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.