Day 3, Wednesday - Parthenon, Icons, Plaka At 7:30 a.m.
I updated my journal from the roof top of our hotel with the acropolis as my companion while my wife slept. At sunrise, I took a picture. When Pam awoke, we walked back up the acropolis and went inside. Originally the entrance was enclosed with dark blue ceiling accented with gold stars. All the buildings were originally painted in bright colors.
First, we stopped to look at the Parthenon. The Parthenon held a giant statue of Athena made of gold. There are no straight line in the Parthenon. Everything is curved to give the impression of being straight in perspective. The columns are fatter in the middle. The length is curved inward toward the center. Parthenon means virgin and describes the store room where Athena’s temple virgins maintained their vigil behind her golden statue. The pagan temple built for the worship of Athena survived the Christianity by being converted to a church to the Panayia, the blessed virgin. The Turks converted it to a mosque in the 15th century. When Athens was besieged by Venetians in 1732, the Turks stored their gunpowder there thinking it would not be touched. This proved to be a bad assumption and after 2200 years, the Parthenon was blown up into the bleached ruins one sees today. The building has been roped off in recent years because all the tourists were doing additional damage to the floor. Although the building still stands, most of the art which wasn't blown up has been chopped off and carted away to distant museums. We saw one frieze from the Parthenon, the Elgin Marbles, in the British Museum.
Athena as she is thought to have appeared in the Parthenon without the gold overcoat. There was almost no one here at 8:30 a.m. when we arrived, but when we came out of the museum at 10:00 a.m., tour groups were just arriving. In a few minutes there were crowds of people grouped together by language being lectured in many different tongues.
We walked down to the agora. At the opposite end of the agora is a museum which was a replica of an ancient building which stood on the same site. It now houses many statues found here. After touring this museum, we continued to the Thesion, the temple of Hephaestus. Its excellent preservation is mainly due to its early conversion to a Christian church. A man guarded the roped off temple. Inside, the floor was just a pile of boulders.
Lunch in the Plaka was not very exciting. Authentic Greek taverna cooking does not measure up to my grandmother's. Greeks serve rice as a vegetable with potatoes. Somebody in this town must know how to cook, but so far as I can tell, the best Greek food is in Chicago.
We exchanged money at Syntagma Square and made hotel reservations for Naplion. On the way, we passed a beautiful church which had the same renaissance art work as the Assumption church in Chicago where I went as a child. I've seen the same art work in the cathedral on the upper east side of New York City, in San Diego, and elsewhere. The Orthodox church must have gotten a volume discount.
Symtagma square is a real zoo. The noise of gunned motors and car horns is unbelievably loud. People and cars both crowd the streets in all directions. Its more confusing than midtown Manhattan at rush hour. The Greeks find this an exhilarating contrast to quiet village life and identify it with advanced civilization.
In the middle of the square, olive trees shade a fountain and restaurant. At about 2:00 p.m., the midday sun was at its peak. It was too hot to go on, so we stopped for some orange juice at the restaurant. The cacophony of people, cars, buses, and motorcycles roaring outside the square blurred to a single distant hum. Under the shade trees it was surprisingly cool and tranquil.
Having rested, we walked on to the Byzantine museum of icons. It was about 3:00pm and very hot. The intensity of the heat was reinforced by the humidity. At 2:00 p.m. all work stops and shops close until 5:00 p.m. when it finally begins to cool down to a comfortable temperature. Most of the natives had the good sense to stay indoors, but we were on a schedule and museums are about the only thing open at this time of day. Each step we took through the concrete jungle, we reminded ourselves that the museum would be air conditioned.
When we arrived, we were aghast to learn that like most buildings in Greece, there was no air conditioning. We walked have dazed from over heating through the corridors. We saw lots of icons. All the faces had a somber expression which reminded us of our distress from the heat. All the colors were dark golden hues which seem burnt from too much sun. All the men were bearded. We saw Christ sitting on his mother's lap, Christ on the cross, Christ on his throne, Christ surrounded by angels, and Christ unlocking the doors of hell. Icons are painted according to precise rules and after a while they all began to look very much alike. We became very tired and bored.
On our way back toward the hotel we walked through the national gardens. The presidential palace was across the street. Evzone soldiers were marching to guard duty as we passed. They were wearing khaki brown kilts and little red caps with tassels. Their famous white pleated kilts and embroidered vests are only worn on Sundays. You have to be at least six feet tall to become an Evzone. Every year a contingent would come to Chicago to be a part of the Greek Independence day parade. We also saw the zoo in the gardens and fell asleep on a park bench. A street vendor woke us up and warned us to be more careful of robbers. We walked on to the ruins of the temple of Zeus and Hadrian's arch. From there we went to the car rental agency near our hotel to verify our arrangements. The evening found us back at the Plaka for dinner, sharing a bottle of wine and watching the waiters dance to the sounds of the oriental mode. Dancing is one of the prime means of self expression in Greece. Greeks are a very expressive people. Dancing is not considered a feminine art. Some dances are traditionally done only by men. In times past only men danced. Alexander the Great taught his soldiers to dance in order to get them to fight in unison.
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