We spent Christmas week in Athens, Greece with a friend of Jenn’s. It was amazing! Athens and Greece overall, was awesome. For better or worse, we were nearly always surrounded by really incredible food.
On our first day after arriving in Athens, we visited the Acropolis. We hired a guide on site and spent two hours learning about the ancient Greeks. Our guide was super knowledgeable and extremely talkative but sadly I had a lot of trouble understanding her accent. The Acropolis complex was very large and overlooked the sizable Agora.
Later that day, we watched the changing of the guard which is a special event on Sunday.
The next day, we hired a car with a guide to take us on a full day Argolis tour. It was fantastic! Our guide, Aver, and our driver Costas were very knowledgeable and made for a great day. We first stopped at the Corinthian canal before continuing on to Ancient Corinth and the citadel of Mycenae. We then went to Nafplion for lunch. Afterwards, we headed to Epidaurus before heading back to Athens. Apparently, the Mycenians had regular trade with Egyptians and in the citadel one of the royals found buried had Egyptian artifacts with them.
We went to the Acropolis Museum the following day. It’s a lovely museum with many different artifacts though mostly it’s filled with sculpture (pieces) from the Parthenon. Since the Parthenon was virtually blown up by the Venetians in the 17th century, leaving almost nothing of the beautiful pediments surrounding the building. The museum was built over neighborhoods of ancient Athens and some of it is excavated.
Our friends took us to Cape Sounio to see the Temple of Athena there, though it was closed (day after Christmas; we knew it was closed). The cape was beautiful and we stopped for lunch at Xristoforos on the way back.
The next day we went with HP again for a full day tour to Delphi. We had a private guide for the museum and the ruins at Delphi. This city was incredibly rich due to offerings given to the oracles. Again we see pieces with Egyptian influence on Ancient Greek art. Some of the statues are really lifelike. It was amazing to see just how skilled they became as sculptors (and architects, and city planners, and….) In ancient Delphi, there was a bronze statue The Serpentine Column- today we saw a reconstruction- that was later moved to Constantinople by Constantine the Great in 324; that Jenn and I saw on our trip to Istanbul! I recognized and was a little blown away.
At the National Archeological Museum, we saw pieces from all over. They had a significant section dedicated to the artifacts from Mycenae and that fleshed out the picture in my mind from our visit to the citadel early in our trip. In this museum it was easy to follow Greek art chronologically and it was cool to see it’s evolution. I was surprised to see so many depictions of octopi and lions. The last thing we saw at the museum was the Antikythera Mechanism. It was a complex mechanism generally referred to as the first analogue computer. It could show phases of the moon, positions of the planets in the sky and more. It just really shows how advanced the Greeks were.
On our last evening we went to Don Carlos at the new opera house in Athens. The performance space was fantastic and I even enjoyed the opera very much. Normally Im not a fan but the screen for the subtitles was in the back of the chair ahead of me, a bit like the screen in an airplane. It was a great design and a beautiful opera house. If I lived in Athens, I have no doubt I’d be there a lot!
I loved Greece and I’m really looking forward to a return trip. The food was amazing everywhere and the country has so much colorful history that I’d really like to go back and see more, especially the Peloponnese Peninsula.