As you can tell, this was exciting.
Showing posts with label athens. Show all posts
Showing posts with label athens. Show all posts
24 June 2011
Acropolis
Amazing visit to the Acropoli today...we went INSIDE the Parthenon. Inside. And even got to climb up the medieval tower. Amazing. Here are some pictures, video going up soon. (Am I a vlogger now?)
View of the Philopappos and the sea
column with restoration
Sanjaya lecturing on the Roman temple of Roma and Augustus
view of the Areopagus
23 June 2011
Week 1
Yasas! Camped out in Blegen again but I put together a teeny video of some of this week's excursions. See for yourself: the Roman Agora in the Plaka (with a view of the Acropolis), a panorama of Athens as seen from on top of the Areopagus (with a view of the Acropolis), and a panorama (and my windblown face) at the temple of Poseidon at Sounion. The background music is actually from the first clip, a musician was playing in the street by the Agora. Greece so often provides her own background music! Sorry it's so tiny, I filmed with my phone. Just full-screen it.
N.B.: Behind me is NOT the ocean, the Mediterranean is a sea. silly me.
Today was our first swim in the Aegean and tomorrow we finally ascend the Acropolis in the morning...and then board an overnight ferry to Crete in the evening.
N.B.: Behind me is NOT the ocean, the Mediterranean is a sea. silly me.
Today was our first swim in the Aegean and tomorrow we finally ascend the Acropolis in the morning...and then board an overnight ferry to Crete in the evening.
19 June 2011
My Greek is horrible
I cannot remember how to say "and." Have been replacing it with "um." Looking up some phrases now. Hopefully it will come back to me...
Anyway, I'm here! Staying in a cute hostel between Syntagma Square, the temple of Zeus and the Plaka, where I just ordered too much food for dinner (Joyce, you know what I'm talking about) but managed to eat most of it. Psomi (bread), cucumber and tomato salad, and gemista (tomatoes stuffed with rice, pine nuts and herbs and baked until it falls apart in your mouth and basically digests itself. YUM.)
My roommates are two impressively tanned french girls who chattered away this afternoon while I napped and dreamed about how to talk to them about premature wrinkles and see if they've ever been to Ibiza.
I did an obligatory stroll through the Plaka/around the base of the Acropolis. Do you have an idea of what this might be like? Does it involve the amusingly familiar notes of Zorba the Greek coming from some light-strung terraced taverna that fade as you walk away and are replaced by a cheerful bouzouki medley? Are cats everywhere, languidly stretching in front of blankets laden with fake designer bags? Do you smell cigarettes, roasting meat, flowering trees, dust, and something that smells both musty and cold, like eating gelato inside of a closet filled with coats that have mothballs in the pockets, which is the only way I can think of to describe the smell of marble that is layered under everything else. Because all these sensory imaginations are accurate.
Greece is not at all boring but a little predictable. The light - the light! Everyone talks about the LIGHT because it is true. It's different here. During the day it is bright and pure, throwing everything into sharp relief, color-saturated. At dusk it softens until it wraps everything in a mild glow. The sunset over the hills ringing Athens takes the sky from ruby to coral to a dusky blue before settling into pitch.
I am familiar with this neighborhood but I usually stay in Exarchia - the funky area of students and communists and bonfires blasting music in the middle of the night. I didn't stay there this time but I actually miss it - I know where everything is! A gyro place, a bakery, a crepe place, an oh-so-charming taverna. Tomorrow my program starts and I will leave this neighborhood and go over to Kolonaki, a fairly swanky area where most of the foreign archaeological schools are housed, as well as luxury shopping and a hospital and a few museums.
Until then,
S
Anyway, I'm here! Staying in a cute hostel between Syntagma Square, the temple of Zeus and the Plaka, where I just ordered too much food for dinner (Joyce, you know what I'm talking about) but managed to eat most of it. Psomi (bread), cucumber and tomato salad, and gemista (tomatoes stuffed with rice, pine nuts and herbs and baked until it falls apart in your mouth and basically digests itself. YUM.)
My roommates are two impressively tanned french girls who chattered away this afternoon while I napped and dreamed about how to talk to them about premature wrinkles and see if they've ever been to Ibiza.
I did an obligatory stroll through the Plaka/around the base of the Acropolis. Do you have an idea of what this might be like? Does it involve the amusingly familiar notes of Zorba the Greek coming from some light-strung terraced taverna that fade as you walk away and are replaced by a cheerful bouzouki medley? Are cats everywhere, languidly stretching in front of blankets laden with fake designer bags? Do you smell cigarettes, roasting meat, flowering trees, dust, and something that smells both musty and cold, like eating gelato inside of a closet filled with coats that have mothballs in the pockets, which is the only way I can think of to describe the smell of marble that is layered under everything else. Because all these sensory imaginations are accurate.
I am familiar with this neighborhood but I usually stay in Exarchia - the funky area of students and communists and bonfires blasting music in the middle of the night. I didn't stay there this time but I actually miss it - I know where everything is! A gyro place, a bakery, a crepe place, an oh-so-charming taverna. Tomorrow my program starts and I will leave this neighborhood and go over to Kolonaki, a fairly swanky area where most of the foreign archaeological schools are housed, as well as luxury shopping and a hospital and a few museums.
Until then,
S
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