The Ruins of Athens

I looked upon the Temple of the Olympian Zeus and I was pleased. Also, sweaty.



It was a baking hot day today, and I chose to use the heat to power my internal engine and enable me to hike through the city of Athens today, bravely taking on the sun in my quest to look upon the great monuments to human construction, ingenuity, ability, and historic beliefs. I sweat a lot, yes, but in the end it was the sun who lost, who failed to deter me from even hiking to the highest point of the city, the Acropolis, despite trying to blaze it's hottest in the middle of the day.

...in other words, I set out this morning, not taking into account how hot it was going to be, or at what time I'd end up reaching the Acropolis, and spent most of my exploration bitterly kicking myself in the head because of how unbelievably hot it was. I thought I was a minute away from heat exhaustion. I was one of the few people walking up the mountain to the Acropolis and I'm pretty sure everyone who saw me shook their heads and muttered to themselves, "What a fool you are." Buuuut, I survived to tell the tale, and that's the important part. (My first interpretation of the day was by far better.)

Athens stretches out for forever. I don't know that it's hugeness comes from it being really a very, very big city, or if it's a side effect from the buildings not being so tall. They do have tall buildings, not like the islands where the tallest building I saw was 3-stories, but one of the stories was on a Terrance a level below and I'm not sure that really counts... But it just seems like Athens is like a pile of white dominos scattering out for much further than any city made of stone and marble has the right to.



(And that's just one tiny, tiny slice. This view is repeated for an entire 360 degrees turn.)

The first thing I saw today was the changing of the guards at the House of Parliament. No, scratch that -- the first thing I saw were the dozens of protesters gathered in the streets on my way to the House of Parliament. I didn't take any pictures of them because I figured it'd be rude, but they blended in really well with all the street vendors. The thing that gave them away was the sign that had a Guy Fawkes mask and the "V" symbols from V for Vendetta on it. If I happen to walk past there again, I definitely taking a picture, rude or not!

In my guide book, the changing of the ceremony is supposedly a really cool thing to watch. In reality, it was kind of stupid. They do all these weird kicks with their legs as their walking so it looks like some sort of deformed tap dance, and the shoes their wear have these weird black fuzzy ball things on the end that I can't even begin to explain. I really wanted to just walk away, but I'd sped-walked from my hostel and felt obliged to stay there at least ten minutes, at which point it was over anyway.


After that, I headed to something on my map labeled "National Garden." I was expecting some trees, maybe some rose bushes or something, like a small park that I could glance at with slight interest as I walked by. Not so! What I found instead was a miniature (but still enormous) African jungle.


I wouldn't have been surprised if a pair of lions walked out -- which they didn't. I would have been surprised to see a pair of missionaries walk out -- which they did. Before I could say hi or snap a picture, though, the elders had sped-walked out of sight, vanishing as if they'd never been and leaving me feeling very, very confused about sort of "garden" I was walking into.

It went on forever and was extremely cool. I'm here in Athens until Tuesday and I'm definitely going to go back with a book and my beach towel to find a spot and read some Aristotle or Plato one afternoon.

My next stop was the Temple of Zeus (see first picture) which is supposedly the largest temple the ancient Athenians ever built, and it took them over a hundred years to do so. Only 14 of the pillars remained standing up until about the '20s, when one pillar tipped over during a record storm -- meaning that there are now only an unlucky 13 pillars still standing, with the remains of the 14th lying in their slaughtered pile. It was pretty cool as well!

After the Temple of Zeus, I saw Hadrian's Gate, which sounds more like the title of a sci-fi novel than a real place. They made it to celebrate some emperor or other, but the cool thing is that on one side they wrote "This side is a part of Athens" and on the other side they wrote "This ain't."

I was getting really close to the Acropolis by this time and getting very excited. As I started ascending the slope, I first stopped at the Theater of Dionysos, the birthplace of Greek theater. They have a spot set apart full of parts they've managed to pull out from the rubble, but that means that it looks like a display of stone body parts with labels like "torso of a naked warrior, possibly in Atlas pose" and "foot remaining from statue." The theater itself, having been reconstructed, is fairly impressive.


That was the last obstacle before I finally broached the Acropolis itself. I had to take several breaks along the way wherever there was shade because, like I said, I was hiking up right about noon and felt like I was standing in the middle of the desert. Greece is a very, very dry place. I think that the next time I picture an island paradise, it'll be more like Costa Rica and less Greece.

But I finally made it to the top!


And it was totally worth it.

There was no shade up there and the wind had died out, so the entire time I walked around I felt like I was baking, but it didn't matter. The Pantheon was amazing, especially as close as I got to it. The view of the city itself was breathtaking. The random mountain off in the distance, the thousands of buildings, the misty mountain range that was nothing but a haze from this distance -- all of it was just amazing.


The Pantheon is roped off so you can only view it from a distance. There were slabs of marble on the ground that had been so worn down from the ages that it was sort of slippery, which made for an occasional instant thrill as your feet skipped a beat, especially being so far up.

I've just now realized that I spent so much time just staring at the Pantheon in amazement that I only managed to snap a few pictures. Oh well. They light it up at night and I've taken pictures of it being this glowing, beautiful mountaintop spectacle.

After that, I was completely worn down. I made it back to my hostel and grabbed a quick siesta, skipping out on the hottest hours of the day. I wandered around the lobby of my hostel a bit, then decided I could go catch at least one more sight in the day since it was significantly cooler. I managed to make it to Hadrian's Library.


When I saw "library" on my map as a place to see, I was fooled into thinking it was an actual library. When I got there, I was extremely surprised to see yet another ruin -- I know, I know, the "Hadrian" part was a dead giveaway. I felt this heaviness in my heart, like it was breaking and falling into little piece as I looked on at what had happened to this once-great structure. Really, not even libraries are safe from the sacking of time? Not even a library? But, but!!

I walked to the other side of the city and found where the Central Street markets were. They are a few blocks of extreme food shops -- a meat market, a fish market, fruits and vegetable stands, even an exotic pet market -- that is supposedly quite the sight to see, especially first thing in the morning. I plan on waking up early for that first-thing craziness...or did, until I realized tomorrow is Sunday. I don't think they open on Sundays, so I'll just go on Monday instead.

My hostel has a free walking tour of the city tomorrow morning. I'm pretty sure I've seen most of the sights they'll be touring, but I also think it'll be cool to hear someone narrate so that's what I'll be doing in the morning; in the afternoon, I'll probably grab my towel and head to that park.

I had a delicious salad for dinner tonight and got it to go. I wanted to eat it on the rooftop bar of my hostel, which has a glorious view of the Acropolis especially as the sun goes down. I'd gone up there last night to see the view and ended up making friends with the Lithuanian bartender, Edwin. Edwin is a self-proclaimed attention-addict, especially from the ladies, and he's extremely straightforward about everything. I'd just meant to tell him how much I liked the King of Leon, the band he was playing at the bar, and we ended up getting into this one-way conversation where he spilled all his stresses out to me for about 15 minutes. He's tall, good-looking, has a very cool accent...and he's got an attitude that reaches for the sky. Since his attitude last night was directed at this female friend he was stressing about -- he was beginning to like her more than he wanted, and blaming her for it ("I'm always thinking about her, I wonder what she is doing, I don't like it!") -- it was pretty entertaining to just listen to him go off.

I went up there with my salad, thinking to hear about how his day had gone and to get a good story out of it. He spent a long time grumbling about how much he hates Greek people, how they treat him like a slave, how his female friend hadn't called him yet. I wasn't disappointed! A group of Germans came in a while later and we all sat around introducing ourselves and comparing Greek travels. A guy came in a bit later, first introducing himself as a New Yorker and then mentioning that he'd only studied in NY and that he was originally from Ohio. Edwin would add to the conversation every so often, enough that you could tell he really wasn't in the mood to work but that he had to do just the minimum. For some reason, the Ohio guy really brought down the mood -- maybe I was just acutely aware that we were both representing the same country and I thought he was acting like sort of a jockey sap and I didn't like being in the same category as him -- so I left awhile later, getting back to my hostel dorm and finding it all to myself.

It's a little before ten now and some people have since come and gone; there's another girl in here, meaning that my plan to walk around naked will have to wait. Outside, the night life is audibly picking up again. There's a club a level below my window and I could hear their music all night last night, like a soundtrack to my sleep. If anything, it should be louder tonight.

I keep on forgetting what day it is. When I found out that tomorrow was Sunday, I almost didn't believe it. There are about 50 more days left before I get back home, not that I'm actively counting (I'm passively counting, thank you very much!). There are still a ton of sights that I've left to see in Athens, like the Agora and the Central Market I mentioned earlier.

I am peculiarly glad to be off the islands. I hadn't really noticed it, but I was getting claustrophobic the longer I was on them. They quickly run out of things to do, leaving only "lay on the beach" as an option. I love the ocean, I love the waves, but I also like knowing that if I get really bored I can drive to another part of the city or maybe even a neighboring city to explore. It would have to be a large island to be able to say that after a few weeks or months, large like Australia sized.

Here in Greece, one really good bit of news is that I fit in with the locals to the point where, while I saw standing next to a hat stand, some German lady tried to give me money, thinking I was the stand owner. People have stopped me to ask for directions and I can only shrug helplessly, unless they're going somewhere I've just been and then I feel like an expert as I point them in the right direction. When I talked to that Nigerian last night, he told me he thought I was Greek. I've even tried not to say anything when I'm buying a bottle of water and the Greeks talk Greek to me, to which I just nod and smile. I feel like an undercover spy at times, blending in with the local populace, walking the streets like I've lived here my whole life and not just arrived last night!

I'll leave you with a message I found in the floor mosaic of the library ruins:


(I love you, in case you have a hard time reading ruins!)

Location:Athens, Greece