Memories, some shared,
Can be kept to one's self, too,
Accidentally.
After our movie-watching night, we all crashed to sleep too late and poor Nikos had to wake up at 5 or some such time to go do his service. Yikes! We slept until about 9, but after that we wrested ourselves from bed as we had a city to see. :)
As we left the house, we gathered up some things for the day, but we unfortunately forgot the camera... So no photos from Athens. I have some up from when I went last year in my own Picasa (http://picasaweb.google.com/VASavage/ItSAllGreekToMe#), but they're not really as good as the photos that we usually take now... it lent a different character to the day, I suppose; we didn't have to pause to take photos of things every few minutes, and although we won't have things to show everyone back home, we absorbed more from it, I think.
We shooed ourselves out of the apartment and headed out for coffee and pastries (tiropita! yum!), then hopped on the train to head downtown. Nikos had left a few papers stuffed in the sides of our computer as notes for the day, one listed the address of a bike shop where we could buy new tyres and the other had instructions for getting to the Acropolis. We decided to deal with the tyre problem first.
Some work is being done in the Athens subway system at the moment, so large portions of the underground are closed. This included the stop closest to the bike shop, so we rode as far as we could and then stumbled around lostly, fortunately finding Greek people who spoke English at key corners and getting directions from them. We managed to find the place, which is called Frederik Cycles. It's run by a guy who speaks perfect English and knows a lot of junk about bikes. Their stuff was a little pricey, but it's a custom cycle shop and they display some interesting modified bikes in the windows. We found exactly what we needed: two 700x32 tyres tough enough to make it to Istanbul. We bought them, and, having no other way to convey them, I threw them over my shoulder and across my chest.
The way to the Acropolis from here was obvious, and we could, in fact, see it from a fair distance away. Almost like they built it that way. Jeff Stuart, if you are reading this I want you to know that the balconies in Athens are just as lovely as I remember.
We walked through town towards the beaming white stones on a hill, and it seems that every Acropolis-bound path in Athina very quickly becomes an upscale tourist street. It's hardly surprising, I guess. The shops were bustling with people, even though it's not really the season any longer, and they hawked things ranging from usual post cards to plastic Spartan helms to metal Spartan helms to leather gladiator shoes to statues of the gods. We walked on.
The sites in Athens are all visitable with one multipass that costs 12€ in general or 6€ for students, so we were happy we'd brought our ISIC cards. Our first stop was the Roman agora.
The Roman agora is in disrepair, as you may be able to imagine, but it's still obvious where the shop lines would have stood. Column bases line streets that aren't very wide, and as we strolled through them we wondered at the volumes of people that must have squeezed through the space. Another feature of this agora is the Temple of the Winds, an octagonal building with personifications of each of the winds carved on its faces. Inside used to be a water clock, but this has since been lost. I remember really liking it on my last visit.
Inside a building there we found a statue of Nike (okay, that's one thing that really bothers me: in English she is always referred to as "Winged Victory" while in Greek, German, French, etc., they simply call her "Nike". what's wrong with our classical education in the English-speaking world?) which was extremely well-preserved: she was missing only her wings and arms, and she was beautiful.
Nearby were the ruins of an old university, and we could still see the lecture halls and some of their seats. What a privilege it must have been to sit there!
Speaking of sitting, there was an old public latrine complex that we were amused to note was called a Vespasiana as a dubious honour to the emperor Vespasian.
The day was starting to get hot, which is a startling thing in November. We pressed past the few other tourists in town to get to the ancient agora and the Temple of Hephaestos. It's the best-preserved temple of its kind; for instance it is all still standing (though presumably it is bolstered from inside by iron bars or some such). The friezes on the front and sides of it are still deeply cut into the stone, and the workmanship is impressive. Hephaestos is the Greek god of metallurgy, so there were some smith scenes and the like carved there.
It's amazing to consider the sheer volume of money the rich had back then. We read plaques about enormous marble buildings that had been gifts between friends. Really, guys?
From there we climbed the hill to the Acropolis. I had remembered that climb being longer and harder and hotter, possibly because the last time I'd done it was in May and when I was not in extreme cycling shape. Anyway, it only took a few minutes to reach the gates of the Acropolis.
Atop the hill, overlooking the whole city, sits the Parthenon. It's a shrine to honour all the gods, the ultimate product of many years of work by many talented artists. The UNESCO plaque about it says a lot of things about overcoming challenges and boundaries and uniting humanity, but mostly I think everyone just likes it because it looks impressive. Again, all the things that were found inside have been evacuated to a museum, which we unfortunately found to be closed Mondays.
We wandered around, drinking in the view of Athens spread out below us. Athens is home to nearly half of Greece's population, around four million people. It's not a tall city; it spreads for miles in all directions, but nothing is so high as the Acropolis, and although the view from on top wasn't so satisfying as some of our mountaintop views... it was really, really nice. We looked around to find the other sites we wanted to see, and we easily spotted the temple of Olympian Zeus with its perfectly-placed and still-standing columns, the old Olympic stadium, and the presidential palace. We trotted past the Theatre of Dionysos (the Greek god of wine and partying) on our way down the hill, and it looks like it's still equipped for productions.
By the time we made it to the temple of Olympian Zeus, we both quite needed to pee, so we mostly went inside to use the toilets. It was nice to walk around the columns, I guess, but there was nothing we got out of seeing them up close that we didn't get from seeing them as we walked past. Oh well. We continued past the temple to the Olympic stadium, which is also well-preserved and seems to host events occasionally still.
We didn't dwell at the Presidential Palace; it's staffed by guards at all hours. Admittedly they look a little silly in their uniforms (which include shoes with enormous pompoms at the toes), but we needed to call Nikos, so we couldn't pause to laugh.
Nikos informed us over the phone that he was unfortunately still tied up at work, and that we should call him for dinner in a couple hours or so. We headed through the crowded tourist streets until we eventually found a bit of sanity and some delicious gyros in a shop next to the municipal market. We stocked up on some dried figs and walnuts to replenish our snack, and we bought some candied kiwi to have as dessert. We wandered around the city for a little longer until we found a park where we took a seat to pass time.
Some kind of event seemed to be going on at the church in this park; seats were lined up outside and people were bustling around. We found out that a parade was going to start, and we watched in amusement as nearly everyone fled the area when the police arrived for parade crowd control. A man from Morocco came over and talked to us for a while about our trip and travelling and life, then bade us have a good time in Greece as we stepped across the street to a payphone to call Nikos again.
He was finally free from his duties, and he agreed to meet us at Syntagma station in a half hour. We hopped on the subway (we tried to get change to use in the ticket machines, but instead a random man just happily paid our two tickets instead) and rode the two stops to get there. Syntagma station, and in general all the central metro stops in Athens, was beautiful -- reworked entirely for their hosting the Olympics in 2004. There's a museum in Syntagma that shares the history of that spot, which has been rather inconstant through the ages. It has variously been cemeteries (of three types), smithies, and servant housing. All this was uncovered when work was done to make it into the wonderful Syntagma we know today.
In the plaza around the station we saw a cluster of cyclists, who Nikos informed us were amassing for Critical Mass. It was pretty well dark by this time, thanks to the time change that took effect yesterday, and we sat around in front of the Hotel Gran Bretagne to wait.
Nikos arrived, and he took us out for hot chocolate at a fabulous place hidden in an alley. They seem to just melt chocolate bars into cups and OH MY GOODNESS IT IS DELICIOUS. We eventually had to adjourn from that place, and we went to a taverna for dinner where we tried a new set of Greek food (including some supremely tasty butter-fried mushrooms... yum) and were treated to wine and dessert by the manager. I guess he felt bad for not having the wine we wanted to order? Maybe he liked Americans or Canadians? Anyway, we didn't argue.
It was getting late, but we made one more stop at an art bar for some German weissbeer. The atmosphere there was really cool: they had fiber-optic trees and an interesting wide-open stone space for seating... I dunno. I liked it.
Then, home. We paused briefly for ice cream, but then it was bedtime. Tomorrow, it's back to cycling. Yeah!