The Bois Family Trip to Athens

March 16, 2001 Arrival in Athens, the Acropolis

The customs officer at the Athens airport barely looked at us.  There was no paperwork to complete.  He just stamped our passports and waved us on.  Danusia said she liked it better than US customs.  We found an ATM, took out some drachmas and bought bus tickets for the city.

On first impression, Athens reminded me of no place more than New York City - big, dirty, exciting and frenetic.  I was exhausted just by the bus ride from the airport to Sýntagma Square.  The jet lag didn't help, of course, but view out the bus window was nearly more than the eye can take in - cars and buildings crammed against each other in never-ending rows, the buildings all in a few shades of beige, the cars fighting for an inch of progress through the traffic jam.

There is graffiti everywhere, and even more billboards than in America.  We had heard that Athens is Europe's most polluted city.  That may or may not be true, but everything seems covered in dust.

The bus didn't take us all the way to Sýntagma Square.  We guessed later that traffic on the last few miles is almost always at a standstill. It dropped us at Dafni, the southern-most station on the new Metro.
 

The Metro is remarkably clean and most of the stations we saw have museum quality displays of the artifacts that were discovered as the stations and tunnels were excavated. By the way, these two pictures are courtesy of Matt Barrett, who wrote the best Web site I found about Athens.  It's called the Athens Survival Guide and I highly recommend it.

We took the Metro to Sýntagma Square and walked the few blocks to our hotel.  When we checked in, the desk clerk had to fill out an extra form for each of us.  It was the Greek census and they count not only Greek citizens, but anyone else who happens to be in the country.  Adam immediately crashed on the bed.  He didn't go to sleep though, he clicked through all the channels on the TV until he found MTV Europe. We didn't stay in the hotel long though.  The best way to overcome jet lag is to keep going until after nightfall.  So we went where all the tourists go.

Halfway up the Acropolis, I happened to turn around and saw Lykavitós Hill rising up out of the city.  I was surprised that it's so big.

We would go to Lykavitós on the next day; and from this same vantage point, we saw many other places we would visit including the Agora, the ancient marketplace.

I later joked that we should invest in a Greek scaffolding rental company, because it seems like every other building is undergoing renovations.  It could be anything from new paint covering up graffiti to new masonry to a hole in the ground for a new foundation.  Of course, a hole in the ground means uncovering antiquities and that slows progress to a crawl.
 

And the Acropolis itself is no exception.  The Temple of Athena Nike was surrounded by scaffolding.  The Parthenon is full of equipment, including a crane, as workers try to preserve it.

The word Acropolis means "high city" and that's an accurate description.  There was only one way into it, and it's quite a climb to get to the gates.  In the past, any invading enemy would be winded before they got close to the front door.

By this time, we had noticed several dogs sleeping in strange places - sidewalks, gutters, courtyards, even in the middle of the street.  We weren't sure what was going on, but we decided to start taking pictures of them.  This one was next to a stone bench at the gates to the Acropolis.

Once through the gates, you see the two remaining structures of the inner Acropolis - the Erechtheion on the left and the Parthenon on the right.

The stones on the ground seem to be scattered at random, but most have been numbered.  I guess it's a big jigsaw puzzle.  In the museum, broken statues have been reassembled.  Missing pieces have been duplicated in plaster.  Most of the statues are more plaster than original pieces.

This is the Porch of the Caryatids on the Erechtheion.  All six of these goddesses are duplicates.  Four of the originals are in the Acropolis Museum. When we were in London two years ago, I took a picture of a church with this same porch.  At the time, I didn't know it was a copy of anything, I just thought it was neat.

 

On the north side of the Erechtheion, you can easily see which blocks are the original marble and which are duplicates.

From the east end of the Parthenon, you can see the crane and scaffolding inside.  It's sad to think that it remained intact for two thousand years and was damaged only recently.  In 1687,  the Turks were using it as an arsenal.  I guess it made sense at the time because it's high on a hill, protected inside the Acropolis walls.  However, when the Venetians hit it with cannon fire, it blew sky-high.

Something else I hadn't realized is that the ground is partially marble.  It's been trod on for thousands of years and has worn like the marble steps at your local library.  It's slippery walking. The Parthenon may look big, but Danusia and Adam are actually eleven inches tall.

The Acropolis has a commanding view of Athens, which is what made it a naturally great fortress.  Here are some of the things you can see from the top:
 

We started noticing there were cats everywhere, too.  This one was sleeping outside the taverna where we stopped for a drink. There are lots of tavernas in the Plaka.  It's Athens' oldest section, with narrow streets winding through the shadow of the Acropolis.  It feels like a family neighborhood, completely removed from the frenzy of the city only a few blocks away.  There are gift shops, museums and, of course, tavernas.

Next:  March 17, 2001 - The Agora, the National Garden and Lykavitós Hill