Day 84: On Being a Classics Nerd

We visisted two important ancient sites on this day, the more archaeologially interesting Pergamon, and the more historically interesting (to me at least) Troy. We visited the Troy site first, and I was fully aware that as ruins go it was pretty crude still. Despite that, just being that it's Troy is incredibly cool for me, and made it the more exciting of the two visits. The others in my group were, as expected, a lot less familiar with the history and legend surrounding it, but even expecting that some of their questions/comments made me feel a mix of amusement and horror. Things like:
"So did the Trojans speak Turkish?"
"Is that the real wooden horse they used?" (At a big model by the entrance)"
and about 20 of "In the movie Troy....".

I explained with great fervor that the movie is nothing like the Iliad, and the Iliad is nothing like real history, but they always kept coming back the the movie... My passion on the subject amused our guide at least. (PS Should any of the people from my tour ultimately read this, I'm sorry! I'm making fun of myself for caring so much, not of you for not knowing - ok - maybe making fun of you just a little :p).

The excavation goes on, but right now the site is largely just the remains of walls. It is pretty neat to see the different layers and styles of walls as they uncover the different cities built overtop one another.



After a solid drive we went to the Pergamon acropolis. While I wasn't as familiar with it, it had an important role in the Hellenistic period. It had the second largest library (after Alexandria), the first hospital for mental illness, the steepest stadium of the ancient world and invented an early type of parchment on calfskin that eventually led to vellum. The site was fun to play around in because it was built around the top of the mountain so there were a lot of steep climbs. The archaeological sits in Turkey are much more open and new than some of the others I've visited. Most of the places only have a fraction of the site revealed so far, and there are no issues with my climbing all over things (I'm very careful not to damage anything!)

Streets of Athens: Unrest and Street Art

Since I was a bit nervous about visiting Greece with all of its troubles lately, I wanted to write a quick post giving my impression after being there for awhile, and to post some of the huge amount of street art and graffiti around the city. The only place I really sensed any trouble at all was in Athens. In Santorini and the places we visited on my tour there was a sense that there were less tourists than normal, but it's also still off-season somewhat, so it could be a mix of both factors.
In Athens things were a lot different. The lower amount of tourists was obvious. I ate at a restaurant Monday to watch the France-England soccer match, and in the 90 or so minutes I was there (7:00-8:30 or so) there was only one other person. There was also a very heavy police presence, especially in some areas. My hostel was on one of the major shopping streets, and there were often 20+ police along the street, grouped in 2-5 at intersections. Some looked similar to the ones I'm used to from Canada, but others had SMGs, riot shields and cannisters of tear gas clipped to their vests. I only came across one small peaceful protest while I was there, but there was a subtle feeling of unrest.
Honestly though, I think it's still a beautiful trip destination. I never had the feeling that I was going to get stranded there or get caught up in violence or have my money suddenly become useless. I don't know what the future holds for them, and the situation is still likely to change, but I found all the people friendly and the prices were the best I've found in Europe so far.

Now some of the art! When I was in Rome I was interested in how much of the best art seemed to be stencilists, and Athens is completely different. The stencils I saw were small generic ones, and mostly not terribly interesting. As I mentioned before there is graffiti everywhere, and a lot of the art is pretty simple, crude stuff - but there are also a lot of good freehand painters around. I didn't see any art by people I know so far, but the styles were very distinct and you could easily pick out which pieces were done by the same person. In Istanbul I've already seen some things by one of the guys I also saw in Athens (as well as a very cool Space Invader tile when I was on the shuttle bus that I'll have to try to find again). There was also a lot of darker art in Athens, which I guess is a reflection of the political troubles.

Day 78: Exploring Athens

This was my one full day in Athens. Since the Parthenon museum is closed Mondays I'm planning to visit the Parthenon as well as the museum on Tuesday morning before my flight to Istanbul. After so much time in Rome then visiting excavation sites around Greece I wasn't too keen on spending my day at more ruins, so I decided to spend the morning just hanging out and exploring the city. Since my hostel is very close to the Acropolis I decided to climb up there first to search for inspiration...


Ah! Inspiration!

I worked my way towards Lycabetus Hill following random streets, and of course documenting the good street art I found along the way. The street art in Athens is a bit weird. Most cities have small areas with graffiti and street art - often hidden away in alleyways and other out of the way areas. In Athens, it's *everywhere*. I guess painting over it is futile, because even the main shopping areas are tagged everywhere. It feels like you're walking in the slums, but feels completely safe at the same time because there are pedestrians all around. I'll do a seperate post with some of the art from town.

Once I got to the base of Lycabetus the actual hike up was very fast and easy since they have a winding path of steps up the slope. It probably only took me 10 minutes to walk up, and the view of the city on all sides was an upgrade of the view from the Acropolis.



I wanted to visit the National Archaeological Museum when it opened at 1:30, so I had some lunch and checked out some shops around the museum until then. The museum had 4 major sections on sculpture (yay!), prehistoric finds, pottery (less yay) and a special exhibit on the Antikythera Shipwreck.

I loved the sculpture section as usual, and can check a few more pieces from my art history class off the list of ones I've seen in person now.



A lot of the pottery was very similar, but it had a nice big collection of pieces from Akotiri, which was interesting since I had visited the site where they were found on Santorini.



The special exhibit was pretty cool too. It had the famous Antikythera Mechanism (google it!) and lots of media on the analysis of it and different mock ups that had been built from the scans of it. The sculptures were neat as well, as the parts buried in sand underwater were perfectly preserved while the exposed parts were eaten away by the water and sea life, creating these eerie Two-Face (as in the Batman villain) like characters.




After the museum I finally got a haircut at some tiny Albanian barber's place for 4 euros. I wandered through the big park in the city and quickly checked out Hadrian's Arch and the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus nearby.



That was about it for the day.

Day 77: Awe and Luck

Like the title, today involves two distinct topics, so I'll begin with the Awe part.
I mentioned that we ended yesterday in Kalamaka. Kalamaka is located at the base of Meteora, which is a series of amazing natural rock formations in central Greece. The formations on their own are among the most beautiful things I've seen in nature, but what makes them even more amazing is that Byzantine monks made their homes on the tops of them to be closer to God. At the start, they camped out in natural caves along the cliff face, but eventually the started building monstaries at the top, lifting up materials rock by rock using ropes and winches. Now, 6 of the monasteries are still in use by Greek Orthodox priests and nuns. We visited two of them - a monastary and a convent, and since it was Sunday we got to spy in on one of the services in progress. There isn't much point to chronology or description beyond that. Just pictures.







As nice as some of those pictures look, they can't do the place justice. 6 months ago I had only the vaguest idea of Meteora, and now it's probably my favourite place that I've been so far. This tour couldn't really do it justice though. I would love to come back and just spend a week hiking along the slopes.

The luck part has mostly been me messing things up and managing to come out largely unscathed in the end. The first thing was that with how things turned out I was only going to have one full day in Athens. That wasn't the problem itself, as I figured I could see what I wanted in one busy day. The problem happened when I realized the one day I had was on Monday, when all the museums in Athens are typically closed. After a bit of frantic consideration into changing my flight to Turkey I did a bit of further research and learned that the main museum I was interested in switches to summer hours this week, so for the first time it's open on Monday. The Parthenon Museum is still closed, but I think I can squeeze that in Tuesday before my flight.

The second event was totally my fault. My tour bus dropped me off this afternoon, and as I started walking to my hostel I realized I had left my camera on the bus. It was very hot out, and by the time I found my hostel I was dripping sweat. I checked in, and asked to use their phone to call the tour company and try to get them to find and leave behind my camera before the bus took off somewhere - only to learn the phone was broken. I borrowed somebody's cell phone since it was a local number and called them and made arrangements. In the end it all worked out and I went to the hotel the tours leave from and picked it up. This was the first time I've left something valuable behind though, so I'm glad I got it back.

Whirlwind day tomorrow as I explore Athens. It's a bit funny to me that this is my third night in Athens, but only the first where I'll have a bed.

Day 76: Delphi

Things have been a bit of a rollercoaster lately, but I'll try to catch up the last two days. There has been a lot of time on the road both days, but the big highlight yesterday was definitely the archaeological site at Delphi as well as the related museum. Since we slept nearby we got to the site early in the morning before things were too hot. It has been very hot the last few days, but doing things in the morning and the breeze from the high elevation made it survivable.

There were two major sections to the site. The first, with the ring of pillars is the bit you see in the pictures the most - even though nobody really knows what it was for. One amusing bit is that the ancient Greeks tried three times to build a temple of Athena at this location, and each time it got destroyed by landslides and falling rocks from the cliffs above. After the third destruction, the Greeks decided that Athena must not like the location and gave up. Now, the giant boulder that destroyed it the third time is still there - with a feral cat and her kittens living beneath it.




Next we went up a bit higher to the much larger section. It included the Temple of Apollo, where the oracle spoke Apollo's predictions of the future, the site for the Pythian Games, an auditorium, and numerous treasury buildings and smaller temples. It also provides a very nice view down the mountain at the valley below. Oh - and the Omphalos! Very cool.





Next was the museum, which was small but had a lot of metal and stone work from the archaelogical site. The most famous things were the other Omphalos (the Roman one) and the bronze sculpture of the Charioteer.



After all this, we did an exchange of people as some of our group headed back to Athens and we picked up some new people. We then took off north for the town of Kalambaka. The one quick stop along the way was a quick visit to the famous battle site of Thermopylae (most recently known from the movie '300', although that one was a tad embellished).


We finally got to Kalambaka and I enjoyed a nice swim in the pool. Impressive sights were to come, but I'll cover that in the next post, assuming I don't get too frustrated with the mosquitos devouring me right now.

Day 75: Olympia

Today we spent a lot of time on the road. In the morning we headed to the ancient site of the Olympics - Olympia. The ruins there were quite extensive and for this part I found our guide much more knowledgable, and I actually learned a lot. Unfortunately there were lots of groups of school kids also there on field trips, and with one week of school left in Greece they had a lot of energy. The site also had a small museum. For the most part it wasn't too exciting, but it did contain the original of the famous sculpture Hermes and the Infant Dionysus by Praxiteles.



Next we started heading north, eventually crossing over a fancy bridge from the Peloponnese into central Greece. Olympia had been pretty green with lots of trees, but as we went north things got much more barren. It really is impressive that such an amazing civilization could grow out of such a dry and desolate environment.


Shortly after crossing the bridge we stopped for a break at a shop that specialized in homemade sweet things, especially in cakes and other pastries. They had a huge variety and getting a slice was quite cheap, so the place was a big hit with the group.


We continued east, hugging the coast. The view was constantly great as we followed the road up and down over moutains, always next to the water. We got to Delphi around 7pm, which is where we're spending the night. We'll be doing the actual archaeological site tomorrow morning, but I went for a walk through town before dinner to check things out a bit and take some pictures of the view and a few of the locals. (Add Delphi cat to the list)

Day 74: In Myth

As I mentioned on facebook, I spent a long night sitting at the port in Athens. I spent most of the time reading halfway through a spare book I had on my tablet, and was left alone for the most part. In the morning I caught the metro to where my bus tour departs, and took off with it around 8am. I slept through much of our guide's opening background on Greece - but the bits I did catch were nothing new for me. I haven't found the guide the best so far. Her english isn't the best, and she's said some things that to me are suspect at best. I questioned her about a few of the things that disagreed with what Ì'd been taught - not to be that jerk that questions the "expert", but because I was genuinely curious if Greeks had a different view of things than outside teachings. In general I just found that she was probably wrong, and so I'm taking some of what she says as a bit suspect. Going forward I'm not going to question her anymore I think, just do my own thing.

The first stop was the Corinth Canal, which creates a water connection across the Peloponese.


Next was a drive into the hills to visit the ruins of Mycenae. This part was particularily exciting for me, as Mycenae was such an important city in history and myth. There was a small museum and all the ruins, as well as an absolutely pitch black cistern that I insisted on climbing to the bottom of in the dark. I would take a picture with my flash and then memorize the layout as best I could and take a few more steps -eventually working my way to the bottom.



We continued our tour with a visit to the acoustic marvel that is the amphitheater at Epidaurus. I didn't try any singing, but the sound was pretty amazing.


The last stop of the day was the seaside city (and former capital of Greece) of Nafplion. We had some free time to wander around the city, and it had some pretty cool streets and shops. Our hotel was a short drive away and it's a very classy place. White marble everywhere, a huge pool, a private pianist, etc. Dinner was a huge greek buffet at the hotel, and have a room to myself (with 3 beds) for the night. The contrast is even bigger for my night sitting outside on the docks last night.