Greece, Day 2 - Athens City Tour

Day 2 - 1st June 2008, Sunday

Greece is a land of deities and philosopher. I am one of the weird person who is so enthusiastic with its ancient history and the movies of Greek Mythologies, Zeus and the Olympians, Primordial Gods and Titans, Apollo and Dionysus, Sea god and earth gods etc etc.  And for those who has read "Sophie's World" would agree that coming to Greece, it feels like entering the land of Philosophers. Greece has Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. A radical philosophers like Xenophones of Colophon, label the poets' tales as blasphemous lies in the 6th century BC. He complained that Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods as "all that is shameful and disgraceful among men; they steal, commit adultery, and deceive one another". This line became a thought found its most sweeping expression in 350 BC by Plato's Republic and Laws.

Our first day tour package includes only a half day trip around the city which ends at Acropolis. The bus made a numerous stop to pick up the rest of our tour group, including the 2 Singaporean who were on business trip to Athens. Our tour guide was a lady Historian who is so passionate and proud with their great ancient mythology. Greeks regarded mythology as part of their history. That was her seated on the rock bench, in below photo ready to do her briefing when our group reached Parthenon of the Acropolis.

The bus stopped at 3 places only. Our first stopped was at one of the oldest stadium in the world, the Panathenaic Stadium. It is also known as Kallimarmoro, meaning of "beautiful marbled" which was built entirely of white marble. This athletic stadium hosted the first modern Olympic Games in 1896, being reconstructed from the remains of an ancient Greek Olympian stadium.

In ancient times, the stadium on this site was used to host the athletic portion of the Panathenaic Games, in honor of the Goddess Athena. During classical times, it had a wooden seating. And in 329 BC, it was rebuilt in marble by the Archon Lycurgus. It was enlarged and renovated in 140 AD by Herodes Atticus, giving a seated capacity of 50,000.

The second stop was at the ruin Temple of Zeus, Olympia.

It is located in western an ancient Greek temple dedicate to their main deities God, Zeus in the 5th century BC. It used to house the big statue of Zeus (13m in height), which became 1 of the 7 wonders of Ancient World. It suffer heavy damage from a series of earthquakes. In addition to that, tribes invaders had robbed the site of its ancient material from the monument in 269AD.

Among the principle Greek gods were the Olympians, residing on top of Mountain Olympus under the eye of Zeus.

Acropolis of Athens is one of UNESCO world heritage sites, our last stop for the day. It is an ancient citadel located on a high rocky outcrop above the city of Athens. It has a remains of several ancient building of great architectural and historic significant. The famous one is the Parthenon. The meaning of Acropolis is "the edge city" of which the flattened rock house a 3 acres area of ancient development.

The Erechtheion, shown in below photo is an ancient Greek temple seated on the north side of the Acropolis. The temple as seen today was built between 421 and 406 BC. The temple name is derived from a shrine dedicated to the legendary Greek hero, Erichthonius.

Some facts to share how the Arcopolis is now a ruin citadel. The Persians sacked the city in 480 BC. The building was burned and looted, along with the Ancient Temple and practically everything else on the rock. It was gradually being rebuilt till the 3rd century. In the Byzantine period, the Parthenon was turned into a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. After the Ottomon conquest, the Parthenon was used as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army. The buildings of the Acropolis suffered significant damage during the 1687 siege by the Venetians in the Morean War. The Parthenon, which was being used as a gunpowder magazine, was hit by artillery fire and severely damaged.

The Acropolis restoration project began in 1975 till present.

After we were done exploring the top of the Acropolis, we walked down to the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. It is a stone theatre structure located on the south slope of the Acropolis, built in 161 AD by the Athenian magnate Herodus Atticus in memory of his wife, Aspasia Annia Regilla. It was originally a steep-sloped amphitheater with a three-story stone front wall and a wooden roof made of expensive, cedar of Lebanon timber. It was used as a venue for music concerts with a capacity of 5,000 audience. Elton John was performing here in 2000 and Andrea Bocelli held his concert in 2010.

The scene that I wont be seeing in my town, very pleasant sight indeed .... How I wish to have a big grapes tree in my yard!

A lady tour guide had informed us to wait for certain hours at the bus stop but when we got there, the bus had left. We had no choice but to walk back to the hotel guided by the city map that we carried along. Along the way, we found a Sunday Bazaar along the road. In Karachi, been to Sunday Bazaar is 1 of the main activity we had during a weekend.

For lunch, we chooses Subway and had a great lazy day sitting down by the Subway Restaurant outdoor. It has been a long walk from Acropolis to Subway.

Byzantine church located next to Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens.

This photo does not focus on me but the object behind, a beautiful Tower Clock!

On finding our way back to the hotel, we chooses a short cut through the wet market. After we passed the market, we took a narrow street and had a shock of lifetime experience. It was a scene of crowds of teenager and adult selling and taking drugs openly in daylights. That was a real weird scene of what we never expected to see. It was saddened to watch a teenage boy who at the time when we passed him, was sitting on a staircases looking so high. He slowly felled down on the pavement when he was on top of his ecstasy, no ability to control himself nor knowingand what's going on. How pitiful.. couldn't imagine what will the mother feel if she saw him at that point of time.

3 of us could not utter any words as we were too shock of what we saw. As soon as we reached the hotel, we slept and when we woke-up we couldn't even discussed about it.

to be continued...