Athens Pt. 1

We flew out of Paris on Friday evening to head to our first spring break destination, Athens, getting there at about 12:30 in the morning on Saturday. We took a bus, as the metro had already closed, to downtown and got off in the central square, called Syntagma. Thanks to my Frommers book I was able to guide us north to Omonia Square to find our hostel. We were soon to discover that Athens is very interesting in the sense that the city can go from rich and prosporous to completely dilapidated in a very short time, even in the middle of a city block. So while Omonia Square is one of the central points in the city, just a block north and a block west our hostel sits in the middle of a bunch of prostitutes, bums, and junkies. Luckily the hostel itself is super nice and safe, but the neighborhood around it is complete trash. Good thing we're paying 15 euros a night per person. We didn't do anything that first night since we got there so late, but upon our arrival at the hostel we did get a free, welcome-to-Greece ouzo shot.

Since I'd heard that sometimes the government museum workers will go on strike (similar to when we visited Paris six years ago) and the sites shut down, we headed to the Acropolis early on our first morning here. We left our hostel on Omonia Square and walked south to Monasteriki, which is one of the neighborhoods that surrounds the Acropolis. We visited the Roman Forum, which is a series of buildings - libraries and gymnasiums and public offices - that the Romans built when the city was under their control. Very, very cool to see just how old everything was. After taking a million pictures in the two forums, we began the long uphill climb to the Acropolis. The grounds around the Acropolis are all preserved because of the various ruins and ongoing excavations there, but what makes it so spectacular is just the amount of green that surrounds the massive natural walls of the acropolis. Once we got near the top, we took a detour up onto this massive rock where you had a good view of the city, just to see how far we'd climbed thus far and get some good panoramas. We then climbed back down and went up the final leg of the climb to the Acropolis. For once, being an ESCP student paid off and we got into the whole system of Greek museums and sites free, saving 12 euros but missing out on the relatively sweet holographic ticket stub. Oh well. The final walk up to the Acropolis is amazing in itself, as you come into view of the Theatre of Dionysus and Odeon of Herottus Atticus below you and the Propylaea in front of you. You walked through remains of the Propylaea, the ancient gate, and then come into full view of the remains of the Pantheon and the Erechteon. Unfortunately for pictures sake, the Pantheon was almost completely covered in scaffolding for restoration and reconstruction. Apparantly in the last several years the government has embarked on an ambitious program to rebuild parts of the building destroyed over the years. I'll be glad to see that happen, but was a little bit disappointed to have no clear view of the building for photos. Oh well. The view from up top was just miraculous and I must have shot 200 pictures that first day anyway. We spent about an hour or so up on the very top but our stomachs were growling and forced us to abandon the ruins in search of food.

We climbed down from the Acropolis view the south side and wound through a series of ruins and excavations leading down to the Theatre of Dionysus. Dionysus was the god of revelry (among other things like wine and drunkeness) and the Greek theatrical tradition developed out of dramatic competitions meant to honor the god. The theatre on the side of the Acropolis was the site of performances by Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and other poets that I'd come across at Country Day, so I knew a little bit about the tradition the theatre represented.

We stopped for lunch at a little taverna next door to the National Archaeological Museum, The Gods' Cafe. We started off with some dlomates, which are grape vine leaves soaked in olive oil and stuffed with a rice pilaf concoction, and some fried feta drizzled with honey and poppy seeds. Both were absolutely delicious. From that point I tried one of the more traditional Greek dishes, moussakas, which is a lasagna of sorts comprised of minced meats, eggplant, and pasta that all have a weird certain sweetness about them. But, all in all, we were able to sit outside in the sun, people-watching with a gorgeous backdrop of the Acropolis, and eat a fantastic meal for 20 euros. It definately felt like, for the first time, that it was an actual spring break (I was to discover later that Paris has already made me forget what the sun feels like; just a few hours out in moderate sun gave me a nice burn on my nose).


Our next stop was the New Acropoli Museum. It is a super modern building built just south of the Acropolis. The original museum was on top of the rock itself, but the limited space and poor construction of the building led to a miserable presentation of the collection, so the government opted for a new and modern structure about a decade ago. They had hoped to build the museum in time for the 2004 Olympics in a desperate plea to the British to return the Elgin marbles (the sculptures from the two pediments of the Pantheon that are now housed in the British Museum and subject to a 200 year-old ownership controversy), but their efforts were stalled when construction of the museum's foundation unearthed a massive Greek and Byzantine city thousand(s) of years old. The museum is thus now built on massive concrete pillars that allow excavation to carry on underneath. The coolest thing about the museum, though, is that the floors are all transparent so that for the entire first floor one can look down and see the ruins of the city below. On the first two floors are finds from the Acropolis, dating back to the first records of civilization there, and on the third a to-scale modern reconstruction of the Parthenon. The columns (17 on the long sides and 9 on the short ones) are spaced exactly to the dimensions of the ruins, and the sculptures from the pediments, friezes (bas relief sculptures that act as a form of crown molding on the inner structure), and metopes (massive carved panels that decorated the outer rim of the structure) are filled in exactly where they rested on the original. It's too bad that the original structure has little to zero sculpture remaining on it. Between destruction of the temple by Spartan arson, Christian defacing of the statues, and the supremely unfortunate explosion in 1687 caused by the Turks using it as a powder storage, the Parthenon is in very bad shape and all the artwork has been moved inside. But, it made for a super interesting museum display and was one of the reasons I'd say that the New Acropolis Museum is the most impressive and overall intriguing museums I've ever been in.

After spending about an hour and a half in there, we headed West along the Grand Promenade, which wraps around the whole area that surrounds the Acropolis and puts one back on the central east-west road that divides the town. Found a great place to see a sunset over a drink or meal, so there are a number of tavernas in that area I wouldn't mind coming back to in the next couple of days. We walked back to Monasteriki Square and then back to Omonia Square to take a nap at our hostel, from which we went back to the Monasteriki area and had dinner on Adrianou street with the lit-up Acropolis and Temple of Hephaistos as our backdrop. I tried the pork souvlaki and a Greek feta salad, as to eat as much of the local fare as possible. Also had a pint of the local beer, Mythos. We finished dinner at about 12:30 (Athens is a super-late town) and went back to our hostel. A fantastic, fantastic first day.