Sarah: Athens, Greece - Acropolis now!
Trip Start
Dec 27, 2007
1
74
80
Trip End
Dec 28, 2008
Athens,
Attica,
Greece
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Hi ya'll. How y'all doin? (sorry been watching The Closer on cable)
Well, Athens for four days. Didn't get off to an auspicious start. Taxi driver, when told of our hotel said, "Oh no, very bad hotel, not nice. I have better hotel, very bad place. Lots of ladies working..." yeah yeah, we've heard this before. We've paid a deposit thanks, we'll stick to it. Well. There were lots of ladies and it did feel like a bad place. And he charged us double what he should have for the privilege of taking us through the BACK street where all the "ladies" were working, instead of the main street. The prostitutes - all African, so beautiful, so little clothing - were literally lining the street that he took us down. Very sad. He made ray stay at the car while he escorted me up the alley to our hotel (what a guy!), supposedly to watch the car but really to mess with our heads and make us feel even more uncomfortable so that we wouldn't balk when he demanded 20 Euros for the experience. Tosser. Ray of course got swamped with requests and smothered in breasts. He politely declined (you know Ray, polite to a tee.) When we mentioned this to our hotelier, he said, oh yes, we've complained about them but the hotel on that street owns them so we can't do anything about it.
The following morning we took the Happy Train through the ancient Greek and Roman agoras (marketplaces) and the ancient Plaka district up to the Acropolis and walked around amidst the gale force winds. The Parthenon is undergoing maintenance so was covered in scaffolding, much to my disappointment. Still, you can get a sense of the grandeur of the place, especially when imagining yourself as an ancient pleb standing in front of those impressive pillars of power. The Temple of Athena Nike was unscaffolded, so that was nice. I learnt that Nike is Victory. Always wondered where that came from. As you can tell I didn't do Classics at school. Know my Greek myths though. The view from the Acropolis across all of Athens and out to the Aegean Sea is stunning.
Day two we went back into Plaka to Hadrian's Arch and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. There are sixteen pillars still standing out of more than a hundred. The remains are set in a bare patch of land so that you can appreciate the size of the thing, and you look directly up to the Acropolis in the background, high up on its walled mountain bearing down on the city. Seeing the still-impressive remains of these ancient buildings, you can see why the fledgling United States chose Classical architecture for their significant buildings to represent strength, order and democracy.
We stayed two nights at the dodgy hotel and then went couchsurfing with Dimitris. He was a dude. He's about 5 feet tall - standing beside Ray they look like Arnie and Danny DeVito in Twins. He took us out for a traditional Greek meal at the restaurant where he works when he's not doing his internship at the Ministry of Finance. We had plates and plates of all different stuff, the Greek equivalent of tapas, but i can't remember the word - sardines, octopus, anchovies, fried feta, fried cucumber balls and of course Greek salad. He also plied us with lots of raki (ouzo without the aniseed). Bloody strong stuff. Ouzo is like the Greek national drink, or so Dimitri told us. I ordered a wine after my first dreadful glass of raki, and it came out in a carafe! After dinner we went into town to the hip area for more drinks and to meet the two teenage american girls that would also be staying with Dimitri. Man, Greek women are hot! Ray says they rival the Cuban girls. So glamourous - well dressed, well made, gorgeous hair, gorgeous skin, gorgeous bodies ... the men aren't too bad either of course, although ray thought many of them were dressed like pansies! Standing outside the club was like watching a fashion parade. Dress gladiator sandals are all the rage this summer it seems. Pity i can't fit even another postcard into my suitcase!
