So the last time I tapped out the latest drivel, I was in the Cyclades, marveling at the food, landscape, mythology, centuries of civilized life in the antique world.... my day trip back to Athens was an epic fiasco. It began with my request for the "speed" ferry boat back to the capital, with every intention of arriving with several hours to go at the Acropolis park b/c the new Acropolis Museum was closed on a Monday. That would give me 2 hours to see the museum the next morning before having to leave for an afternoon flight back to the Gulf. The "speed" boat was a turtle - a two hour journey took more than three with no apparent need for an explanation or apology. My "business" class seat was at the front of that cabin, where the a/c was not working. I had boarded the ferry from the right side (I know there's a proper marine term for that) and about 45 minutes before arrival, an announcement was made asking if there were any doctors onboard. By then I had given up the "comfort" of my business class seat in the sauna and was moving towards the door where in a short while several hundred passengers would be clamoring to retrieve their bags in the luggage hull en route to disembarking. The sick passenger was right in front of that door.
We finally pull up to the docks at Piraeus and the movement on the side of the ferry with the sick passenger is prohibited to allow for the ambulance that needs to collect him. They've turned the little a/c that was working completely off by now. This is when I feel particularly American. I want a/c. I want ice. I want a freezing cold Coke. An announcement with an apology in English would be civilized but I've lost all perspective by now and no one is allowed to get their bags and get off this vessel until the ambulance pulls away with the passenger. I finally get to my bag and roll it and another heavy tote I am trying to balance on it out onto the scorching pavement where there are no cabs. Taxi strike. The obscenities in my head are endless and unfiltered. Where exactly is the blankety blank blank subway and how am I going to cross the 6 lanes of midday traffic to the entrance, figure out how to buy a ticket and figure out what stop I am supposed to get off when my iPhone is almost out of juice???
I manage into the station and figure out the ticket. I have the address to the hotel and guess the station by reference to the Acropolis Museum, where I know I am staying a few blocks away for one night. I transfer lines and then emerge to more sweltering heat next to the Museum. I call the hotel and ask them to send a porter but alas, this is Greece and the country is on a taxi strike so I have clearly lost my mind in assuming that a porter is going to fetch an American tourist from the escalator of the subway as a concession for not being able to procure public transport at the port to their door. I get the walking instructions to the hotel from the subway stop and keep dragging my bags in the heat. The streets are marked in Greek, not Latin letters but I know the transliteration of my street and recognize many of the letters. I get to the bottom of a long hill, having approached and then passed the Acropolis on the hill on my right and I know something is wrong. I approach the park ranger kiosk and ask them about the address and they point me back up the hill. I am almost in tears. And I am NOT taking the rocks out of the bag thatI brought back from Paros. I already screwed up my shoulder in Japan dragging this same bloody bag on/off 3 trains and a ferry each way to Naoshima in February and I am NOT going to succumb to a taxi strike, 100 degree heat and a lack of preparedness.
I drag my sorry self back up the hill, angling for shade and a level sidewalk until I get to the street where I was supposed to turn but the sign is missing. I finally get to the hotel and get myself into a shower, where I return to civilization and plan a night out in Plaka. On my way back from dinner, I see a couple that are surely American, rolling their bags in the same direction of my hotel. I ask them if they are going there and sure enough, they are also dealing with the taxi strike having just gotten off the ferry from Naxos, the island next to where I was the previous two weeks. I give them the business card for gorgeous taverna (Psara's) where I have just finished eating my last Greek dinner and insist they try it.
The next morning, I watch the sun rise on the Acropolis from my window and enter the park as it opens, before the morass of humanity arrives by the busload. Here are some snaps of my last adventures in Atticus:
Hadrian's Arch and the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus beyond it, and both of them the next morning from Acropolis Hill.
As one climbs up Acropolis Hill, one of the first sites is the Dionysos Theatre. The theater in ancient Greek culture began around 550 and 220 BC in the city of Athens, the political center of Greece at that time. Originally used to celebrate the festival of Dionysus, it was expanded and was exported to colonies around Athens to promote cultural identity in Greece.
This is the Erechtheum on the north side of the flat summit of the hill, built about 420 BC which housed earlier cults. This is the south view with six maiden figures (caryatids) supporting the roof. These are actually concrete replacements with five of the original caryatids in Acropolis Museum and the sixth in the British Museum. Due to the saga of the turtle ferry and the taxi strike, there was no time to see the original caryatids in Athens but on a recent business trip to London, I got close one of the ladies that Lord Elgin brought to the UK in 1816 and wondered what it was doing so far from home:
Here are some details from the other side of the Erechtheum (back on the Acropolis):
This is the Temple of Athena Nike, originally built in the 6th century BC but destroyed by the Persians in 48o BC. The reconstruction on the original footprint of the temple was erected between 447-406 BC.
Here are some snaps of the Parthenon, which is visibly in the midst of restoration:
I enjoyed an amazing day trip to the ancient island of Delos and then an afternoon in Mykonos before I left the Cyclades. Delos was outrageous and I have too many photos to upload and explain....if you are truly interested, pls Google it b/c so many other enthusiasts have uploaded their images online and gone to painstaking detail to describe every monument and ruin. It's fascinating and I can't imagine spending time in the Cyclades and not seeing Delos. By the time we pulled into the Mykonos harbour, my camera battery was toast so I only captured a few snaps:
And these were shot late in the afternoon in a nearby Byzantine village of Lefkes in Paros the next day:
I'll be back. I hope the austerity measures have had a positive impact by then.
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