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Tuesday November 27th, 2012: Athens and Old Corinth, Greece
Bob: I was excited to finally see the birthplace of democracy, and we had booked a tour that started with the Acropolis in Athens. Our tour guide was very good and pointed out the foundations of the "Long Wall" that connected the port of Piraeus with the city of Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars. Those walls had been torn down after Athens lost the war to Sparta, but it was exciting to see some concrete remains of those ancient events. We also passed by the 1896 Olympic stadium, which was apparently used for the finish of the Marathon in the recent 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. We also passed Greece's Parliament building, with their Tomb Of The Unknown Soldier out in front, on our way to the Acropolis, which was our first stop. The Acropolis is located on a small hill near the center of Athens. The bus parked at the foot of the hill and from there it was a moderately steep climb up to the top where the complex of temples is located. |
Monika: If it is Tuesday, it must be Athens...this really is turning into one of those trips. But I was psyched to see the Acropolis. We had opted for a tour that first stopped at the Acropolis, had some bus sight seeing in Athens and then went on to see the ruins and excavations at ancient Corinth. The ship, of course, docked in the harbor of Piraeus and we had a nice view of the harbor when we came in. Our tour was scheduled to meet at 7AM so we got up early and had breakfast before heading to our meeting place. We did not wait long before we escorted to our bus After a drive past the three harbors of Piraeus, we headed to Athens. In modern times Athens and Piraeus had grown so that now it was hard to tell where one ended and the other started . We drove past the old Olympia Stadium, where the first modern Olympic games were held, a statue of Lord Byron, the Parliament, and the University. |
Bob: Our guide paused several times on the way up the hill for people to catch their breath and to explain what we were looking at. Two old amphitheaters were located at the foot of the hill, and one of them was in good enough repair that it was still occasionally used for events. The other looked a bit more tattered and worn, with many of the benches sitting at odd angles or kind of sliding down the hillside. A bit further off below us was a small temple to Hephasus, the god of blacksmiths like the Roman Vulcan. I don't know if one can tour it, but from up above that temple looked completely restored. I imagine it appeared much the way it had 2,000+ years ago, which was very impressive, by the way. Finally we worked our way to the top of the Acropolis and entered through the Temple of Nike. We walked through the columns at the center of Nike's temple to reach the round and fairly flat hilltop. |
Monika: We reached the parking lot for the Acropolis around 8AM. Since it opened at 8 we were one of the first groups. Our guide was very knowledgeable and that made the whole experience very enjoyable. We had to walk up to the Acropolis, the highest point of the city. It was the place of several temples. Right at the big entrance gate was the temple to Nike, she of the shoes and swoosh emblem. At the foot of the bluff was one of the old theaters. You could see modern metal benches and indeed the theater was still being used. |
Bob: To our left stood the Eurecthean, a temple commemorating the contest between Poseidon and Athena to give mankind useful gifts and become the patron god of the city. Poseidon gave the gift of water, but it was brackish water like that in the aquifers below the hill and not that appealing. Athena gave the gift of the olive tree, whose fruit could be consumed or used to make olive oil, which was considered essential for keeping the little lamps that preserved the household fire alight. That illumination was considered essential for civilization, so Athena got the nod over Poseidon to become the main god for Athens. What a story! In any case, the statues of the Karytids, even though cast reproductions of the badly weathered originals, that supported the roof on one side of the temple, were quite exquisite. The Parthenon, the main temple to Athena, was huge but astonishingly dainty for such a large building. The Greeks of course used tricks of curves and perspective to make the building appear beautifully linear and well-proportioned, although in actuality the majestic columns are curved and even set to slant inward all the way around so as to make the building look straight when viewed from outside. |
Monika: Once inside the old rather impressive gate structure, I for my first close-up look of the Parthenon. Unfortunately there was scaffolding around the side so it was not so great for photography, but boy was it still impressive. The reason it had to be renovated was that during the first renovation, they used iron to put the marble pieces together. After the first winter, they found out why the original builders used lead. Iron expands with the heat and contracts with cold, marble and lead do not. So after one year of this, there were cracks in the renovated columns and the good people had to re-do the whole thing following the ancient builders way, i.e using lead. A smaller temple was called Eurecthean. Here Athena and Poseidon had a contest to see who would become the patron of the city. Athena gave the city an olive tree, Poseidon brackish water. Since the city had a good water supply from rivers that came out of the mountains they preferred the olive tree, a very useful tree. Thus the name of the city. After all this information, we had 45 minutes to enjoy the Acropolis, take pictures of the structures and views, and get ourselves back down to the bus. This small temple was rather pretty with statues of 5 Karytids on one side. We walked around it and then over to a viewpoint overlooking old Athens. |
Bob: We could not go inside the Parthenon as it was under a major refurbishment, but we could admire the outside. New pieces of marble that had been hewn to fit missing pieces of the old marble were stark white instead of the honey or cream color of the truly ancient marble, so that contrast was rather noticeable. Thus, from up close the Parthenon had a bit of a mottled complexion, but majestic nonetheless. The buildings were, of course, mere by-products of the ideas that were developed in Athens, the most important to my mind being democracy and the scientific, rational, analytic approach to the world. I enjoyed it for the ideas much more than the buildings, and was relieved to learn that the Athenians had built the Acropolis complex only with non-slave labor, and that ultimately about half of the citizens of Athens had worked on the construction during the main 20 years or so required to build it all. To me it was like being in the rift valley north of Reykjavik were the All Thing was the first western Parliament, another Great Idea. |
Monika: Coming back we had a wonderful view of the Parthenon with hardly a crane of scaffold in the picture. On the top were friezes of a horse and a man. I was happy to have again a camera with a good zoom. In addition it has wonderful anti-shake, so even at 26x my pictures come out clear. We also had some obligatory 'we were here' pictures taken. One of the ship's photographers was there and was nice enough to take a picture of us with our camera. There was also a graveyard of fallen columns and I could get a really good picture of a Dorian cap. People were looking over the edge of the cliff beyond the Parthenon. Down below was another really large old theater. This one had not been restored but it looked still in very good shape. But this was all the picture taking we had time for. And indeed we got to the bus just in time. But we were not the last persons, so we did not feel guilty. |
Bob: We took pictures until we ran out of time and then hustled back down the hill to our bus, which drove us a little over an hour westward to the site of ancient Corinth. Corinth was smaller than Athens and situated at the foot of a hill overlooking the Ionian Sea to the North and the Aegean Sea to the South. Apparently the ancients used chariots to pull the ships over the narrow (2-3 miles?) isthmus to save them the lengthy circuit around the Pelopponesian Peninsula. Even back then, it seems, they had dreamed of a canal between the two seas but it never got beyond the preliminary stages until Lesseps finished it in the late 1800s. We began our visit with a tour of the museum where many of the ancient artifacts are stored and preserved. It was nice to be able to see the statues, mosaics, friezes, and pottery really "up close and personal", so to speak. Much of the collection was not under glass, so I could also take pictures although using a flash was prohibited. But modern digital cameras are rather good at interior, non-flash photography, so we had good luck taking very nice photographs of the usual gods and goddess, but also memorials to important citizens, pottery depicting scenes from everyday life, and carved friezes depicting battles and so forth. I particularly liked a pot showing an ancient galley that clearly had two sails set to catch the wind, as I had not known that galleys carried sails. |
Monika: We had lunch at a resort at the beach on the Peloponnes. It was closed for the season, but opened up for a nice buffet lunch for our tour buses. There were all kinds of Greek foods and even some spaghetti. I mainly took the meatballs that were truly delicious. After lunch we drove over to the ruins of old Corinth. We first walked through a small museum that had interesting statutes and mosaics from the ruins. |
Bob: Outside we toured the actual site where ruins and fragments of ancient shops, streets, and temples abounded, waiting for the painstaking reconstruction efforts. The main temple was a Temple dedicated to Apollo and judging from the size of the few standing pillars at one end and the remaining stairs to the entrance at the other end, it must have been HUGE. They had also excavated the street from one gate of the city that lead down to the Ionian Sea, and our guide pointed out where the other gate with a street leading down to the Aegean Sea would have been located. |
Monika: We then walked through the ruins. They were smaller than Pompeii or even Herculaneum but had all the basics, and agora, a temple and some city streets. |
Bob: We capped off the day by stopping at a pottery store that had many reconstructions of the pieces we had just seen in museums. Ordinarily I detest the additional "shopping" experiences that are inevitably tacked onto these shore excursions, but in this case it was pleasant because it allowed me to see how the pots, statues, and so forth would have looked like when new back 2000 years ago. And the result is that they looked very, very pretty. So just like we learned from seeing the Terrace Houses in Ephesus, much of the artwork and decorations of the ancient western world are still very pleasant to a modern viewer. |
Monika: Our last stop was the Canal at Corinth that connected the Aegean with the Ionian Seas. In antiquity they had just hauled the boats across the Isthmus by chariot. But after the building of the Suez Canal the same builder started to build this one. The Aegean and Ionean Seas are at the same level, so they did not have to build any locks, but they sure had to build a deep, deep canal. The Isthmus is not very wide. We were at the Aegean side and could clear see the Ionean Sea and the bridge spanning the canal at that end. At the little gift store were we met our bus, I finally picked up some Ouzo and shot glasses and then it was back to the bus. A last stop was a pottery shop. I finally got a reproduction of a discus thrower. My father used to have one on his desk, so this reminded me of him. |
Bob: Once back on the ship we had dinner with Will and Cordie, and they had not had such a great experience with their guide that day. By exchanging info, however, we all kind of live and learn from each other and that type of exchange makes the trip more pleasant. After dinner we sat in the piazza in the ship's atrium to listen the very good string quartet, followed by a contortionist and a rousing number from the ship's two main singers and four of the dancers, which was an entertaining way to end the day. |
Monika: We had to hurry to get to dinner on time but made and enjoyed our dinner. Will and Cordie told us about their less successful tour in Athens, where their guide did not really give them any information. After dinner we listened to the really excellent string quartet in the Atrium. After the trio they had scheduled a performance of a contortionist and a small show of part of the ship's singers and dancers, 2 singers and 4 dancers. The contortionist was really amazing, it was one of the shows were you think she must have rubber for bones. The dancers and singers were also quite good and not too loud. We were sitting right at the performance area and really enjoyed the show. |
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