8 March 2010 (Monday #2) – Athens

We set foot on Greek soil (okay, on the Athens airport floor) at 9:15 a.m. with no plans for the day so we could check into our hotel and explore Athens on our own. One problem—Athens’ time is 8 hours ahead of Memphis time. The clock might have said 9:15 a.m., but my body was yelling 1:15 a.m.!!

Our room wasn’t ready that early; not to worry! Our travel agency’s Greek representative was right there in the lobby. He told us lots and lots of stuff for a full hour, animatedly marking up an Athens’ map the whole time, so that we couldn’t read a thing on it when he’d finished. Conrad heard his name as Nick Kakas—“Nick” being the name of most Greek guys, and “Kakas” from Poupi Kakas in the movie My Life in Ruins, which we watched right before our trip. Later, when Conrad had to call him, he regretted not getting the guy’s correct name and asking his wife to speak to Mr. Kakas.

So, we checked into our hotel, listened to our version of Poupi Kakas, and went to our room (from which we did not see the Parthenon) to drop off our stuff. Athens was ours to conquer, and we had a whole day in which to do it!!

Unfortunately, I could not stay awake. And everything was hilly and crowded, causing me to want to whine (but I couldn’t, so Conrad wouldn’t think I’m an old person).

We set out walking, usually uphill. Check out this street around the corner from our hotel:

Look at the hills in the distance! Look at the cars on top of each other! As far as the eye can see, there are buildings and buildings on hill after hill.

Here’s a closer view of that same street above:

Look how the people park! If there’s an opening along the sidewalk, they pull in. Sometimes they pull in two or three cars deep. So what if other cars can’t get down the street?And how do the cars blocked in ever get out?

Note, too, that the Greeks are big on graffiti. When they deface buildings with their Greek letters, it’s really rather pretty.

The buildings shown here are mostly residential, but in some sections (like Plaka) shops and restaurants are on the ground level, with apartments on the upper levels. It’s rare to see an apartment balcony without plants. They have lots of satellite dishes, too.

If you walk around Athens for even a few minutes, you’re likely to look up and see . . .

The Parthenon!! (unless you’re looking from our hotel) The first time we saw it, I thought I would cry. The experience was right up there with seeing Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the British Museum in London (until I learned that he painted beaucoups of the things, which are in galleries all over the world).

Anyway, I was really standing there, looking up (way up) at what was originally an ancient temple built to the goddess Athena. I was standing before a structure that was built centuries ago. (It was started in 447 BC. By the way, all our Greek tour guides used the term “BC”; none used “BCE,” the pagan version of BC.)

Here’s another photo we took at the same time as the above photo:

The Greeks are really proud of the Parthenon’s Doric columns. In the case of the Parthenon, I think they’re mainly proud to have so many columns all still standing in one place.

Part of the reason for the ruination of the Parthenon was the attacks by those dang Turks 100s of years ago. (See My Big Fat Greek Wedding for more info.)

The Turks weren’t the ones who actually destroyed the Parthenon, but they stupidly used it as an ammunition dump in the 1600s. When the Turks’ enemies attacked the Turks, the Parthenon exploded.

By the way, Greek people don’t like the English any better than they like the Turks, because the English took the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon while the Greeks were quarreling with the Turks. The Elgin Marbles are now in the British Museum in London. When we saw them there a few years ago, we were led to believe that they should belong to the British people.Who knows?

The only downside of seeing the Parthenon on this day for the first time (besides the difficulty of keeping my eyes open to see anything) was that the day was so dreary. So I gave it some clouds:

(I must work on making better cloud formations.)

Conrad and I continued our walk around Athens. He said I staggered like a drunk; I'll admit I was very sleepy. I think I did some sleep-walking. At one point while I was walking, I dreamt Conrad was carrying on an animated conversation with a Hari Krishna, who was trying to sell him a CD he (the Hari Krishna) and his friend made in their apartment. It contained meditations to help one sleep.

Besides sleep deprivation, I had problems with my stupid broken leg. We had to stop every few yards so I could sit down to sleep to adjust my leg brace:

Note that the walls, steps, and even the sidewalks are all marble.

We walked up and down more streets and more hills:

We walked past whole groves of orange trees right on the sidewalks:

Since there were billions of oranges all over the city, Conrad thought it would be fine to take one to eat. It was inedible. Later we learned the orange trees were planted just to be pretty. All the oranges consumed in Athens are flown in from a different region of Greece.

At some point we decided it was lunchtime somewhere and stopped to eat. (Our body clocks were totally messed up.) At the recommendation of Nick Kakas we went to a local favorite named Smiles. (What kind of name is that for a Greek restaurant??) The owners were there on site. They were quite Greek, as was the food. We placed our orders, and I went night-night.

The rude server made me move my head so she could serve me this Greek salad:

What a shock to learn Greek salads in Greece don’t have any greens. They swim in oil, though. Yum.

I had some excellent moussaka for my main course, while Conrad ordered these lamb kabobs:

Greek kabobs aren’t like our kabobs either; they were more like a sausage, in this case a very highly seasoned lamb sausage. You’ll note they were served on French fries, which were on top of pita bread. Very strange. Even more strange was that almost every food we ate in Greece came with French fries.

After lunch I suppose Conrad directed me back to our hotel room, because that’s where I woke up hours later (and being directionally-challenged I wouldn't have gotten back there by myself). While I was comatose, he went back out and explored the city on his own. All the following photos were taken by him.

This photo was taken from the top of one of Athens’ many, many hills:

A closer look at one small part of the city:

There is a reason for Athens having so many buildings, all on top of one another. It’s because it's overcrowded. Ha ha! Greece has 11 million people; 5 million of them live right in Athens. Why are the people so clustered? Perhaps it’s because Greece is 80% mountainous. The mountains rather cut down on livable area.

More buildings:

While the buildings in this view look brown, they don’t look like that in real life. I don’t know why they’re so brown here.

Most of the Greek buildings, whether they’re homes or businesses, are white, like those illuminated by the sun in the distance in this photo:

Some buildings are yellow. When historic buildings and ancient Doric columns are brown because of ancient dirt and soot, they use lasers to clean them.

Now Conrad has momentarily come down from the high hills and is doing artsy photos:

This is the Gate of Hadrian, as seen through the surrounding iron fence. All tourist sites have an iron fence around them or a forest or both.

A quaint side street:

The street is marble, of course.

It’s not uncommon to be walking down a street in Athens and pass a statue:

I like the statues in Greece better than those in Italy. The Italian sculptors weren’t real big on clothes. Blue, as seen on the door above, is the most common accent color used in Greece. In some areas the roofs and all the shutters are blue.

Now Conrad has walked by the Parliament building (formerly the royal palace) to watch the hourly changing of the Presidential guard.

You’ll note the guards wear big fluffy balls on the toes of their little elf shoes so it won’t hurt so much when they kick the guy in front of them in the butt. Just joking.

Yo, Mister Guard! I think the rest of your group went the other way!

The Parliament building:

I take back what I said about clothed statues.

I almost forgot Greece was the birthplace of the butt-naked Olympics (which must have been one disgusting sight).

Conrad took the above photo right before he took photos of the Panathenaic (or Panathinaiko or Kallimarmaro or five other names/spellings) Stadium, which hosted the first Olympic Games of the modern era. So, this must be an Olympic competitor, leaning on the crumbled remains of a Doric column, while holding onto the leg he just ripped off one of the other competitors. Just joking again.

Here are views inside the Panathenaic Stadium:

The Panathenaic Stadium was originally a valley that was transformed into a stadium by a guy @330 BC for the athletic festivities in ancient Athens. The original stadium could seat 50,000.

When it was restored for the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, it was rebuilt with Pentéli (or Pendeli) marble from the mountain range with the same name (northeast of Athens), the source of much of the marble used in construction throughout Greece, including the Parthenon.

This was probably taken in Plaka, the oldest section of Athens and our favorite part of the city:

It's located in the center of Athens and very near our hotel. You can see the Parthenon from Plaka, unlike from our hotel.

Until the 1970s Plaka was a nightclub district, famous for its loud music. The music was outlawed by the government to get rid of the undesirables attracted by the music and because the vibrations generated by the music were not good for all those ancient, decaying edifices (and Doric columns). Plaka is now street after street of shops and restaurants. Some of the streets are closed to automobile traffic.

We went to Plaka very single day we were in Athens. Sometimes Conrad ran back over there in the evening to get us a little snack, like souvlaki or baklava or (our fav) spanakopita. We always washed them down with a Coke Zero from the little store across the street from our hotel.

At last Conrad is returning back to our hotel. He passed the Parthenon, which, as I said, one can see from just about any spot in Athens (except our hotel):

He ran up and down many steep streets:

(Does this remind anyone else of the Beatles on Abbey Lane, except that this street is narrower and more hilly than Abbey Lane and it doesn’t have any people walking across it?)

So ended our first day in Greece, the cradle of Western Civilization, the birthplace of democracy, the home of the Olympics, and a place with a lot of steep hills and mighty (but crumbling) Doric columns.

8 March 2010 (Monday #1) - our hotel

Here’s a map of Greece (see the colored part):

Conrad and I flew into Athens (see circle and arrow), and we stayed there every night of our trip, although most days were spent exploring outside of Athens.

When Conrad and I arrived at the Athens airport, a cute little man met us inside, holding a sign so we’d find him. (I was expecting our names to be on the sign, but it had the name of the travel agency instead. Momentarily confusing.) He took our luggage and drove us to our hotel, which was about 45 minutes away, in the heart of Athens. We all had a lively conversation! Not. I asked the man if he spoke English, and he replied, “No English.” So, Conrad and I whispered just in case he did speak our language. Why did we do that? We weren’t exactly divulging any national secrets.

While we were going to our hotel, it was rather dreary outside, with rain threatening. Our view was further hampered by the taxi’s really dirty windows. See (all photos are clickable to enlarge):

We later learned that Athens is one dusty place (ancient decaying ruins? constant excavations?), and all vehicles there are downright dirty. The grimy windshields probably limited visibility, but the drivers were all over the place anyway, so it didn’t seem to be a problem.

Here’s our hotel—the Divani Palace Acropolis (a name I never once could recall when a driver asked us where we needed to go; I kept trying to say Da Vinci, but he was in a different country [when he was alive], and he wasn't a hotel):

You’ll notice the hotel is short; it only had about seven floors. Skyscrapers are not allowed in Athens, maybe so as not to overshadow the Parthenon? The tallest building in Athens is only 17 stories high.

Here’s another photo from the hotel website, showing our hotel from a different angle:

Do you see what I see? Yes! It’s the Parthenon! The website repeatedly says the hotel offers a “superb view to the Acropolis” (what the Parthenon is on top of).

Photo from the hotel website of the swimming pool area:

There’s that Parthenon! (It seems to be moving closer.)

View from the hotel roof:

The Parthenon is particularly stunning when it’s lit up at night, which happens every night.

After we checked into the hotel, we ran to our room, went straight to the window, threw back the regular drapery and the room-darkening drapery (nice feature!), opened the slider to our private balcony, and looked out upon . . .

buildings and orange trees. Who took the Parthenon?? We tried to see the Parthenon from our hotel from every angle during our 8-day stay there with no success. We even tried the roof, but the roof access was locked.

Parthenon or no Parthenon, the hotel was quite nice. Here’s the front desk:

I didn’t take a photo of the actual people who were at the front desk while we were there. Suffice it to say, I was well-known by the staff, who snickered every single time I walked by the front desk.

Their snickering might have been related to this mailbox in one of the hotel lobbies.

If you’re ever in Greece and want to mail 24 postcards, they’ll expect you to put stamps on all 24, not just 10. The unstamped 14 cards will not be discarded. Rather, the postman will remove them from your hotel’s mailbox for the staff to display at the front desk.

One of the hotel lobbies:

See what a nice place the Da Vinci Something is?  

Me walking through a side of that lobby above:

I’m way in the back to the left. It was there that we accidentally stumbled upon free wifi for a couple of days. Sweet!

I’m seen above walking to the restrooms, but this photo was not taken on the day when I accidentally locked myself inside one of the stalls for nearly 30 minutes. (Free advice: Know the country code for where you’re traveling. I had my iPhone with me in the stall, but I couldn’t call the front desk to rescue me, because I didn’t know Greece’s country code. Conrad said he’d rather I rotted in the stall than called for a rescue. He embarrasses easily.) Prior to getting stuck, I was so proud of myself on that day. It was my first time to go into the ladies’ restroom in our hotel lobby instead of the men’s.

Our room looked just like this:

. . . except that the layout was in the opposite direction, and our accent color was purple. Oh. And we didn’t have that view of the Parthenon.

Here’s the far side of our actual bedroom:

That would be Conrad sound asleep. With his mouth hanging open. He snores.

Our bathroom was swathed in marble (everything in Greece is swathed in marble!) and had all the modern amenities, as well as a few oddities.

For example, apparently the concept of a shower curtain hasn’t arrived in Greece yet. This was our tub:

Instead of a shower curtain or door, we had a glass thing (see right of photo) . . .

that shielded about 1/3 of the tub. Unless we pointed the shower head straight down, it shot water all over the bathroom.

If we pointed the shower head straight down, we had to stand at the very end of the tub to get under the water, which brings us to a second problem with the tub. Notice anything?

The end of the tub was about 6” across, meaning we had to stand with one foot lined up in front of the other. But wait; there’s more! Every few minutes the hot water disappeared, causing the showeree to have to sprint to the other end of the tub until the water warmed back up, at which time the showeree had to do a backwards tightrope walk to end up in that little niche under the shower head.

This was our toilet:

(There are those who might wonder why I’m ignoring the 100s of photos we took of GREECE and focusing on a hotel room. It’s easier to focus on a hotel room than on 100s of photos of Greece.)

See the little button thing on the top of the toilet tank:

It gives you the choice of flushing the toilet completely, or doing a one-half flush. If you push the ½ part, sure enough, it flushes one-half of the contents of the toilet. I don’t get it. Gross.

We started each morning with a herkin’ buffet breakfast in our hotel’s restaurant. Here’s one wall of the buffet and some of Conrad’s fingers:

Conrad and the restaurant staff all glared when I tried to take photos, so I put up my camera and ate—breads, cheeses, eggs, pastries, fruits, meats, juices, coffee, Greek yogurt, . . ..

Ancient ruins are all over Greece. Every time people dig a hole, especially in Athens, they’re likely to stumble upon antiquity. For example, a part of the bottom floor of our hotel was glassed off, because when they were renovating the hotel, they found these ruins under it:

This sign explains those ruins:

(That’s me and my new camera reflecting in the sign.)

By the way, most of the ruins in Greece consist of a few fallen and crumbled columns. The Greeks have fantastic stories built around each set of these columns.

Enough is enough. Time to tackle those 100s of photos that actually show Greece. I’ll be back soon. I hope.

7 March 2010 (Sunday) - Travel to GREECE

Our Greece adventure begins!

Conrad and I were at the airport very early this morning to fly from Memphis to JFK in New York. Here’s Conrad trying to check us in:

The kiosk machine wouldn’t recognize my passport.

While Conrad worked on my passport, I stood there with our carry-on stuff—(left to right) the bottom of my all-weather coat that’s been to Europe twice so far (and is about to go on its last European adventure), my striped scarf (which I "haggled" for in Paris, only to end up paying full price), my carry-on luggage (my big bag was already checked), my backpack/sling thing, and the only two things Conrad took—his messenger bag and his little, bitsy luggage:

After we got checked in, I treated us to some Starbucks:

Conrad! I’m over here! Look at the camera, Conrad! Oh, never mind.

One thing you can say about Conrad is that caffeine does not keep him awake. Here he is moments after boarding the Memphis-to-New York flight:

(I took many such photos on our flights, as well as on our tour buses. This kid seriously needs to get more sleep.)

View from the plane during the Memphis-to-New York flight:

We ate lunch in the airport in New York while waiting for our flight to Greece. I asked for some extra napkins with my food. The woman behind the counter yelled, “You want more catsup??”

Me: “No, I want napkins.”

Woman behind counter: “WHAT? You want MORE catsup??”

Me: “No, I want napkins.”

We repeated this conversation several times, with her scooping up handfuls of catsup each time and putting them on my tray. I finally gave up and took the catsup. Me with a sample pak:

My camera is out because (much to Conrad's embarrassment), I was taking photos of a body builder. He was HUGE! (I astutely recognized him as a body builder because across the back of his shirt, it said BODY BUILDER.) He had two trays of food, mostly salads, just for himself. He'd eat a salad, open a black canvas bag, pull out medicine bottles, pour a bunch of pills in his hand, and throw them in his mouth.

Then we were off to Athens! The flight was about 10 hours long. The plane was ridiculously small and antiquated. We didn’t even have individual TV/movie screens. We had NO leg room. (If *I* get leg cramps, you know there is no leg room!)

Here we are over the ocean, not my favorite place to be:

This was about the exact point in our flight when I was struck with acute bronchitis, which lasted throughout the trip.

At one point while we were flying, the captain told us to remain in our seats and fasten our seatbelts because "there are some folks up ahead of us that we are trying to avoid running into.” What?? Was it like people going to heaven??? I don’t think we hit of any, because we didn’t experience any bumps.

Photo from the airplane window as the sun was coming up:

If you look closely right above the bottom of the window and slightly to the right, you can see ice on it. This photo was from March the 8th Greece time, but from March the 7th body/Memphis time. Greece is 8 hours ahead of Memphis.