athens, day 2

paola and i at the parthenon.


we started by having breakfast, which the hotel provided. it was on the roof of the building, which was really neat, since from the roof, there was a view of the acropolis and the agora. from therre we went to the agora and walked around. i was impressed with the ancient sculptures that are out in the open. the hilight was the temple of hephastion, which is the most complete, and best preserved ancient greek temple in greece. there was also a small byzantine church, and another long temple, which originated in the ancient times, but was destroyed, and as such, was rebuilt sometime in the twentieth century.

after the agora, we went to the acropolis. that was very neat. so far on this trip, although i have seen a lot of astounding things, i have not had that feeling of wow like i have here. of course, it was very crowded, and that made paola disappointed (she compared it to when she went to machu pichu). certainly i feel that it would be better if we were the only two people on the whole site, but i also know that we are just the same as they are: tourists who all want to see the same thing. in any case, the whole complex was much larger than i thought it would be. of course, there is the parthenon, and the dionysian theater, but there was also another temple which was nice, and a lot of space to walk around. there was also a museum in the back which had a few interesting items from the acropolis site.

back to the temple of hephastion. nobody named elgin has removed the marble sculpture reliefs and put them into the british museum as was done on the acropolis. thus, these marbles were still there, and the figures very much resembled the reliefs that we saw in london. one major difference, however, was that the sculptures on the temple of hephastion in the agora were very worn down, and much detail was lost. that is, the reliefs in the british museum looked as though they were in much better shape than those on the hephastion temple that is about a few kilometers from the parthenon. this seems to lend a bit of credence to the argument that the british have often given: the greeks would not know how to take care of the precious artifacts.

after the acropolis, we took a walk up athenas street, which was listed in our tourist book as something special, but really wasnt. we ended up at the national archeological museum, which had great artifacts and sculptures from all periods of ancient greek history. some hilights were the bronze statue of zeus (or posiedon; there is a debate as to who it is, but i think it looks better if the figure were throwing a lightning bolt rather than attacking with a triton), a bronze statue of paris (or perseus; after seeing the statue, i am more compeled by the argument that it is paris holding an apple rather than perseus holding medusa’s head), and a famous marble sculpture of aphrodite. i was a little disappointed that there were not more minoan frescos; i suppose that i will have to trael to santorini or crete to see those.

one thing that i wanted to do today but couldnt was visit the olympic stadium (the new one, different from panathenakon stadium that we saw yesterday). i asked someone, and he said that it was further away, and not in the immediate area. once we got on the subway to go to the airport, i saw where it was, though, and only then realized how easy it might have been to see it. perhaps next time.