Athens, the first day
Aug. 12th, 2011 12:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hawkwing_lbUnlike every other city I'm used to, Athens isn't built around a river basin. When I emerged, blinking, from Ambelokopi metro into the darkness of a warm Greek night, the city's hilly topography proved disorienting. Down is not automatically further in; nor will up necessarily take you to a central point.
My meagre Greek proved vital on the short taxi ride from the metro to the Institute, where an old acquaintance gave me my set of keys. (I'm glad to see Dr. J again - although since she hasn't had any luck getting work during the academic year for a while, her news doesn't make me feel happy about the global economy.) I'm sharing a room with an early-riser of an Australian, and lying in the darkness at three am local time, listening to the air conditioning and the sound of someone else's breathing, traffic rumbling down Leoforos Alexandras two streets away, I found myself thinking, Insomnia? This would be a good time for you to go away.
By the time I woke up properly and got myself showered, it was nigh unto eleven o'clock. The forenoon didn't even hit thirty Celsius; a very moderate temperature all told. I did some shopping in the corner shop - yoghurt and sliced meat and cheese: expensive, but this is the centre of the city - bought tyropita and bread in the baker's, and fruit and a cucumber in the greengrocer. The cicadas were going like the hammers in the yard across from the kitchen window while I put my stuff away, and I - falling into the category of Mad Dogs and Irish Women - set out thereafter in search of the Greek National Tourist Information Bureau, and details of How To Get Places From Here.
The bus from opposite the Archaeological Museum set me down beside Syntagma. As I walked down from the bus stop, I passed three soldiers of the Presidential Guard and their NCO, making a ceremonal guard circuit. Two more were standing by their pillboxes in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. (The Evzones are a bizarre unit, to my eyes, but hey, everybody has their traditions.)
After some fooling about with the metro (I went to Monastiraki; the metro info people at Monastiraki sent me back to Syntagma telling me the GNTO was on Leoforos Amalias; a very helpful person in the Halkidiki Tourist Bureau - who had a gorgeous friendly terrior in the office with her - finally told me I needed the pedestrian street Dionysiou Areopatigou that leads to the Acropolis Museum, and that I'd find the GNTO at number 18), I ended up walking down Leoforos Amalias beside the National Gardens towards the south side of the acropolis.
On the left hand side of this avenue, as you walk down, is an archaeological park. (Nothing new in that, sez you: this is Athens, after all. Well, yes.) The columns of the vast temple of Olympian Zeus rear above the shrubbery. Olympian Zeus is massive: begun in the Classical period, on a base measuring 41m by 108m, it wasn't completed until the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Hadrian's Arch (famously inscribed on one side, This is Athens, the city of Theseus and on the other, This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus) stands between it and the south slope of the acropolis, which lies perhaps half a kilometre northwest. Intervisibility between the temple and the acropolis is startlingly good, despite tall modern building: in antiquity it would have been even better.
Dionysiou Areopagitou is crawling with tourists. But the GNTO - a modern building set back from the road behind shrubbery, not well-marked - is air-conditioned, and the nice people inside were able to help me with the little, important details of my transport from Athens to Corinth to Argos to Palaio Epidavros, like bus timetables. I am now the proud owner of instructions for how to get to the Amphiareion at Oropos. I am also hopeful of successfully bussing to Eleusina and Sounion, and getting as far as Aegina by ferry - or at least one of three.
Getting back to the Institute involved hopping the trolley - an electric bus that runs on wires like a tram, but without the rails - but fortunately I found the right one. Now I am hungry, and since I want to check out Pedion tou Areos before dark, it may be appropriate to have a nap.
My meagre Greek proved vital on the short taxi ride from the metro to the Institute, where an old acquaintance gave me my set of keys. (I'm glad to see Dr. J again - although since she hasn't had any luck getting work during the academic year for a while, her news doesn't make me feel happy about the global economy.) I'm sharing a room with an early-riser of an Australian, and lying in the darkness at three am local time, listening to the air conditioning and the sound of someone else's breathing, traffic rumbling down Leoforos Alexandras two streets away, I found myself thinking, Insomnia? This would be a good time for you to go away.
By the time I woke up properly and got myself showered, it was nigh unto eleven o'clock. The forenoon didn't even hit thirty Celsius; a very moderate temperature all told. I did some shopping in the corner shop - yoghurt and sliced meat and cheese: expensive, but this is the centre of the city - bought tyropita and bread in the baker's, and fruit and a cucumber in the greengrocer. The cicadas were going like the hammers in the yard across from the kitchen window while I put my stuff away, and I - falling into the category of Mad Dogs and Irish Women - set out thereafter in search of the Greek National Tourist Information Bureau, and details of How To Get Places From Here.
The bus from opposite the Archaeological Museum set me down beside Syntagma. As I walked down from the bus stop, I passed three soldiers of the Presidential Guard and their NCO, making a ceremonal guard circuit. Two more were standing by their pillboxes in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. (The Evzones are a bizarre unit, to my eyes, but hey, everybody has their traditions.)
After some fooling about with the metro (I went to Monastiraki; the metro info people at Monastiraki sent me back to Syntagma telling me the GNTO was on Leoforos Amalias; a very helpful person in the Halkidiki Tourist Bureau - who had a gorgeous friendly terrior in the office with her - finally told me I needed the pedestrian street Dionysiou Areopatigou that leads to the Acropolis Museum, and that I'd find the GNTO at number 18), I ended up walking down Leoforos Amalias beside the National Gardens towards the south side of the acropolis.
On the left hand side of this avenue, as you walk down, is an archaeological park. (Nothing new in that, sez you: this is Athens, after all. Well, yes.) The columns of the vast temple of Olympian Zeus rear above the shrubbery. Olympian Zeus is massive: begun in the Classical period, on a base measuring 41m by 108m, it wasn't completed until the reign of the Roman emperor Hadrian. Hadrian's Arch (famously inscribed on one side, This is Athens, the city of Theseus and on the other, This is the city of Hadrian, and not of Theseus) stands between it and the south slope of the acropolis, which lies perhaps half a kilometre northwest. Intervisibility between the temple and the acropolis is startlingly good, despite tall modern building: in antiquity it would have been even better.
Dionysiou Areopagitou is crawling with tourists. But the GNTO - a modern building set back from the road behind shrubbery, not well-marked - is air-conditioned, and the nice people inside were able to help me with the little, important details of my transport from Athens to Corinth to Argos to Palaio Epidavros, like bus timetables. I am now the proud owner of instructions for how to get to the Amphiareion at Oropos. I am also hopeful of successfully bussing to Eleusina and Sounion, and getting as far as Aegina by ferry - or at least one of three.
Getting back to the Institute involved hopping the trolley - an electric bus that runs on wires like a tram, but without the rails - but fortunately I found the right one. Now I am hungry, and since I want to check out Pedion tou Areos before dark, it may be appropriate to have a nap.
