We'd caught a latish flight from Heathrow to Athens where we were met by Yiannis, the guy who would be our driver up and down Greece for the next 19 days. He dropped us off at our hotel in central Athens where we'd had dinner in the roof top restaurant which had a great view of the Parthenon.
22 May 2022 -- Arrive in Athens at different times and meet and greet by our English-speaking driver and transfer to your hotel.
22 – 26 May -- 3 nights at Hotel Athens Gate (4 *) – 1 double superior room with a view to Temple of Zeus and breakfast.
***
Busy day today (23/5), our first in Athens and all unplanned. Early start too, straight after a really rather blah breakfast at the hotel.
Nice location though. Opposite the Temple of Zeus and just turn left and left again and there is the Acropolis. We have a tour there tomorrow so today is for exploring the streets.
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| The Temple of Zeus from our balcony. Almost everything is under restoration. |
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| What's a Greek Urn? This is. |
The Athens Gate Hotel is on the outskirts of the Plaka district. Very touristy but jammed full of ancient buildings and ruins. The whole city is full of them. Our general aim was to start at the Roman Agora or Forum and go from there.
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| Our fantastic tour hats that we bought immediately. We melded right into the local environment wearing our tour hats. It was only when we chose not to wear them that we got picked as tourists. |
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| Typical touristy stuff! |
Athens has 4 million people and the same number again in tourists, many from cruise ships. Ok that’s an exaggeration but it feels like it. This was Sunday so it wasn’t so bad just bimbling around.
Athens and of course Greece has a very rich history. Birthplace of democracy, Alexander the Great and of course the Spartans!!!! But if I have my history about right, Greece hasn’t won a war since Alexander and was occupied by conquering nations between the late first century BC and 1821 when a coalition of western nations helped them gain independence from the Ottomans who had occupied the country for 400 years. That’s about 2,000 years of being occupied by someone or other. Not Greek.
First it was the Romans. The great general Sulla sacked Athens in 87 BC and that was about it for the Greeks for some reason they thought they could slide out from under Roman rule in Augustus’ time and discovered rather rudely that that was not the case.
First the western Roman empire, then the eastern empire after the split in 330 AD. They morphed seamlessly into the Byzantines until 1456 when the Ottomans overthrew the empire and that stayed the case until 1821.
Since then I don’t believe that the new Greek republic has won any wars. They joined the Allies in WWI almost by accident. The king was pro-German, the PM Venizelos was pro-Allies. The British and French landed in Salonika anyway so the Greeks almost reluctantly joined in. That gave them a seat at the table in Versailles, but not an important one.
They attacked the remnants of the collapsed Ottoman Empire in Turkey in 1919 seeking territory in Asia Minor and were resoundingly beaten by the new Young Turks of Kemal Attaturk. The loss of all the age old Greek cities in Asia must have been hard to take.
The Italians invaded in 1941 but were resoundingly beaten back by the Greek army forcing Hitler to divert the Wehrmacht through the Balkans and into Greece fatally delaying the start of Operation Barbarossa for 6 weeks.
When the Germans withdrew in 1944, that was the signal to start the Greek Civil War which stretched on for several years. Greek fought Greek (again) but this time it was Communist versus Democrats. With much help from the USA and Britain, democracy won in the end.
The king was voted out in the 1970s after an army coup, and the country is now a republic. Anyway back to Athens…
We walked nearby Plaka and passed by several monuments and Byzantine churches on the way. Streets are of course narrow and windy and hilly so it wasn’t all plain sailing. Then we reached the Roman Agora. Obviously not as big as in Rome but then again the Greeks had one already so all the Romans did was adapt what was there and make a few tweaks.
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| The Roman Agora |
The Greek version is huge. But then again they’d had a couple of millennia to get things in order of which the last 500 or so years related to their ‘golden age’. The age of democracy. The age of when the Greeks were the top dogs. This was the 500 or so years between 600 BC and the Roman conquest.
I really liked the Tholos, this is the small round building that held the 20 or so decision makers that ran the city state of Athens for 35 days before passing the job off to one of the other 10 tribes of Athens. This was the democracy that ruled. Everyone had a chance to be ruler for a day. The building doesn’t exist any more but the foundations remain. The building is tiny yet so important.
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| The Greek Agora extends over a really huge area in the midst of which is a roadway that was used amongst other things for the annual processional during a religious festival all the way up to the Parthenon, where all the other temples were as well. |
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| This temple is in much better condition than the Parthenon on top of the Acropolis (hill on top of the town) and is in the Agora |
If you like ancient history, this is the place. Just like Rome except it is older and as the Roman travel writer I’d read in Rome a week earlier said from a 2nd century travelogue the Romans did drains and sewers far better than the Greeks even though the buildings could be pretty impressive. As for the aqueducts….
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| In one of those did you know moments, we learned that statues of Roman Emperors like Hadrian here (in the Agora) often didn't have the correct head. This is because the sculptures were tricky to make so the heads were swapped once the Emperor died and the new one's head was affixed. The head was therefore simple to lift off. They know this is Hadrian because of the statue's armour and the fact that he loved Greece very much, or rather one particular Greek boy, and visited the province three times during his reign. He didn't build a wall though but did arrange for lots of aqueducts. |
The Romans loved the Greeks and identified with them strongly even though they considered the Greeks to be wimps by the time they’d taken over. Every Greek God had a Roman equivalent. The mark of an educated Roman was the ability to speak Greek. Many if not most serious teachers of wealthy Romans was a Greek scholar, often slaves. Yet the Romans also knew they were superior and patronised the Greeks accordingly.
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| Almost everywhere in Greece had a statue of Hercules doing something or other, mainly in connection with his 12 labours. Statues always had a lion skin (one of his labours) somewhere assisting identification. |
The Greek Agora is the place where all activities in Athens took place. Start to finish. Rich or poor. Noble or slave. Truly a unique place. The remains are very impressive yet modernity wasn’t far away as today the Metro goes right through the middle of it.
We spent several hours in all this and felt the need for rest, recuperation and refreshment to be in order and selected a lovely looking cafe for the task. Antica.
Beer was cool. Moussaka was hot and satisfying. Greek salad was immense chunks of everything topped with a vast slab of feta. Just great!!
Viv discovered the delights of ‘Freddo’ Espresso. Essentially iced coffee but done differently with style. Simply but differently made. Two shots of espresso plus a few chunks of ice and a bit of sugar in a blender. Whizz a while and you get a coffee confection with a mass of foam at the top. Pour over ice into a Whisky tumbler and voila!! Really nice.
We also visited the central market to check out the fresh fish and meat. Very interesting and the produce looked great!
After this we bumbled back checking out various stores along the way as we had to meet one of the tour guides from the firm we’d used to arrange the trip. The message we had at the hotel when we got back said this meeting couldn’t take place at 5 pm but at 7 pm as something had come up. We couldn’t make this so rearranged till tomorrow and went out for dinner.
There is a central theme developing here centring around eating and drinking! We found a road side restaurant in Plaka nearby which provided Greek wine, ouzo and vast amounts of Greek meat. We couldn’t leave until we’d tried and tasted everything in the house…..
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| The reason for the blur. It is normal for Ouzo such as this to be served in 200 ml bottles as opposed by the glass. It doesn't travel so you have to finish it... |
The rest of the day was a blur!
Great day.
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