron, which is turn ruined the marble surface and they had to start the restoration process again.
The Acropolis used to be the highest point in the city at 600m high, but you can clearly see another hill from there now which is 900m high. Back when the Pantheon was built the other hill was outside the Ancient Greece town limits.
It is sad that there are no original statues in the Acropolis now. The major problem they
face is the deterioration of them due to the high levels of pollution. Some replicas are now in place but the majority of the statues are in the British Museum, England and they are referred to as ‘Elgin Marbles’. They were stolen by Lord Elgin when Greece was occupied and the Greeks have been trying to get them back for the past 25 years without success.
Both Temples that are on the Acropolis are dedicated to the Goddess Athena - Goddess of War, but the main temple was build to worship her for being a virgin - said to be the only virgin in Ancient Greece (hehe!!) It is said her father Zeus (The father of all Gods) had a massive headache and asked his brother to cut his head open with an axe, when he did Athena was ‘born’ from his head, wearing full battle gear and this is why they believe she was a virgin. Athens was named after her.
From there we went and saw where the first modern Olympics were held in 1896 in the Old Olympic Stadium.
We then did some shopping and then to dinner at a restaurant before going to
get tickets for the ferry and this is where all the problems started…. Our tour manager took ages getting the tickets from the ferry office which made us all think that there were problems from the beginning. We finally boarded the ferry but the reception was not exactly warm. They held us in the reception for ages. We finally got to our rooms which were ok, but Stacey and Elisa weren’t so lucky, there was stuff actually growing on the floor of there shower and many of the rooms just weren’t clean…
One of the guys got kicked out of his room 3 times throughout the night and the longer the night wore on the more it became obvious that this was more like a refugee boat than a ‘2 day cruise’ as advertised…. There were people lying all throughout the stairwells and there were so many of them that there were some places you could hardly walk through. On the top deck people were camped everywhere, some even pitched tends. There were dogs kennels on top with dogs in them and shit everywhere, they filled the pool up during daylight hours and the ‘refugees’ bathed in it… There
was even one woman in the corridor that was cooking rice on a little gas burner!!! It was just not cool at all and all of us were unamused. I can’t even believe they are allowed to sell deck space like that, I’m sure that has to breach a whole host of safety regulations…
Didn’t get out of bed the next day till 11am, didn’t see the point, was trying to avoid having to spend any time awake on this ‘cruise’. Missed breakfast and then couldn’t get any other breakfast food until the other restaurant opened.
Gypsy kids kept trying to break into everyone’s rooms through the night. The boat would only issue one key per shared room which was a pain in the butt, and ment that if one person wanted to go to bed they had to leave the door open for the other person to get in.
Everything about this boat was ordinary including the food and drinks were expensive.
I ended up getting Elisa to dye my hair for me to fill in some time, it was in Greek so Art had to translate the instructions… It was supposed to be medium
Restored section of temple
They have to ensure that you can differentiate between the original work and the restoration works brown or so but apparently Greek hair dyes don’t agree with my hair and it partially bleached it and made it like a caramel colour!! Hehe!!
We were all counting the hours till we were off the refugee boat…
Our tour manager still maintains that this was the correct boat but we think not…
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Refugee
non-member comment
Not a Refugee Boat
Dear Lisa, I am a refugee and I take great offence to you labelling the Greece-Italy ferry you went on a refugee boat. Let me tell you this -- that boat is below refugee status! Do you see Gypsy kids breaking into rooms on refugee boats? No, but you do on the afformentioned ferry. Do you see people cooking rice outside your rooms on refugee boats? No, but you do on the afformentioned ferry(but that is because we can't afford rice). So from now on please refrain from calling it a refugee boat. Instead please call it "Ross's dingy of deception." Regards, Refugee.