Day 1 - What I did today...

It's only 2pm but we're already pooped. We did quite a lot today! Although we assigned a day for the Acropolis, we ended up moving through it rather quickly as we knew what we wanted to see. Also, a lot of things we wanted to see were closed to the public - the Temple of Athene Nike and the Herodeion. The Acropolis itself was an awesome sight - but the site is spoiled by the allowance of too many tour groups and school parties in at a time. 'Cattle market' springs to mind. I wouldn't mind that much, but we weren't allowed to be 'touristy' and pose for photographs on the sight. While I knew that we weren't supposed to, I still thought it was a little... strict...

From the Acropolis we saw the Greek Agora, so we decided to head down and take a look at it, particularly as we spotted a temple down there and it pretty much fell under our 'Greek Religion' project title.

Needless to say, we got completely and utterly lost somehow and ended up climbing the Hill of Nymphs. We saw an altar of Zeus up there as well as some random stoa and a Sanctuary of Pan. (http://www.greg-hand.com/pics/sanctuary_of_pan.jpg <- the floor mosaic we saw outside, the sanctuary itself was a cave but the relief inside of Pan with a nymph had either been removed or it was too dark to see it.)

Eventually, we found the Agora and immediately we headed for the Hephaiston (seen here with the Greek Agora in the foreground http://k43.pbase.com/v3/45/310145/2/49075005.Agora.jpg). It was a pretty awesome temple and while we were there we realised a few things - either the Greeks made the same scenes for metopes in Athens over and over inspired by the parthanon, or some handy restoration has happened. A lot of the scenes from the Parthanon's sculptures seemed repeated on the Hephaiston. We're going to research into this as it'll be important to our project.

We went to the Stoa of Attalos as well (in the Agora) while we were there. There wasn't much there that concerned us apart from an original vase by the painter Exekias. That only concerned us because we like him so much!

After the Agora we decided it was time to head back to the hostel, having done more than enough for the day and our aching feet hurting. Naturally we got lost and had to find our way back to the hostel with a map that doesn't name the streets - so we relied on a Greek couple who showed us the way XD

Walked past the Roman Agora and a lot of ruins that we don't know what they were. Then had gyros from a local vendor with tsatzuki in it <- they were lovely and cheap at only 2 euros. Today I spent a grand total of about 5 euros. That leaves a lot of my budget left for dinner! At least I can try something new...

Anything coated in tsatzuki would be nice actually...

First Day - Yesterday

We got here safe. I don't have much time to update so I'll do that later when I have more time!

Acropolis today!

first day so far...

I'm updating from my phone so forgive any spelling errors or stuff like that.

We arrived in Athens at 2pm local time, so about midday in england. Our first sight of greece was the giant ikea outside the airport. perhaps not the most greek of things to see but the mountains were plenty greek enough.

We spent our bus journey looking for monuments and museums. We saw a grand total of 0. I'm pretty sure the route into Athens purposefully drives round them or something.

We have seen the parthanon however. Heading towards our hostel for the night (yes we got lost) we walked along the road that lezds to it. Speaking of the hostel, its in a great area and wevw just got the toilet to work so we should be well set out for the next few days.

Trip to Athens 2009

This is my travel blog for my two week study tour to Athens in March/April 2009. I intend to try to update it daily with information from my Study Tour, to tell my family I'm okay and to keep a lasting record of what looks to be a good few weeks in a foreign country.

I'm travelling with two friends who I'll call Tunafish and The Italian One (which will probably become shortened to Tuna and Italian pretty quickly). They may be in any pictures I get the chance to upload.

Our itinerary is shown left.

You'll notice it says 'church' on the Sunday. This isn't because we intend to attend some Orthodox masses but actually because we need a day off to gather our notes together...

A little more in depth is as follows...

We travel to Tunafish's house for a stopover before our flights. We're taking the opportunity to see the bits of the Parthenon that are at the British Museum at that time. We then go back to Tunafish's house to stuff our faces with the last good meal we will have for two weeks (I'm thinking fish and chips <3) href="http://www.hostels.com/hostels/athens/students-&-travellers-inn/15729">Student and Traveller's Inn for five nights, mostly for it's central location and good reviews on hostels.com. We're going to spend the afternoon and evening either sleeping or exploring in order to find ATMs, food and various other amenities.

The next day is the Sounion. The plan is to catch the bus, though there is some dispute on exactly where to catch the bus. Some require us to catch various buses and metro lines to get to a bus station, others say we need to walk five minutes down the street. Either way, we are going to the Sounion to see the Temple of Poseidon. We are, unfortunately, probably unlikely to see 'the best sunset in the Mediterranean' as it appears that sunset on that day is at 19.44 and our bus leaves at 18.30. We may see a little of the sunset though. At least, I hope so...

The next day is the National Archaeological Museum. We've set aside a full day for this so we hope that it's going to be quite a leisurely stroll round here and then back to Ice Grill, Plaka. (Ice Grill is an ice cream parlour known for it's cheap but delicious ice cream. We may not be able to afford food, but there will be a special ice cream budget I'm sure).

Tuesday is the Acropolis. Obviously, this is the one place in Greece that most people would head to first, but we like to be backwards. Besides, we've seen most of the site already in the British Museum and the NAM. We're mostly going to see the beautiful Parthenon, even if it is covered in scaffolding. Apparently the little decorative Temple of Athena Nike (picture next to this text) and the Propylaea is completely invisible under the construction tarpaulin...

The Olympeion and the Herodeion, while sounding similar, are actually completely irelevant from each other. The Olympeion is the Collosol Temple of Olympian Zeus and is one of the largest temples on mainland Greece. This isn't to be confused with the Temple of Zeus at Olympia however. The temple at Athens is mostly in ruins now, but I have it on good information that if you follow the signs for the toilets you can find some pretty temples dedicated to Zeus' son Apollo out the back. The Herodeion is a reconstructed theatre and, while of absolutely no interest to me, makes up Tunafish's third of our total mark.

The Stoa of Attalos is a museum now, and wholly uninteresting to those of you who don't enjoy either grave stelae or pottery. Much more interesting is the Panathenaic Stadium. The Panathenaic games were held here during (betcha can't guess) the Panathenaic Festival. These were games held in the honour of Pallas Athene and, in ancient Greece, weren't as obscure as they appear to be now, being about on par with the Olympic Games for significance.

The Kerameikos is my personal specialist area, as I'm studying death cult as my individual project whilst on tour. The Kerameikos, so named after the ceramics workshops that used to stand on the site, was the ancient burial ground along the main road into Athens. The graves along the Panathenaic Way (processional route into Athens) are beautiful examples of grave markers from Classical Athens. The Kerameikos can also tell us something of Athen's social history, with the graves of Hegeso, Deixileos and the abrupt changes of types of graves in later years telling us not just about what the Greeks believed after death, but also what those left alive wanted to portray their dead loved one as.

Then to Delphi. The Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi is something that is held up to every Classics student as the important one. Neither covered in scaffolding nor completely destroyed by rivers changing course and earthquakes, it remains one of the more intact Sanctuaries and, due to lying outside Athens, it has fared better on the acid rain front. Maybe it is some snobbery from classicists, who see the Acropolis as too touristy and Olympia as a little too boring, but there is something about Delphi that is more interesting than first appears. One part of Delphi that catches the attention is the presence of the Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi, who inhales toxic gases and proceeds to babble out prophecies to all who will listen. The Oracle of Delphi became world famous with kings from all over Greece and all over the world coming to hear her prophesy. Of course, the prophecies were always rather open to interpretation, as can be read about here. It was also believed that there was no way to avoid the Delphic Oracle's predictions - to do so is to think you are better than the gods and to share a fate similar to Oedipus who, despite his best intentions to avoid killing his father and marrying his mother, through his ignorance did it anyway.

Corinth. Temple of Apollo. Odeion. There is not much to say about this apart from that it's a time filler before we move on to other things. And yes, the Odeion is where we get Odeon Cinemas from. No, it's not Greek but it's in Greece, so it must have meant something to them!

Epidaurus is the Greek theatre to see. It's the Sanctuary of the Greek God Asklepios, god of Healing. As a god, Asklepios is a rather latecomer (later even than Dionysus whose creation is some time in between Homeric times and Classical times during the Dark Ages). His Sanctuary however, is pretty impressive. The theatre is the biggest and best preserved in Greece and, yes, we're going for Tunafish.

Our next port of call is Olympia. The Sanctuary of Olympian Zeus was the largest temple of its kind in the world at one point. Now it's pretty much just rubble. The home of the Olympic Games, but all in all a rather boring site to those who are wandering around it without archaeological plans. Not much left to see but worth it to build up more information on our Sanctuaries.

Monastiraki. This is a shopping district. It can't all be work. There are souvenirs to buy!

Our final visits are to the Theatre of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis and the Museum of Piraeus. The theatre is another Tunafish thing, and by this point I imagine we'll have no money and be living off whatever bits of cheese and bread we stole from the continental breakfast hotel in Corinth two days before. Even so, we'll probably still get some work done on that day.

Maybe it'll aid the weightloss?

Our flight home is quite late on Easter Sunday (leaves Athens about 19.00) so we have plenty of time to get aquainted with the airport. At this point in time we'll be sick to death of each other anyway, so I predict there will be plenty of burying our head in books/DS/staring into space with headphones on rather than talking to each other at this point. Either that or we'll be planning to emigrate. One or the other...