Today we awoke to a bright and sunny day in Athens, Greece. The ship actually docks in Pireus but it is only about 15 minutes or so from the center of Athens. We didn’t have time for breakfast so we grabbed a muffin and headed off to meet our tour group for a long day of sightseeing. Our tour guide was Thanos, who was a slightly younger version of the dad from My Big Fat Greek wedding…and he admitted that he would sound like him at times when explaining the meanings of some words. So we took the scenic route (which means nap time in Greek) towards Athens. Along the way we saw several little ports that have been used since the days of antiquity. In one spot you could see the ancient pier submerged and Thanos explained that the sea level has risen about 4 feet since the time of the Ancient Greeks. Of course the cost line was gorgeous and except for the crystal clear water, the cliffs reminded us of home. So we drove for about an hour towards the cliff top temple to the Greek god of the seas Poseidon. Needless to say it was a beautiful place overlooking the Aegean Sea. We were given little history lessons about the ancient times and about the local foliage and economy. The most interesting story was about how the Aegean Sea got its name. In ancient times there was a Greek King by the name of Aegean. The legend says that when the Persians conquered the area, every so often they would take a few Greeks to be sacrificed to a monster that had the body of a human and the head of a bull. This lasted for several years until one time, the kings son decided to volunteer to be sacrificed. He took with him a spear and vowed to kill the monster. His father told him that he would wait upon the top of this cliff, where the temple to Poseidon now stands and await his return. He told his son that if he was successful he was to change the traditionally black sails of the ship (for mourning the deaths of those sacrificed) to white sails. Well his son was successful in killing the monster but was so busy celebrating on his way home that he forgot to change the sails. When his father King Aegean saw the ship returning with black sails, he assumed his son had not been successful and unable to bare the thought of living without his son, he plunged off the cliff into the sea and to his death.
So that is the best story I have for today. We left the temple as the clouds started making their way in. We stopped for buffet lunch at a hotel. The food was good so I can’t really complain but not really anything special and definitely not anything uniquely Greek so that was a little disappointing. After lunch it was a short ride around town to let out food digest before hiking up the acropolis. Thanos showed us some typical areas that middle class Greek citizens would live in. The towns were cramped with cars and people and, as in most places in Europe, the people here mostly lived in apartments. The city was not impressive and did not strike us as somewhere we would like to come back to. The picture that most people have of whitewashed walls with blue awnings is not seen here, not even along the coast. These are found only on the Greek isles. We stopped at the site of the original Olympic stadium in Athens. According to the legend of the marathon, this is where the first one ended. Legend says that a Greek warrior, after beating the huge odds against them and defeating the Persians at the battle of Marathon, he ran 26.2 miles back to Athens to give the good news. After spitting out the words “we won” he fell down and died. So, that is why the marathon is 26.2 miles.
Next stop was the acropolis. On top of the acropolis, which means “high city” stands the Parthenon, the temple to the goddess of wisdom, Athena. The Parthenon is considered the finest temple of ancient world. There are tons of interesting facts about the construction of the temple and I highly recommend looking it up if you are interested. I won’t go into all the details, but there are few cool things that really impressed me. For instance, the columns lean slightly inward, to draw people in and make it look inviting. If you were to draw a straight line up towards the sky from the center of each column the lines would meet at about 3,000 feet and that point would be directly above dead center of the Parthenon. The fact that this was done intentionally, with no computers and no zero to work with when making the calculations, is mind boggling to me. There are several others, but I will leave them for you to discover!
So we roamed around, and once again I took way too many pictures and I love all of them. We were happy that the clouds had rolled in and the temperature was nice for our walk up the hill. It was a great day. Thanos dropped us back at the pier at 5:30 and we took a short nap. After dinner we stood out on the deck and watched the lights of Athens fade away. Tomorrow we arrive in Ephesus (Izmir) Turkey and I am really excited for this. I think it will be culturally the most unique city we have seen so far and we don’t have any tours so we just get to roam around! It should be fun.
I do have to admit that we are getting a little worn out and seem to have lost a little of the luster we had at the beginning of the trip. The places are beautiful and amazing and awesome but I think the excitement we had is fading a little. It seems like we have been gone forever and we are kind of used to the fact that everyday we wake up to some different city and some more cool stuff. We have to really remind ourselves where we are on the planet and how cool this is. We are tired and worn. Maybe tomorrow will spark up some more interest being in such a different city. We’ll see.
