This will be a shorter post as I didn’t have time to take notes for this day, so I’m mostly reconstructing the day from photos and memories.
We started off the day by walking to the hotel Lizy parents had lived when they were refugees in Greece. It has been renovated since they stayed there and now was a boutique hotel of some sort. I’ve posted a photo oof Lizy standing outside the hotel and the doorway from the hotel’s lobby to the outdoor patio.
After getting SIM cards from Vodafone, we took a taxi down to the Acropolis Museum. The Acropolis Museum houses artifacts from the Acropolis. The objects were either excavated from the ground or ripped off the structures and include things like statues, friezes, and gutter spouts. The museum first opened in 2009. It is built on top of Athenian ruins that you can view by taking a staircase underneath the museum and is included with the price of admission. The museum has big glass windows, from which you can see the Acropolis–source of the artifacts.
The museum’s main exhibition is on the second floor. It is mostly in chronological order, so the viewer can get a sense of how the artistic sensibility changed over time at the Acropolis. It starts with more simple, static statues and ends with the more detailed and evocative statues of the Greek Classical period.
Below is a statue from the pre-classical period. One can see it is standing still without much emotion.
Here’s a photo of me looking at some vases.
Here’s a photo of a miniature reconstruction of one of the frieze’s of the Parthenon.
And here’s a too size cast of the horse from that previous frieze found at the Acropolis.
This lion’s head was used as the spout one of the gutter’s of the Parthenon. To preserve the artifact, the archeologists have produced a reproduction of this artifact which is currently on the Parthenon.
Here’s a photo of the Caryatids, a set of female statues that were used to support a balcony of a building on the Acropolis. One was almost completely destroyed by an explosion during the Greek War of Independence. Another of the statues was taken by the British, which is source of tension between the Greeks and British. The missing statues is on display in the British Museum.
They had a recreation of the Acropolis using lego. It includes Gandalf from Lord of the Rings, who as far as I can tell never visited the Acropolis, but I think the inaccuracy can be forgiven.
We had a nice lunch at the museum restaurant. The balcony had a great view of the Acropolis which we took the opportunity to use as a background for a photo.
Lizy thought she was ordering a yoghurt and a pastry, but accidentally got two items of pudding consistency, which I thought was a funny lunch order, but she seemed to enjoy it. As our lunch was winding down our table was swarmed by seagulls that wanted our leftover crumbs. Unfortunately, I did not get a good photo of the birds as I was too startled in the moment.
After lunch we walked over to the Temple of Zeus. It was one of the ancient wonders of the world, but has been almost completely demolished over time. The site was in the process of being restored by the Greek government. I got a classic pushing up one of the columns photo ala the leaning tower of Pisa.
Near the temple we got a photo in front of Hadrian’s Arch. Hadrian was a Roman emperor who had an affinity for all things Greeks, so he built many grand buildings in Athens.
We spent a while wandering the Athenian downtown neighborhoods. Downtown Athens is a maze of many small side streets filled to the brim with stray cats. We were still tired from the time change, so we stopped for an early dinner at a restaurant that specialized in seafood. Here’s a food photo that Lizy took.
The food was a delicious capstone on a wonderful, but tiring first day.