Day 23 - Athens

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Today we have a guided walking tour of Athens and we are to meet at the rail station some 10 mins from the hotel. We met there with Hermes, like the god, our tour guide and a nice young fella he was. We finally set out after waiting for a couple of yanks who were late and went to see the changing of the guard in front of the tomb of the unknown soldier and the government buildings. This was a very strange sight with the soldiers wearing the traditional uniform and doing the strangest march you have ever seen. Leaving there is was off past the national gardens to the temple of Zeus, this is an amazing sight and was started to be built in 600bc and was not finished until Hadrian’s time in 200ad, then the Germans came along in 280ad roughly and destroyed it, go figure. It is was huge some 130m long and about 40 wide and there are on 6-7 columns and part of the top rail left, it must have been a sight. Then it was off the Acropolis, not much to say about this except WOW what a sight. It has been there since 600bc and the walls from circa 2000bc and as with many ancient structures is constantly being worked on to preserve them. None the less this is a must see. The Acropolis was standing pretty much intact until about 1680ad when the Venetian’s were attacking Athens along with lots of other places, the Venetian general had cannons and could not get the right elevation to hit the acropolis so decided to move a couple to the top of a close by hill, he got lucky and lobbed a cannon ball right onto the top, that would have been ok except the Turks, who ran Athens at the time was using the Parthenon as an arsenal and this one cannon ball blew the thing to pieces. It turns out the Turks won that war and the Parthenon was left partly destroyed until the 1835 when Greek won its independence again. Unfortunately all and sundry looted the bloody place for the marble statues and friezes, the poms, the Italians and French took most of it. So far the Italians have returned the stuff they stole but the poms and the French have refused to do so, typical eh. After a long day it was dinner time in another Taverna and off to bed. By the way a visit to the Acropolis Museum is well worth it as much of what was saved from the Acropolis is in that museum.

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