Ancient Athens

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Tuesday 8 - Friday 11 June 2008

We’re over a month behind with the blogs (our trip is just flying) so I’m making the next couple pretty short to try and catch up. So here’s a run down of the things I remember most about our two days in Athens:

Heat. It was hot, damn hot. The temp was high thirties, but unlike the Islands, there was no breeze to cool us down. Also, since we only had two days, we went against all advice and roamed around in the middle of the day.

Food. I found the yummest and cheapest banana and nutella crepes at a Parisian Creperie right in the middle of the old town. They were sooooo good.

Parthenon and Acropolis. The view from the Parthenon was spectacular and allowed us to get a good understanding of the layout of Athens. Basically, huge mountains surround Athens on three sides and the ocean on the fourth. The city centre circles the Acropolis and extends all the way to the base of the mountains and ocean. The Parthenon itself was covered in scaffolding and as far as I could make out the restoration works are never ending; one section is finished, they move onto another, discover new restorative techniques and then start back at the beginning and so on. Also, we were surprised that there was hardly any historical information available about the ruins. Unfortunately, with no plaques, pamphlets or audio tours, Sean and I resorted to googling the info in our hotel each evening.

Other Sites. Our Acropolis ticket got us into a bunch of other sites for free. My favourite was the Temple of Olympian Zeus because one of the columns had collapsed in a storm and looked pretty cool (note the pic). Sean liked the Temple of Poseidon, which was built high on cliffs about two hours bus ride from Athens.

2004 Olympics. I spent a lot of time looking out for reminders of the 2004 Olympic Games. The train stations were all newish and our hotel looked like it’d had a makeover at some stage. On the coast there were lots of stadiums (some looked abandoned) and nice parks and walkways with signs displaying the Olympic rings.

Sean’s Insert. Athens was definitely on my list of places to visit and I am glad I had the chance. However, the display of the sites was a little disappointing as it was almost like there were two ruins at each site: that of the Greek’s ancient architecture; and that of the haphazard scaffolding, cranes and scattered building materials that absolutely nobody was working with. I suppose that ancient ruins in Greece are almost everywhere, so the care of these sites is not as important as, for example, Bath is in England. Perhaps there is a funding issue as well, but with the current pace of work and continual ‘re-restoration’, I get the feeling that the Acropolis will never be seen without tatty construction work around it. I guess that is another reason why I preferred the Temple of Poseidon so much, as it has hardly any construction around and really is just an unspoilt ruin. But then again, the Temple of Poseidon did look like it could fall over any day.

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Photos

Theatre of Herod Atticus
Still in use today.

Temple of Olympian Zeus
15 of the original 104 columns remain. One blew over in 1852.