Saturday 22nd Athens

We had to get into Pireaus (the port of Athens) by 5am because the port is abuzz with commuter and freight ferries along with a huge number of container vessels.  I woke to us docking in the dark, so had to wait for a while until we could see what was around us.

Athens is an amazingly densely packed city – everything seems to be a 6 story building, and they’re all some shade of white.  So from a distance the city looks like a huge sprawling white tumble of buildings with almost no greenery anywhere. 

We decided to use a ship based tour to get a quick guided and easy access to the Acropolis.  The guide was a wealth of knowledge & I think we heard more than 6,000 years of Athenian history in a couple of hours – interesting but exhausting!

Went past a few buildings including parliament & saw the very interestingly traditionally dressed soldiers who guard the tomb of the unknown soldier in front of the parliament.  Having just seen the overly elaborate baroque equivalent monument in Rome, to me the Athens one is really appropriate for its somber purpose.  Some of you may recognize the building as the one that is shown on TV with rioters in front of.  Our guide was really dark about the way the media has been portraying Greece but I wasn’t going to get into the politics of it all.

Anyway – we did the tour of the Acropolis – amazing.  They continue to restore the Parthenon by putting back bits in the right place, as well as inserting new marble when it is required to hold up some of the old bits that they want to put up.  I think it will be a 500 year restoration project at the rate they are going.  But it is certainly amazing.  We also got to see a couple of other temples up there etc

We decided to leave the tour as I wanted to see the new Acropolis museum which I had seen on TV.  This museum completes the match between seeing the ruins and making sense of the artifacts and the history.

The top floor is aligned with and mirrors the Parthenon up on the hill.  It is the same size & has laid out in the correct places many of the original pieces of the Parthenon as well as plaster casts of many other parts.  So they have much of the freeze that ran around the building and the pediments (i.e. the triangular end pieces which were full of statues). 

This museum is built up on pylons as it is over an interesting site filled with streets and houses from BC.  They have inserted glass floors so you can look down at the work that they are doing.  They hope to open it to the public in the near future so that visitors can walk through the ruins.  I’d go back just to have that experience.  (I'm not doing this justice as I am behind in publishing my posts - but truly - this museum is a must see for anyone interested in Ancient Greek history & culture)

Anyway – having completed this duo of ruins and museum of artifacts we were very happy vegemites & headed back to the ship via local taxi for a break!  Of course our taxi driver has family in Melbourne & plans to visit soon – with the possible aim of migrating.  This seems to be the story of much of Greece at the moment.