Athens!

Ciao tutti!! Come va?  I wish you a splendid weekend, here in Roma we are having fine weather.  Spring seems to be in the air, buds on the trees, birdies chirping & whatnot.  Last weekend, as mentioned, my pal Kelly & I ventured to Athens, Greece for some fun & food.  I had dreamed of going to Greece ever since that classical mythology class with Barry Powell that I took @ UW-Madison back in my freshman year of undergrad.  Good times, it was my favorite class!  I've always been fascinated by mythology of any culture & those crazy greeks were the best.  It seemed appropriate to visit the birthplace of western civilization....  Athens, Greece!  

We found Athens & the Greek people to be quite friendly & welcoming.  We picked up a tiny bit of Greek language & everyone seemed to appreciate our efforts.  Athens sure is a huge & sprawling city, 1 in 3 greeks live there!  Also, it is definitely not as charming as my beloved Roma.  It is a big, gritty city.  Times are certainly tough economically in Greece right now, as everyone knows.  Despite this, the people are cheerful.  I believe that tourism is the main income in Greece & I'm sure they are extra friendly to tourists spending money to help boost the economy!  So, despite being budget travellers, we did our best to help.  Mostly by doing a lot of eating.  Eating was my favorite thing in Greece, leading to a condition we call...  "greek body".  :)

I've said I'm not crazy about Italian food, I don't really get into pasta or cheese too much.  My default has become pizza, which is delish but, not super healthy.  So, in Greece all the different veggies, lentils, pita, tsatsiki, olives, greek salads, fava beans, zucchini fritters, grilled peppers, yogurt with honey, etc. it was all extremely delicious!

This is a rather long post... good luck!

ruins in Athens with acropolis in background

Monostiraki square

strange, thick brew with spices made of orchid root.  i liked it.

street scene

 We went to one open air market where we were most fascinated by THE OLIVES!  You can just pluck one out & sample all of them!  Everyone at the market was also fascinated by US!

yum!

also, all these pickled items & peppers.... YUM!

glistening olives

Here's how the acropolis looks at night from down in Athen-town.  It is pretty impressive!

We found a cute little bar decorated with bazillion bottles of colored liquors where we sample the homemade bitter.

it was a popular spot

street art, lots of cool graffiti in Ath.

outside the Parthenon museum.  Glass floor lets you look down into excavations of ancient Ath.

You know how when you are traveling you always hear about some certain things you HAVE to do in a new location?  Well, we had heard that we just had to go see this Poseidon temple down the coast in Sounion.  Of course, we were game for a day trip!  There was just one bus per hour & we spent some time locating the bus stop at the proper time, etc, so as not to miss it.  Finally, we see the bus approaching, it is blinking it's lights, pulling over to us...  I get excited & wave "hello!" at the driver.  He acknowledges this by giving a nod & driving off....  We are bamboozled by this until realizing that the happy wave hello must have been a signal for GOODBYE.  Oopsies, chalk it up to cultural signaling differences.  It was funny, we caught the next bus one hour later.  :)

The trip down the coast sure was pretty!  It gave us a sort of greek island experience without actually being on one.  The temple was gorgeous & in a stunning location!  The views of the sea were amazing.  Turns out that viewing the temple & then sitting at a cafe are the only things to do at Sounion so, after 4 hours of this & then getting super cold from being out in the wind so long we were ready to take the bus back to  the Ath.

you can see that greeks actually made these doric columns in sections or "drums".  I guess they just rolled 'em on up here.

We thought it would be real warm in Greece.  This was not the case so we ended up wearing the same outfits (basically layering all our clothes) the whole time.  I was usually wearing double sweaters, just to enhance greek body.  :)

pretty views

we love our bus rides!

 On Sundays you get free entrance to the Acropolis & National Museums, so we went.  Acropolis means "high city" & the famous structures that still stand today were built during the Golden Age of Greece in the 400 B.C.s under the rule of Pericles.  The massive Parthenon was built in something like only 10 years!  Pretty good for back in those days, can you even imagine?  You enter through a grand staircase with lots of columns called the Propylaea.  Passing by a small temple to Athena that has been fully deconstructed & rebuilt two times for restoration.

propylaea & athena temple

the Parthenon!  It was used as a treasury.

here it is from the backside, restoration in progress.  restoration began around 1985 & has been an ongoing process.  there is now a permanent crane living within the parthenon to work on restoring the sellae (inner structure).  I must say, all the restoration equipment does detract from the experience.  

only remaining decorative freize panel, the rest of them are actually in London.  England told Greece they'd give them back the marbles if they had a proper place to house them.  So, Greece built this fancy new Parthenon museum & now England is stalling on giving them back...

view down to the Odeon ampitheater.  Of Yanni, Live at the Acropolis fame!  ha ha

Here was my favorite, the Erechtheion!  Named after Greek hero, Erichtonius.  (who's he?)

Porch of the Caryatids.  This was beautiful! The original Caryatids (maidens) are down in the parthenon museum, these are replicas.  Over the past 100 years these marble monuments have suffered more damage from acid rain & environmental effects than over the previous many centuries.  Crazy to think, isn't it?  Darn that pollution!

the elegant ionic columns of the Erechteion.

viola, the Parthie!

the sprawl of Athens

spring flowers in bloom

Temple of Olympian Zeus, the largest temple in Greece! It took 638 years to complete!

The changing of the guard outiside the parliament building on Syntagma square.  This was the best view I could get due to mob crowds.  The ceremony consisted of some funny outfits & funny marching.

national library

owl! the symbol of Athena, patron god of Athens.

national Archeological Museum, supposedly one of the ten best museums IN THE WORLD!  of course we had to go, i do love me some old shit.

the funerary Mask of Agammemnon!   Found in Mycenae & quite famous ( & of course... old).   

really OLD amphorae!

map for reference

one of the oldest greek sculptures EVER, look at those crazy greek quads!

either a bronze Zeus or Poseidon throwing a spear.    This one was found in the ocean!

 The next day we took an epic bus ride to Delphi to see the temple of Apollo.  I'll spare you the details of our bus terminal finding escapade...  just know that it was a boondoggle.  Delphi is up in the mountains, it was nice to see a bit more of the countryside! The story goes that a temple complex was built up here to worship the cult of Apollo.  There was an important oracle here where people would come to ask about important questions & decisions.  There would be a priestess of Apollo who you'd go ask your question.  She would be in a trance-like state & Apollo would speak through her.  She would mutter something to you in an incense filled temple with a chasm in the floor that acted as a passage into the underworld.  Then you'd stumble on out of there to ponder the meaning of life.  Intense! The place did have some crazy energy going on.  We thought of doing an oracle re-enactment but not before it started to seriously dump rain.  I also got a unusual headache, I thought that Apollo was perhaps trying to possess me! :)

fruit trees (apples?) were in bloom!

the Omphalos! Navel, or center of the world.  Story goes, Zeus released two falcons to fly in opposite directions around the world & they would meet in the exact center.  They met here in Delphi & this thingy marks the spot.

there you see the remains of the oracle temple & the lovely view into the valley

ampitheater

huge stadium way up the hill (how the H did they build this thing???), built for the Pythian games.  Fitness competition second only to the ancient Olympics held in Athens!

then the storm blew in...

there were so many cats in delphi it was spooky.  at one point kelly set down her purse on a table to rummage around in it & about 10 kittens ran over to beg for food.  an eerie scene, but I do like kittens.

 
Then, with some vegetarian souvlaki for the road we flew back to Rome.  It felt nice to be back, Rome as a city is much prettier than Athens.  The weather also seemed warmer in Rome, we really had a chill out in Greece.  It was a great trip, I'm so glad to have made it there! We met a lot of really kind people & got to experience a bit of Greek culture.  Next time I'll try to go to the Greek Islands during summertime...  I think that's really where the scene is at.

Back in Roma I'm trying to make a big push to promote my yoga classes.  They have been rather sparsely attended thus far.  I am realizing that it takes some time to build up some momentum to get some regular students attending so, I'll have to stick it out for a bit & see how it pans out if I plan to profit.  I feel lucky, I have some great buddies here giving me a hand in networking & promotion.  Turns out I am trying to start a small business in Rome!

I went to the Opera House to see some modern dance yesterday evening, it was absolutely fabulous!  Kelly took off to Ireland for a week & will be back for a final Italian hurrah soon.  Here we are jumping for joy @St. Peters, happy to be back in the Roman sunshine!!

Happy weekend! xo