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Published: September 19th 2014
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Every travel story we read about Athens mentioned the searing heat on the Acropolis and warned not to go in the hottest month of August. But we’d booked our Greek tour for August and said pffft to searing heat – we’ve lived in Darwin, holidayed In Singapore and Bangkok – what could be hotter than that?
Well, 42 degrees in Athens is pretty close I can tell you. Eye-dryingly, marble-blindingly, airlessly hot. Thank goodness our hotel, boutique as it was, had a Jacuzzi on the roof – although lying in it was like being lightly poached.
Even the usual travel trick of getting out as early in the morning as possible gives little respite. The heat is there from sun-up, which is more than the shopkeepers who don’t rouse till around 10am, by which time your tongue is hanging out for an ouzo on ice.
When the shops are all roller-doored and shuttered the graffiti which disfigures this city is even more evident. Sometimes it’s hard to work out what’s real graffiti and what is an attempt to deter graffiti by painting shop doors, trains or buildings with graffiti like images. Whatever,
the look is not a good one and Plaka, the central tourist area east of the Acropolis resembles in parts an eastern block war zone.
It’s not so noticeable when all the tourist shops full of scarves, sandals, shonky jewellery and general tat are spilling out onto the cobbles lanes, or if you keep to the main tourist trailways. But early (anything before 9am) in the morning there is an air of underlying despondency and dissatisfaction in the city.
Other than this, the Greeks we met in general seem to have accepted ‘the situation’ (their reference to the GFC) as something imposed on them by the rest of Europe and are stoically waiting it out till they can return to their rightful natural lifestyles of working as little as possible while being full-time philosophers.
Athens is an easy central city to walk around - the Acropolis is pretty hard to miss as landmarks go. If you think you’re getting lost in the maze of narrow streets just go up the nearest steps and it’s bound to pop into view, glowing like a rocky beacon. Once you wander
away from Plaka though, it’s just another city, albeit low rise as nothing can be built higher than the sacred rock.
Our ten day tour included a visit to the Acropolis so on the day before we visited the new Acropolis Museum, opened in 2009, which is simply stunning and gives you all the background you’re likely to need to appreciate the rock and what’s on it. Big signs at the entry say no photos but ignore them, like everyone else.
The museum’s built over an archaeological site - in fact it seems to us that the whole of Greece is an archaeological site. One of the few really interesting things our tour guide told us was that farmers dread earthquakes as they can expose previously covered remains of past civilizations which they are then not allowed to touch, so they lose valuable productive land – which they don’t have much of to begin with (Greece is 70% mountains).
The fabulous thing they’ve done with the Acropolis Museum is to leave the excavations insitu, build the museum over them and use glass floor panels so you can view them from above.
A definite must to know what you’re looking at when you climb the rock along with a trillion other tourists who will hog the info boards and clutter up the pediments taking idiotic photos of themselves trying to hold up the Parthenon. (why do they DO that??)
Never having thought we’d be tour people, I’ve now decided it’s actually better to be in a tour party when visiting hotspots such as the Acropolis. No matter how early you get up and get to a site independently, there will be a tour bus there before you. You’ll be jostled, pushed, walked in front of (always by a man with a red backpack while you’re taking a photo) so if you can’t beat ‘em you may as well join ‘em.
Then there is that glorious sense of self satisfaction when you swan past the queue with your tour guide.
Another advantage of coach tours is the comparative ease of getting to distant places while both of you enjoy the views, which in Greece are plentiful. In 1800 km we covered most of the Peloponnese and north to Kalambaka on roads and mountain passes
that make Coromandel roads look average.
But there the advantages come to a grinding halt.
We’ve learnt to take anything a tour guide says with a large bucket of salt. Turkey was the cradle of civilization according to our Turkish guide, Greece was the cradle of civilization according to our Greek guide, who was English but nevertheless completely biased towards all thinks Greek. Both were surprisingly defensive about the countries they were introducing us to.
Karen the ex-pom (she dreaded having a bus-full of Brits) was an ageing hippy with a long, once-blond plait and a chip on her shoulder on behalf of the Greek nation. She called herself a nomad, had lived in Greece for years, smoked like a train, laughed like a drain and had no intention of interfering with our holiday by bothering us with facts and Information.
After experiencing Alp the non-religious, pro-Muslim classics scholar with commitment issues in Turkey, our guide in Greece was at the other end of the tour director spectrum.
She was brilliant at getting us all on the bus early in the morning (thankfully we avoided
being roasted on the Acropolis) and sorting out hotel glitches – obviously becoming experienced in that department with the state of Greek hotels. At one the lifts weren’t working, another had no water when we arrived after a particularly sweaty day and at the last hotel on the road the air conditioning had gone out in protest at the heat and she organised another hotel in a very small town and had us all there within half an hour.
Just don’t expect to know anything about any of the towns you’re driving through other than it’s full of beautiful Greek people who are so hard working, always pay their taxes and only eat fresh, healthy food. The waistlines of both men and women in Greece were in obvious contrast to that last ‘fact’.
Rhys kept himself busy picking holes in her commentary, which was pretty threadbare to begin with. Karen was ok on myths and anecdotes and Hi De Hi patter, but if you wanted to know historic, geographic or geological information you needed an appropriate guide book…which she expressed disdain for as obviously those who’d read any Greek guide book would easily know
more than her.
Fortunately the tour company uses local specialist guides at significant sites and they were all knowledgeable and interesting. So by the end of the tour our heads were so full of mythology, BC’s AD’s gods, heroes, battles, myths and misses Rhys kept on forgetting my name.
As well as untold layers of civilization, mainland Greece is mountainous, often barren and clearly depressed with unfinished buildings, uncollected rubbish and unkempt properties. Many of the lunch stops were family run taverns which had room for several hundred diners but we were the only customers. Mind you – that was one of the reasons we chose to tour Greece – to in some small way support their economy.
I ate my fair share of baklava,
zucchini flowers and stuffed tomatoes while Rhys discovered he loved Greek yoghurt and honey.
We soaked up the history, climbed acropoli (there’s lots of them), cruised the Saronic Gulf Islands, clambered around crumbling theatres, discovered abandoned cities, spotted Spartans, considered running the track at Olympia then quickly thought better of it in the heat, consulted (or in Rhys’ case
insulted) the oracle at Delphi and marvelled at the monasteries of Meteora.
It seemed sad that a country with such a glorious, long and celebrated past should be having such trouble with the present – with the only industry supporting its future based on exploiting their past.
Yes, Greece in August is scorching and dry as dust, but somehow that seemed the best way to see it. Next stop Santorini to recover from the tours and have a holiday from our holiday.
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taracloud
Tara Cloud
Worthless guides!
I totally agree with you regarding guides. I'll sit in a spot and listen to guides in the three languages I speak and hear wildly differing nonsense from each. Much better to do the research oneself. While I've never done a tour, I must say another advantage is that you visited quite a lot of places in your ten days, something an independent traveler couldn't do. I really love that new Acropolis Museum with its glass floors to another world! Good luck avoiding summer crowds on Santorini!