Urban Outcast Music Discovery #12 - When You're Gone by Amanda Shires + 24 Frames by Jason Isbell. Two songs this time because, well you'll see... A talented couple who appeared together twice on one of my favorite podcasts, Death, Sex, and Money, before I realized that they both had songs waiting to be posted on the blog.
Athens:
There are more promising ways to start an international trip: Airplane shuffling gave us an extra five hours to bask in the glory of Heathrow airport and we finally touched down in Athens at 3 am. On the home stretch our friendly taxi driver explained that he needed to stop for gas but didn't bother to follow through on the ruse and instead came out of the shop with a duffel bag and stuffed it into the trunk. That woke us up! Fortunately, we made it to the hotel without participating in any (further) drug deals or arms smuggling.
Day 1 - Establish The Ground Game:
Its not clear if our tendency to walk everywhere spawns from an effort to better connect with a new place or an unhealthy aversion to spending a couple euros. Either way we set the bar as high as my still soft self could handle at about 10 miles a day. For our Athens appetizer we perused sites encompassing a mere 3,500 years of history. The Acropolis (above) starts the clock at 1,400 BC as a Mycenaean fortress. Skipping right over the ancient Greeks, we hit the Roman imitations:
Emperor Hadrian was an early grecophile and built up an early example of the gated subdivision (above) surrounding the Temple of Olympian Zeus that was also completed during his reign. Only 16 of the original 104 columns are standing from Greece's largest temple but its football field footprint is preserved. Supposedly, democratic Athenians thought it was hubris to build on such a scale but the Romans suffered no similar qualms.
If its possible to have an engineering man crush across a couple thousands years, Hadrian has my vote. A fan of the road and funding mega projects, he spent almost his entire life traveling the empire, working to improve its defenses and taking a personal interest in designing better towns. During some future rainy winter he will get his own post as his work has also popped up in our previous travels. In Scotland we walked along his wall which crossed the entire country. In Italy we wandered through another example of his planned communities at the port of Ostia and marveled at his version of the Pantheon. In Athens the list of his public works included temples as well as a grand library (one wall in the top left picture below).
Athens:
There are more promising ways to start an international trip: Airplane shuffling gave us an extra five hours to bask in the glory of Heathrow airport and we finally touched down in Athens at 3 am. On the home stretch our friendly taxi driver explained that he needed to stop for gas but didn't bother to follow through on the ruse and instead came out of the shop with a duffel bag and stuffed it into the trunk. That woke us up! Fortunately, we made it to the hotel without participating in any (further) drug deals or arms smuggling.
Its not clear if our tendency to walk everywhere spawns from an effort to better connect with a new place or an unhealthy aversion to spending a couple euros. Either way we set the bar as high as my still soft self could handle at about 10 miles a day. For our Athens appetizer we perused sites encompassing a mere 3,500 years of history. The Acropolis (above) starts the clock at 1,400 BC as a Mycenaean fortress. Skipping right over the ancient Greeks, we hit the Roman imitations:
If its possible to have an engineering man crush across a couple thousands years, Hadrian has my vote. A fan of the road and funding mega projects, he spent almost his entire life traveling the empire, working to improve its defenses and taking a personal interest in designing better towns. During some future rainy winter he will get his own post as his work has also popped up in our previous travels. In Scotland we walked along his wall which crossed the entire country. In Italy we wandered through another example of his planned communities at the port of Ostia and marveled at his version of the Pantheon. In Athens the list of his public works included temples as well as a grand library (one wall in the top left picture below).
Skipping ahead to the era of Byzantine/Crusader/Ottoman rule, the old city is littered with small churches that feel out of place sandwiched between the grand monuments of the ancients and the modern city. Athens was well on its way to becoming an irrelevant, backwater village during this period.
Finally, there was the little burb of Anafiotika, built into the slope of the Acropolis by Greek islanders answering the call for labor from Greece's new king in the 1800's. The little alleys still retain their island vibe and great views.
Day 2 - Plato's Athens
Started the morning with the Greek Agora, the cultural hub of the old city. The site is big enough and opened early enough that it felt like it was just us and the guy with the world's best weed wacker job. Maybe you get jaded quickly but, in my commitment to accuracy, I spent a considerable time scrolling through Google's opinion on the best weed wacker jobs and nothing came close.
Started the morning with the Greek Agora, the cultural hub of the old city. The site is big enough and opened early enough that it felt like it was just us and the guy with the world's best weed wacker job. Maybe you get jaded quickly but, in my commitment to accuracy, I spent a considerable time scrolling through Google's opinion on the best weed wacker jobs and nothing came close.
Next up was the Kerameikos Cemetery which is more accurately described as a main thoroughfare through the city wall that Athenians spruced up by surrounding it with monuments to their dead.
Finished up the day with the main event, the Acropolis. Its a vast site with theaters, temples, shrines, caves, and hordes of fellow tourists. Hope you like marble:
Not sure if I am more disgusted with the Turks for storing munitions in the Parthenon or the Venetians for shelling it but this historical crime is still making a good jigsaw puzzle for the archaeologists. The first Parthenon suffered a similar fate when it was destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC. As I am sure you remember this occurred shortly after King Xerxes finished off the 300 dudes in muscle suits and spray tans. A few of the column pieces from this bad day are still visible in the Acropolis wall:
All of this history tickling my neurons and an untimely virus combined to provide the most vivid fever dreams/delusions I have ever experienced. As a consolation, I got to live in the plot of the Athenian historical fiction "The Last of The Wine" for a whole night. I couldn't save Athens from the Spartans but that probably just reflects my lack of imagination.
Day 3 - Wait, There Is More?
Still a little groggy, I left my armor in the hotel and we headed to the National Archaeological Museum to see all of the relics that have been pulled from the rubble or the sea. Clearly not myself, I didn't take pictures but my two favorite were bronzes pulled from the sea that are believed to be from the 2nd century BC and the 5th century BC respectively (thanks internet).
Day 3 - Wait, There Is More?
Still a little groggy, I left my armor in the hotel and we headed to the National Archaeological Museum to see all of the relics that have been pulled from the rubble or the sea. Clearly not myself, I didn't take pictures but my two favorite were bronzes pulled from the sea that are believed to be from the 2nd century BC and the 5th century BC respectively (thanks internet).
On the way back we stepped down into a basement for our most authentic Greek meal. No menu, you get what the old man is brewing while he chats up the only other patron. Nobody warns you how much passion goes into any conversation between locals and it often sounds like blows are imminent until someone cracks a smile... its a little unnerving, especially to someone who struggles with eye contact. Lunch came with what we thought was expired wine but nope, turns out its just retsina, a white wine that has been poisoned with pine resin. Originally, the resin was an ancient technique to seal the tops of clay wine vessels to prevent spoilage and its continued existence is two thousand years of proof that people have trouble accepting change.
In the afternoon we hit the Panathenaic Stadium, the site of Athens own four year games and rebuilt in marble by the Romans. It was refurbished again in the late 1800's for the modern Olympics and can seat close to 80,000 fans who aren't too concerned with personal space. The archway in the bottom right corner leads through ancient tunnel into a museum that houses a display of all the modern Olympic torches while the before and after picture below has a shot from the first day of the 1896 Olympics. For sports nuts, this is the best temple in Athens.
In the afternoon we hit the Panathenaic Stadium, the site of Athens own four year games and rebuilt in marble by the Romans. It was refurbished again in the late 1800's for the modern Olympics and can seat close to 80,000 fans who aren't too concerned with personal space. The archway in the bottom right corner leads through ancient tunnel into a museum that houses a display of all the modern Olympic torches while the before and after picture below has a shot from the first day of the 1896 Olympics. For sports nuts, this is the best temple in Athens.
Day 4 - A Little Peace And Quiet
In three days we had not ventured more than a mile from our hotel in any direction but the constant buzz and threat of incoming scooters on the sidewalks had us ready for a little different pace. We dropped the plan to visit Delphi and instead headed to the port to catch a ferry to Hydra. The biggest selling points were the presence of three vehicles on the whole island and a relative lack of archaeological sites (because I can't help myself). The waters were absurdly blue, the mules were friendly, and it made for a great day of recuperation before the second big push of rubble scrambling.
In three days we had not ventured more than a mile from our hotel in any direction but the constant buzz and threat of incoming scooters on the sidewalks had us ready for a little different pace. We dropped the plan to visit Delphi and instead headed to the port to catch a ferry to Hydra. The biggest selling points were the presence of three vehicles on the whole island and a relative lack of archaeological sites (because I can't help myself). The waters were absurdly blue, the mules were friendly, and it made for a great day of recuperation before the second big push of rubble scrambling.
Day 5 - Round 2
Jumped on a bus bound for Nafplio, the original capital of modern Greece for all of five years before the first king said, "this is silly" and moved the government back to Athens. Its also the home to three separate fortresses/castles as the town has a long history of changing hands (the short story: Byzantium, Crusaders, Venetians, Ottomans, Venetians, Ottomans, Greeks, Germans, Greeks).
After scarfing some souvlaki, our typical $3 lunch, we picked the oldest castle for our intro to the town. We have moved out of the marble era but if you have made it this far, I guess you will also be ok with a lot of grey rocks... Castle #1 was the oldest of the three but is probably most notable for providing great views of #2 and #3. Its an undeveloped site which meant unlimited access and fortunately we didn't learn about the vipers until Day 6.
Day 6 - Troy's Doom
The hilltop fortress of Mycenae has stood for over 3,500 years and at its peak in 1,350 BC was estimated to be a megacity of the era at over 30,000 people. If there is any truth to the Troy legends, Mycenae sent the fleets over to Anatolia for a Homeric smack down. I also suspect the city of housing an unusual abundance of engineers. There is not much beauty in what has survived but the shear scale of their works led later Greeks to claim that giants must have built their walls.
The hilltop fortress of Mycenae has stood for over 3,500 years and at its peak in 1,350 BC was estimated to be a megacity of the era at over 30,000 people. If there is any truth to the Troy legends, Mycenae sent the fleets over to Anatolia for a Homeric smack down. I also suspect the city of housing an unusual abundance of engineers. There is not much beauty in what has survived but the shear scale of their works led later Greeks to claim that giants must have built their walls.
Several of the large burial chambers have survived intact (although looted). The biggest collection of golden goodies at the National Archaeological Museum actually came from the more modest graves nearby. The largest tomb stands 45 feet tall and was the largest dome in the world for over a thousand years. The lintel stone which anchors the entrance weighs over 120 tons and I wish a camera could transmit the goosebumps.
Day 7 - Stairmaster Challenge
Its over 900 stairs to reach the fortress of Palamidi from Nafplio but that just earns you the right to climb a bunch more as you explore the eight separate bastions set up for interlocking defense. Originally constructed by the Venetians from 1711 to 1714, it was a giant waste of treasure and conscripted labor as both times it fell to stealth. This time I do blame the Venetians, you do not name one of the bastions "Achilles" and then give it the lowest section of wall, that is just asking to be embarrassed.
Hunger finally flushed us out of the fortress and back into town, just in time to catch the boat to Bourtzi Castle. Bourtzi is bite sized compared to its companions and still recovering from many years as a hotel.
Day 8 - The End Game
Our last day was primarily focused on starting the trek home but before we left I wanted to compare the Nafplio jetty to the Westport model. It was a beautiful morning with the fishermen out in force. I even think there was someone going after sand shrimp in the mud. The wife is not a huge fan of rock hopping but I left her in the company of serenading fishermen (a serious deficiency in my own fishing techniques).
Never a fan of a coherent narrative, here are also a couple random shots from the trip home. The first needs no explanation. The second is from the Athens Airport museum where they display some of the artifacts found during construction, because you cannot drop a shovel in Greece without hitting history. The most interesting item was a 4th century BC bee-keeping pot from the days when men were men, women were women and either one could order the slave to go get the honey...
If you made it this far, you are a true glutton for punishment but I thank you for your attention and I apologize for the delay. Leaving out photos of old stuff is an exquisite form of torture to me and I am looking forward to returning to more manageable posts about Washington adventures in the near future!!
** I also apologize for the low resolution on the photos but wanted to make sure Blogger didn't blow a fuse**
** I also apologize for the low resolution on the photos but wanted to make sure Blogger didn't blow a fuse**