Athens was an interesting city. We, of course, went on the free walking tour there and learned so much about its history- which, not surprisingly, including being conquered by the ubiquitous Ottoman empire!
Again, I have to admit my ignorance and share some of the the biggest surprises that Athens had in store for me:
1) The ruins are not in great shape. Sure, they stood for thousands of years so obviously they are going to have some wear and tear, but things like Zeus’ temple are almost non-existent at this point. I really thought that they would be a little more complete, I am not sure why. Unfortunately, we were just a few centuries too late- most of the monuments stood fairly well until the 1600’s. Then those pesky Ottomans conquered the city and in order to help make the transition to living under the Ottoman empire a little easier, they tore down all the monuments to the Greek gods. Some things, like the Parthenon, have changed hands so many times and have been changed and had things taken, they have fallen into ruin a little more slowly, but the result is the same.
2) They continue to unearth ruins. I thought that they already knew where everything was and that they had finished excavating everything. Once again not sure where I got that idea- I guess I tend to think of Greece in Ancient history and present, but I don’t often think of the time in between where things got destroyed or buried. Our guide told us that there have been some issues with current excavations. In order to get to the ancient ruins they have had to go through other, more recent ruins that have just as much value historically- so the question becomes, who gets unearthed and what should they do with the other historically valuable ruins.
3) How quickly everything gets buried. In modern day Athens there is a square, it is a lovely square full of marble from all over the country, lined with frozen greek yogurt shops and souvlaki restaurants. One adorable little alley snakes through marking the modern day agora filled with touristy shops and restaurants. Anyway, during construction of the lovely square they found an underground river. But, not just any underground river, one that had clearly been used in the past, as stone archways and other signs of structure surrounded it. In fact it was used during the 11th century. Then buried over the course of time and only rediscovered in modern times! Its amazing to me that an entire river could be buried by rubble! And, it wasn’t just a little ways down, it was way down there! Lucky for us, there was a nice viewing window so we could enjoy the tiny buried river way down there.
While we were in Athens, we were lucky enough that the Denver Broncos played a morning game, which meant that the game came on at 8pm in Athens, a much more reasonable time than most of their games which come on around 3am. So, while we were in Athens I got to watch a Bronco game, live and in person with my mom! This has not happened in the US since probably last Christmas, usually we have to stick to phone calls after every play or, more often these days, face time, so it was a big deal and a lot of fun! The bad news was Danny Trevathan got hurt, but the upside of this was that “The Greek” (the team doctor) had to come out onto the field- Mom got such a kick out of watching The Greek in Greece! In order to make our football party more fun we picked up a few Greek beers and decided to make a pizza (because what is football without beer & pizza??). It was a Sunday, so most things in Athens were closed, including the big supermarket near us and we had to settle for a smaller market. The smaller market didn’t have pizza crust, so we decided to improvise and use the phyllo dough we had brought from Istanbul (a silly thing to bring, perhaps? Yes, but we had tons of it left after making our tasty apple tea turnovers and it came in very handy and made an excellent pizza, thank you very much!). We also picked up some veggies and cheese, which was easy enough but when it came time to pick out a meat we were in trouble. Nick and mom looked through all the meats, most of them were labeled only in Greek and few had pictures so it was quite a challenge. Ultimately they decided on a plastic wrapped tube with a picture of a carnival on it that they thought was sausage. It was such an adventure! We got home and made our delicious phyllo dough pizza, opened up our sausage…. and it was liverwurst! This was my first ever experience with liverwurst and while we were not sure how it would taste on our pizza, it actually turned out to be pretty delicious! And the Broncos won the game, which made it even better!
After our Athens adventure, we flew to Santorini- while we ended up sitting on the plane on the runway for about 45 minutes, when we did take off it was a very nice, very short 30 minute flight where the flight attendants practically ran down the aisles throwing snacks at us and then we landed.
Comments on this entry are closed.