So Philip has a third or fourth aunt/cousin/relative in Athens that helped us plan our trip and made this whole experience much more enjoyable than it could have been. She met us around 9:30 in the morning and took us down to the metro. The metro is basically a subway, but they are so clean and not scary! Athens has really cool metros because when they dig into the ground the always find ancient artifacts and things. They put what they find on display in the metro so every station is a mini-museum. Tre cool. We walked around that for a minute and she helped us get acquainted with the system. After this we went up to Parliament to watch the changing of the guard. I have pictures. It was mildly humorous. I hate to say that about a government ritual that is so highly regarded, but their routine is just silly. They wear a uniform with funny little black puff balls on their shoes and do some weird kick when the walk. It was entertaining. We proceeded to the Benaki museum for a quick trip through ancient Greek history. The Benaki museum is the largest personal collection of Greek artifacts in and was donated by Mr. Benaki to make this really nice museum. It takes you through the Cycladic period, Renaissance period, and one of more recent (by recent I mean the past couple hundred years) periods. It was an hour lesson of about 2000+ years of Greek history. I would have liked to spend more time there! It was especially interesting because of the course I took on freedom in Greece. They had a lot of helmets and armor from the hoplites of the Greek army. Very neat! The jewelry in the museum was incredible. It was all very intricate and elaborate. I go with a ‘less is more’ approach to jewelry, but this was beautiful. They also had a lot of paintings in the museum that were really good. She was telling us how a lot of Greek painters moved to Venice and into Italy so a lot of that time periods Greek and Italian art overlaps. She also informed us that if it weren’t for the Turkish invasion of Greece the renaissance period never would have happened. Apparently at the time there were a lot of scholars and well educated people, but upon Turkish occupation they fled and spread their knowledge. That might not be completely accurate, I was told this story a week ago, but that is the gist of it. From the top of the Benaki you can see into the facility where the guys in the change of the guard practice their little dance/routine. We proceeded to go down to the port to pick up our tickets for the ferries to the islands. We thought the ticket pickup would be quick and the port wasn’t that big. Wrong. It is a chaotic massive port and we would have been lost without His aunt’s help. When we got down there the ticket machine was in Greek and our ferry was in the afternoon. His aunt printed our tickets and talked to the agents to get our ticket switched to the morning ferry…7:30 AM. Woof. It turned out to be a godsend though because we got two full days on the island of Paros. Paros is my new favorite place in the world, but more on that later. We went back into downtown Athens after leaving the port and has a bite to eat in the agora (marketplace) at Monestariki. It was a large square with lots of shops and restaurants and action. We ate souvlaki, which is gyro meat on a pita served with onions and tomatoes and some sauce. Quite tasty. We then headed to the agora beneath the acropolis and saw a lot of artifacts in the Roman part of the acropolis, saw the temple of Hephaistos (5th century BC) which is the most well preserved temple, and saw a couple of other ancient things that have been well preserved. She took us to the other side of the agora to where you can climb the acropolis and see the Parthenon and things. There is a museum now at the base that is really great. It just opened two days before we arrived, so we were unable to get tickets to see the museum, but we walked around the front of it and checked it out. The floor in the area leading up to the museum is kind of trippy because it is all thick glass cutouts that display what is underneath. When they started digging they found the remains of an ancient civilization and they are displayed beneath the glass. We left Phil’s aunt for the day after this portion of the tour. She could not have been more helpful, informative, amazing, saint-like and we really appreciated that. Now to climb the acropolis. This was at about 5 PM so the heat was pretty rough. Totally worth it though. It is a pretty tough climb because it is steep and very tall. Also, the rocks there are stepped over by millions of people per year so they are very slick. We got to the top and walked around for a while. The size of the Parthenon was very impressive. Another couple of history lessons we got were about the war with the Turks and the German/Greece portion of WW1. In WW1 Hitler thought Greece would be a pushover so he left them to the Italians. It took the Italians 6 months before Hitler intervened and pretty much destroyed Greece. While it was a defeat, the Greek hold up set Hitler’s troops back 6 months so they were unprepared for the rest of the war. Go Greece go! Also in the war between the Turks and the Italians the Turks used the Parthenon as an arms base and the Italians shot numerous firearms and missiles at the base destroying most of the Parthenon. After this the Turks and the Brits took a lot of what was in the Parthenon, which is why it is so deteriorated. Interesting stuff! After the acropolis hike, we were walking down the slick steps and I ate it. Ouch. I have a sweet bruise on my forearm, but I think my pride was hurt more than my ass/hands/arm. We got to eat dinner with Phil’s cousin and he showed us some really great Greek seafood and liquor. I don’t remember the name of the liquor (not because I was hammered, it was just complicated), but we ate shrimp, calamari, sardines, and some black dot fish I couldn’t pronounce. It was all really good, and I figured out I do like seafood! For dessert we got two dessert liquors and then walked around Athens for a little while. We went to some bar in Koloniki (very ritzy part of Athens) called city that was a little too posh for my taste. We finally made it home around 330, which was good considering we had a 530 wake up call to make it to our ferry. Woof. All in all it was an informative and fun day.
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