We left home on Tuesday morning and drove Blanche’s mother to the airport in Grand Junction and continued on our way to Denver. We arrived at Jeff and Dolly’s house after a lovely dinner. We stayed overnight and went to the airport the next morning.
Glad to say we had an uneventful flight from Denver to Munich. The plane was wonderful. It was an airbus, and we had a whole row to ourselves for the 9 ¼ hour flight. Then we changed planes to fly to Athens. We seemed to walk all over the Munich airport in order to find our gate. But again all went well.
When we arrived in Athens we were escorted to the hotel, where we met our tour guide. We also found out that we were not on a tour with 11 people, as we thought, but we were traveling with 41 other people. So the adventure begins. We stayed up as long as we could and went to bed around 10, which was really hard to do.
OCTOBER 2
Here we are in Athens. We got up early and had breakfast then went on a tour of Athens, then up to the Parthenon on the Acropolis. After getting some euros, we went to lunch with our tour guide Rea (pronounced Raya). Rea is a short, stout woman who adopts her whole tour group. She has been guiding for 35 years and tells a great story. We then went to the Temple of Zeus on our own and then walked back to our hotel.
This of course is the Parthenon. It is under reconstruction, as is most of the Acropolis. The money for this work comes from the European Union, to which Greece is a member. It is pretty amazing and looks just like you would expect. The knowledge of the old Greeks was amazing. They designed the guilding so that all the lines look parallel, even tho they aren't. Wonderful stuff.
This is the 7 Maidens Porch, the original maidens are in the museum to protect them from the pollution and weather. The building around the porch is newly reconstucted (that is within the last 40 years, since it did not exist when Arleen was there in the 1960's)
The Odeon of Herodes Atticus Theatre. The theatre is still used today. As a matter of fact there was a concert that night. You can see the speakers near the stage.
This is a view of the Temple of Zeus from the Acropolis. Also you can see that Athens has become a big city. There is amazing traffic and pollution. So, right in the middle of the city you find all these old ruins that the Greek have preserved. There was one corner in the center of the city that has on building on it because they found ruins when they started excavating. The poor owner lost his property.
This is the Acropolis from the Temple of Zeus. Look at the size of the columns.OCTOBER 3
The next day was on our own. We went to the Archeological Museum with Dave and Blanche. We traveled by trolley bus. We didn't know exactly how to get there, so I asked a lady at the trolley station. She didn't understand where we were going, so she found someone who spoke English and asked her for us. This new lady told us how, and then asked the trolley driver where we should get off because she was getting off first. What wonderful people. On the way back from the museum we saw the changing of the guard at the tomb of the unknown soldier. Then back to our hotel.
A discus thrower from the 6th century BC. He is made of bronze that has bubbled up with age
This is either Zeus or Podedion. There is some dispute as to whether he was throwing a trident or lightning bolts.
Yes, you guessed it. The changing of the guard. There are metal spikes on the bottom of the funny shoes the guards where so their steps are very loud
No comments:
Post a Comment