Athens (by Tash)

Finally we had 4 days in Athens were we could just stay put for more than a couple of nights.  We didn’t have much time to spare for Greece and decided in the end to make a brief stop in Athens before heading across to Turkey.   So to ensure our sanity over the 4 days we spent adequate time sleeping, playing computer games (improving our Worms’ skills) and venturing out to explore the place without days of ridiculous amounts of walking while not eating or drinking enough.  Doesn’t sound like our kind of travel!

So our first adventure took us to the Acropolis.  Lucky for us it was the end of the peak season and there was very few people scrambling across the ruins.  Most certainly more stray dogs then people and there were surprisingly very few street hawkers to bat off.

Although we have already seen multiple ruin sites by now, the Acropolis was really interesting.  It’s easy to see that a lot of damage has been done and they are continually trying to restore and preserve what’s left.  It leaves you wondering how much should they actually reconstruct.  I thought they seemed to be reaching a reasonable balance between the old and new to give the tourists an idea of what once stood upon this rock.  The views were fantastic and Athens sprawls across the valley and creeps up every hill it touches.  Again, it’s a pity about the smog.   I know everyone always talks about the Greek Islands, but are these covered with smog as well?  We didn’t have time to check them out but geez I hope not. 

From here we wondered down some rocks overlooking ancient agora.  Some scamming-looking guy made an attempt to steal my camera (I suspect anyhow) but there was no way I was handing the camera over to him to take a photo of us as he had requested.  He just looked far too dodgy.  So alas, I have no story of how I had to chase him miles and miles in an attempt to get it back but thank goodness my camera is still safely by my side. 

Ancient agora – more ruins.

Temple of Olympian Zeus – Quite impressive with its 17m high columns and it use to consist of 104 of them.   Not many are still standing today.

Now the shopping in Athens was really pleasant.  Wondering around the Plaka area at the base of the Acropolis was most enjoyable for me; Lots of cool silver jewellery, clothes and other touristy stuff.  I really wanted to buy some Roman style leather sandals that buckle up the leg.  They were cool, but way too expensive given I don’t know how many Toga parties I have left in my lifetime to use them.  I did take the opportunity to by a ridiculous beanie which I can’t wait to wear while watching hockey games in the middle of winter in Tassie.

The other thing I really enjoyed in Athens was the food; delicious salads, kebabs, meat platters and seafood.  On our last day we took the advice of the Lonely Planet and ventured to find some seafood on one of the small marinas near Piraeus.  Taking the metro to Piraeus was fine but we got a little lost from here and covered twice the distance to get from the harbour to Mikrolimano (small harbour) which the book recommended for some delicious seafood if you have time.   We got there in the end and it was quite nice and peaceful.  The seafood was good but you know, we’re from Tassie, you have to do damn good seafood to beat the stuff we get at home.  So I can’t wait for some Trevalla marinade from The Fish Bar when I get home.  Mmmm……..

We also had our obligatory Souvlaki from a local kebab shop.   While we were there in the line a customer went to get a drink out of the fridge.  In what seemed to be slow motion the cans came tumbling out, followed by the glass shelf and before we knew it glass was smashing all over the ground.  There were a few exchanges but mainly shrugging of shoulders, “I didn’t do it, I just went to get a drink out….” and the shop person going, “well….”  Anyhow, no harm done, we got our kebabs, the guy got his drink and the shop girl cleaned up the broken glass on the floor.  Seems fair…

We survived the kebab meat though which is promising, go tummy!!!  In fact the only bad food we had was a hot chocolate in the morning at our hotel which was free but tasted like crap, probably burnt milk.  I felt bad because the lady who made it was lovely and made huge big milkshake sized ones for us and we both took one sip and couldn’t stomach anymore.

Now we read that the National Archeological Museum in Athens is supposed to be “one of the world’s best”.   So given we had some free time we decided to check it out despite the museum fatigue that spread from every muscle in our bodies.    Anyhow, it’s got some great stuff from the Minoan times and it’s well presented.  The visit started off ok and we were a little confused as to why each room contained 2 staff members in the corner chatting away to each other.  We eventually went to go into one of the rooms and I was abruptly pushed back with ‘No, no, no’ and yet no explanation given as to what was going on.  Really rude and given the amount of staff around some sort of polite reason for why the room is off limits would have been handy.  So then we were doing our usual thing of taking a picture of our Wombat with a sculpture and sure enough we are told off.  “You can’t take photos of that thing”.  To which Marcus asked “Why not” and she replied “those are the rules”.  Now ok, there was a sign at the ticket desk which said that photos should not be taken of people in the gallery.  What we couldn’t understand was how she was unable to tell the difference between an 8cm tall wombat and a person.  So the staff really bugged us, weren’t very friendly and in general ruined the experience of the museum for us.   Not far away we came across more people that were clearly also not very happy with something as a whole lot of people were marching through the streets to protest.  As we walked against the flow we observed the riot police down the side streets just there in case things got out of hand.  Right in front of us one of the demonstrators ripped a Greek flag from a shop and ran off.   Not sure what it was all about but we decided that we probably should keep moving along.

Have you seen John Cleese’s silly walk?  Well if so, we have discovered its origin and this is what I will end with.  At the tomb of the Unknown Soldier there are 2 guards that silly walk their way back and forth with their clownish shoes which have a pompom on the toe.  It’s a pretty funny sight and I always appreciate traditional guard uniforms and together with the silly walk it was very entertaining and is a must see if you are in Athens.