31st May 1984 National Museum, and off to Crete

Thursday May 31^st.  I wasn’t in any hurry so I waited around the hostel until about ten (after packing) and left with Charlie and Alex. We walked down the street. They were on their way to a kibbutz in Israel. I left them at the National Museum. I had a small pizza for breakfast and then went into the museum, where for the small fee of 20Dr. I could store my pack for the day. Being as much as an opportunist as I could, I went into the exhibitions (150Dr.). The Mycenaean hall was very interesting – so many bits and pieces – and also (last) the well-presented gallery of jewelry. Of course there are many statues and carvings in marble, but the highlights of the museum are the bronze statues of Poseidon [the Artemision Bronze or God of the Sea, now said more likely to be Zeus] and the boy on the horse [the Jockey of Artemision]. They also showed how they molded bronze statuettes.

 

Ethnic Archaeological Museum - the ticket

   After the museum I had some lunch, and then went to the post office to buy some stamps. I also bought a knife, a spoon and a small can opener, but not at the post office. (195Dr.)

Bronze Greek God, or Greek Bronze God

The Artemision Jockey and Horse

   I went back to the museum, collected the pack and sat on a bench in the park finishing a letter home. Then having not much else to do, I went on the electric train to Pireas (20Dr.). Near the station at the port I met Christine and Georgia, American sisters from the hostel who are also going to Chania [also spelt Hania] but on a different boat. But I went to a park and sat there for quite a while to write this veracious account. Then I had moussaka in a restaurant down the street and read a booklet on Greek gods and heroes represented at the Agora. Time to board the good ship Kriti, which was due to leave at 7.00pm. Who should be on board but Gavin and Marian [28^th May, bus from London to Athens]. We also met a couple of Kiwi girls, Jan and Kerry, who were also travelling third class.

   We sat around in our sleeping chairs for a while while the TV blared out various programmes in various languages (subtitled in Greek if not in it). The TV wasn’t turned off until station close after the 12 o’clock news. The chairs had room for two people sitting but there was no armrest between, so one could actually lie down to sleep. Slept.

30th May 1984 Agora and Acropolis Then

Wednesday 30^th May  When I was quite ready for it, I caught a trolley bus all the way to the Temple of Olympian Zeus and Hadrian's Arch, which are just near the National and Zapia Gardens on Leoforos Amalias (though Hadrian’s Arch is on Leoforos Singrou).

The temple took rather a long time to build – Hadrian finished it 700 years after the Peisistratids started it. I wonder how Hadrian found the spare time to build all these things, as edification [in the meaning of building edifices, rather than education] is such a time-consuming hobby. Anyway, it was the largest Greek temple ever built and had 104 Corinthian columns, though only fifteen are still standing. Most of them are in a clump and one or two standing apart, unloved and unwanted. There is also a fallen column. Near the temple are the foundations of some sort of building. The site is covered with a lot of dry grass, which was being raked up. Two men were creating a mound of the stuff, and another two were stuffing a different pile further away into the back of a compacting truck – the driver wanted me to take a picture of his lovely truck. So I did. [Funny, in my memory, the Temple of Olympian Zeus is west of the Acropolis, where in fact it is just east of it.]

Hadrian’s Arch, on the other hand, would crush it. [Get it?] It was built in the second century AD to mark the boundary between the city of Theseus – the ancient city – and the new Roman extension, the city of Hadrian.

Leaving this site, I walked up Dionissiou Areopagitou and turned up a little lane that runs up beside the Theatre of Dionysus. This led into the Plaka, an area that is all that is left of 19^th century Athens – and according to the guidebook, it remains Greek and draws more Greeks to its taverns than foreigners. But I found that there were many many souvenir shops selling many many souvenirs. There is just so much of the same sort of thing – brass ware, chess sets, leather, pots, material etc – but it is all good quality stuff, which is fortunate.

I wandered around the narrow streets, past a walled noisy schoolyard, opposite which is an excavation site. And I went into a large church outside which the pavement is being/has been remarbled. The church is the Cathedral Church of Athens and its walls include materials obtained from the ruins of 72 small churches and chapels around Athens. [It took twenty years to build and was dedicated in 1862.] It’s loftier and more spacious than the Russian Orthodox churches I went into in Russia. There are chairs and candle stands but the murals and icons aren’t as beautiful or as gold-ridden or as wall-covering as the Russian. The figures in some of the icons have flat painted faces but wear clothes of beaten silver. It’s the main church in Athens [the Archbishop of Athens and all Greece] and holds the remains of St Gregory V, who was hanged by the Turks in 1821 for independence fighting.

Sooner or later I was bound to end up in Monastiraki Square, from which the Metro train leaves from its station there. The railway track runs alongside the Agora, which is where I went now, for 100Dr.

I looked at, first, a statue of a giant (proper giants are supposed to be half-fish or something), then I went up to the Temple of Haphaestus which is as big and with the same basic design as the Parthenon but more complete – it’s the best-preserved of all the Greek temples, in fact; only the outer roof is missing. Actually, it doesn’t seem to be as big as the Parthenon. [Actually, it’s well-preserved because it was built after the Persian occupation of Greece, during which time the Persians had destroyed many buildings which the Greeks later declined to rebuild or repair.]

I then walked around some garden paths and came upon some gravestones collected together. Some had carvings and most were cylindrical. I presume they’re gravestones. There were two tortoises in the grass and a long thin green snake on a fence. Lots of poppies in situ.

I gamboled around the foundations for a little while and then went to the Stoa of Attalos [the 1950s reconstruction], the reconstruction of the original of the 2^nd century AD. The columns of it are massive and the statues and the museum exhibits are very interesting.

 

Ticket to the Ancient Agora Museum in the Stoa of Attalos

There is a church just up the hill from the Stoa, the Church of the Twelve Apostles, I think. This is another restoration job from the fifties, though it seems that they knocked down a bit of it to do it. I think the original church was from the 11^th century, with later additions. The walls inside are plaster with bits of faded original mural here and there – not really a very impressive reconstruction. But on the way up to the church there were some puddles with the minutest frogs you ever did see hopping around enjoying life as amphibians.

   I followed the path – the ancient Panathenaic Way – up the hill to an outcrop of slippery marble to look at the view of the Acropolis from there. (Bumped into John, the tobacco-chewing American in my room at the hostel). Then up the path to the Acropolis, buying some cans of drink at the rip-off refreshments trucks. Entrance is 150Dr. I had a look down into the Odeum of Herodes Atticus – it would be great performing there on some balmy Athenic night.

    

Ticket for the Acropolis (they had similar style tickets in 1970)

   Well, the Acropolis is the Acropolis, and there’s a lot of scaffolding about – on the temples and also on the retaining walls and buttresses on the east end. The original Caryatids (only four of them) are in the museum. I’m not sure where the other two are – I didn’t have a close look at the Erechtheion.

   After the Acropolis, I went back down Dionissiou Areopagitou and back into the Plaka. In a street approaching Monastiraki Sq. I met Charley, whom I had met at the bus station in London, but he had gone on a different bus. We sat on the curb watching the people go by and talking for quite a while – a good way to spend an afternoon in Greece. Every now and then, old ladies would try to sell us lace table cloths. Charley is from Sydney and is 26.

   After leaving Charley, I walked all the way back to the hostel, had a shower and a sleep and chatted with Londoner Charlie and John (the American). They went off with Argentine Alex to watch the European Cup Final in a café up the street. On television, of course. I went to bed. [I knew it was Liverpool playing, but I didn’t know the result up till now – Liverpool won 4-2 on penalties against Roma. You can watch the whole match on Youtube…]

29th May 1984 Arrival in Athens

Tuesday 29^th May  Finally into Greece, about four hours behind schedule, but I tried to sleep it off. When I woke up we were passing through some mighty fine country where the light is so different, and there are shrubs along the side of the road with yellow and pink flowers, the pink ones being oleander.

We were skirting by Pagassitikós Kólpos (Bay) [Pagasetic Gulf on the Google map] – a wide flat valley extending westward with its mountains on the side, but we drove right across, then round past Lamia. That valley was like a grand scale version of how I remember the valley where Thermopylae is [which we had visited in 1970. And would you believe, it was the same valley. Thermopylae is just a few kilometres from Lamia; I missed seeing it from the bus.]

The memorial at Thermopylae (statue of Leonidas) which we saw in 1970 but I missed in 1984.

I read a couple of chapters of Mr Verdant Green and we arrived in Athens at about 10-10.30. I left my pack in a building in Filelinon St where the bus stops, and went off to find accommodation – seeking the YMCA, which turned out to be closed and under renovation. So I walked along Akadimias St, and Patission St to Kypselis St where the Youth Hostel No. 1 is. But it wasn’t open until one o’clock, so I wandered around, bought something to eat and returned. It costs 500 Dr. for two nights.

So I went back in the direction whence I had come, taking my time. I cashed $70 and bought a ticket to Hania in Crete for Thursday. I picked up my pack and had a strawberry milkshake in a street café. Then I caught the trolley bus no. 2 back to the hostel where I had a much needed shower and a sleep.

After lazing around for a while I went out up the street as far as a little square, from which led a plaza almost parallel to Kypselis Street. I went down this, eating some sweet pastries and a piece of pizza. The evening air was cool and there were many many people there; kids playing, adults sitting, drinking, talking, walking the dog. I think it used to be a vehicular street but was made into a pedestrian plaza with shrubbery and awninged chairs down the middle. It’s crossed by several one way streets and there are a few fancy shops along the side. [This was Negri Fokionis, if you ever go to Athens and want to see it.]

   I returned to the hostel, which is on a corner. The streets are noisy – there’s a lot of klaxon usage and noisy motorbikes.

Were they klaxons like this? Probably not.