The Acropolis
We checked out of the hotel this morning after a quick breakfast - the hotel is nice, but I gotta admit that the one thing I think I’ll miss most about it is the black bacon.
Reminder: you can click any image and it will open fully on your screen without needing to scroll
I know what you’re thinking: OMG, BURNT!!! But it’s not. It’s just barely crispy. The bacon station on the buffet is divided into the regular bacon and black bacon (there’s one slice of regular bacon on the plate so you can see the difference). I thought the black bacon was burnt, so I would get the regular. It isn’t crispy, though, and even though I preferred floppy bacon when I was a children, I like it a bit crisp now. So I tried a slice of the black bacon, figuring that burned would be slightly better than floppy.
But it’s not burnt. It’s slightly crispy, but not obliterated like you’d expect. It is, however, absolutely freaking delicious. I think they might coat it in some kind of sweet coating like brown sugar or maybe honey before it’s cooked and it’s the caramelized sugar that gives it the colour. Dunno. I just know that I’m going to miss it.
So we checked out of the hotel and hopped aboard a big bus back into town, where we parked at the foot of the big rock in the middle of town known as the Acropolis. Up on top are the ruins of big marble temples celebrating the goddess Athena, where the city of Athens derives its name.
The largest and most famous is the Parthenon, which is being painstakingly restored as best as possible (notice the scaffolding). When I say “restored” I don’t mean that they’re going to put it back the way it was when it was new - rather, they’re gathering up all of the pieces they can find, figuring out where they go, then painstakingly reassembling them into the structure to restore it as much as possible.
If you get aggravated at putting together a jigsaw puzzle, then this job probably isn’t for you
Notice in the picture above, the different shades of marble. The marble is local and it’s brilliantly white, but 2500 years of weathering and sun turns it that pinkish-sand colour over time. The white bits are new marble that has been manufactured to hold in place the shards and pieces that they’ve put back into place. That building in the picture is the Propylaea (Προπύλαια), which was the gates that formed the entryway to the Acropolis. “Acropolis” means ‘high point of the city’ and it refers to the hill itself rather than the structures on it. In addition to the Propylaea, there is the Erechtheum (Ερέχθειο): the temple of Poseidon that housed the statue of Athena Polias.
The statue is no longer inside, but the Porch of Maidens is still there. (see next pic)
On the front of the bluff as you approach, there’s the Temple of Athena Nike, which has been restored about as far as it can be.
The big draw, however, the one temple that everyone knows, is the Parthenon
Yes, it’s massive. And the Greek architects at the time knew that the human eye will skew things at this scale. As the columns rise, the eye perceives distortion, even where none exists. To counter this, the columns lean in toward the centre ever-so-slightly and the ones on the corners lean on the diagonal. Thus, to the eye, they appear perfectly straight. It’s a neat trick - and one you’d swear was just a myth, except that they’ve got scaffolding around part of it, which IS vertical and you can see how the columns don’t follow that line.
Notice the vertical bars of the scaffolding are touching the column at the bottom, but are a good foot away from the column at the top.
It’s absolutely stunning to look at and be near, up on top of this hill overlooking the city.
Obviously, a lot of other folks think so, too, since we estimate there were at least 2,000 people up on that rock with us this morning. Even so, our guide gleefully informed us that “you’re lucky- it’s not that crowded today!”
From up here, you can see another temple way down on the ground, the Temple of Hephaestus (Ναός Ηφαίστου), the god of iron working and construction. It was built around the same time as the Parthenon, but is still largely intact due to it having been used as a church and other things for most of its history.
Zoomed-in for detail. The non-zoomed view from the Acropolis is below.
And for all the grandeur of the temples up here, the massive crowds and modern equipment (such as the crane inside the Parthenon) made it almost feel like a theme park installation. You could, with some effort, appreciate how ancient the structures are, but it didn’t give me the gut-punch of emotional impact that the Temple of the Olympian Zeus did the other day. However, there was one thing today that did: the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.
You approach it from a cliff above it and suddenly this just opens into view as you reach the edge. It took my breath away.
Without crowds milling around it and without modern machinery interspersed among the ruins, the majesty of this is unspoiled and the history hits you like a hammer. It’s not difficult at all to imagine the ancient Greeks filling the arena and listening to the music of the day. Yes, music. This was not a theatrical theatre, but a music hall. There was a roof on it, which is long gone now. Even today, it’s still used for concerts, which is why the seating has been restored with new materials. Even though the Parthenon has been on my bucket list since pretty much forever, this Odeon, which I didn’t even know was a thing before today, was my favourite thing I’ve seen in Athens.
After the Acropolis, we ditched the tour and headed over to catch the shuttle bus to the cruise ship. We had a few minutes to spare, so we sat down at a sidewalk cafe and ordered lemonade.
But it wasn’t really a sidewalk cafe - it was a sidewalk offshoot of the restaurant inside Athens WAS hotel. The lemonade was astonishingly good. I’m not normally a fan of lemonade, because most people make it way too sweet. This wasn’t. It was almost savoury, in fact. It was so good that we even looked up the restaurant… turns out, it’s got two Michelin stars! Who knew?
And that was a nice end to a nice morning. We caught the bus and made it to the ship, where we checked in and unpacked and enjoyed the feeling of being home. But more on that in the next post.