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In the footsteps
of ancient Athenians...
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Room with a view: Acropolis
day & night |
Athens continues to offer
the best of both ancient and modern worlds. A huge sprawling
city, it delivers a unique mixture of 21st century urban life
right next door to the roots of its thousands of years
of history. Athens is the only city I've ever been to
where pieces of marble lay beside the sidewalks and
roads, where subway stations are museums of their own
excavation and where a city full of tall office
buildings is overshadowed by a 2500 year old
monument on a hill. |
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Monday November 20th
Starting the
day with coffee
on our balcony at the
Marriott Ledra Athens, I snapped the morning light
equivalent of the Acropolis shot I took the prior night. The large picture above shows those
two shots stitched together. After breakfast we
began a walking tour of the city. We wound our way up the
sidewalk and steps of the Acropolis. The sheer size of the
Acropolis itself and the structures on it are hard to comprehend
without being there.
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Craig & Wayne at the
Parthenon west face |
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After
passing through the Beule Gate and ascending the stairs beside
the Temple of Athena Nike, we turned right past the Odeon
of Herodes Atticus (first picture above), crossing south away
from the Erechtheion (second picture above). We set up a small
tripod on the southern wall and waited for the sparse crowds
to pass by to capture the large picture top of page right,
standing at the foot of the western face of the Parthenon.
Continuing east along the southern face of the Parthenon
(third picture above), we got a sense of the incredible views
this place offered for defending itself (fourth picture above
looking southeast over Hadrian's Arch, the Roman Temple of
Olympian Zeus and the Panathenaic Stadium, all of which lay
ahead of us on our walk that day). The eastern face of
the Parthenon (first picture below) is near the (soon to be
relocated) Acropolis Museum which houses many of the important
pieces that once adorned the buildings (second picture below).
Circling around the north side of the Acropolis we visited the
Erechtheion close-up and got an overhead view of our next
destination, where Socrates and Plato once walked (third
picture below). |
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Leaving the
Acropolis, we wound our way down the path to the Ancient Agora
(fourth picture above at its eastern end and first picture
below looking across from its western end back toward the
Acropolis). Heading east out of the Ancient Agora toward
Monastiraki Square, we visited the Roman Agora and the Tower
of the Winds (second and third pictures below). The contrasts
of ancient and modern Athens abound in this area. Skirting the
base of the northeast wall of the Acropolis we strolled the
thin streets of the Plaka, stopping along the way for a
delicious lunch at a sidewalk counter creperie (fourth picture
below). |
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Exiting the
Plaka, Hadrian's Arch comes into view (first picture below)
which marks the entrance to the Roman Temple of Olympian Zeus
(second picture below). Continuing our walk eastward, we
arrived at the site of the 2000 year old marble Panathenaic
Stadium, which hosted the 2004 Olympics as well as the first
modern Olympics in 1896 (third picture below). From the
stadium we cut back northwest through the National Gardens,
ending our walk around 4PM at the Parliament Building's Tomb
of the Unknown Soldier where the Evozones, National Guardsmen
in their unique uniforms, maintain an animated and remarkable
vigil (fourth picture below). |
Mackey Group, Inc.
© 2002 - 2010
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