Quick Update!

Just a quick update: Yes, yes – we are still alive.  In “blog time”, we’re just about ready to leave Athens.  In “real time”, we just wrapped up a busy four days in Denmark, and are now on a plane for London.  The intervening ~21 days represent three weeks of unlimited travel on our Global Eurail Pass.  For us, this meant Italy (all over), Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, and Denmark. 

Keeping up with the blogging has been harder than we anticipated, especially since we want to do a good and thorough job with the blog (both for your reading pleasure, and because it’s our journal of this trip, too!).  And we refuse to blog at the expense of experiences: We won’t stay locked in the hotel room to write five posts, while missing out on a day’s worth of adventures!

We’d been trying to sneak in a post every day or two, but recently we’ve been busy planning our time in the UK, and starting to line up our cross-country trip in the US.  Since having a place to sleep at night trumps blogging, Our Big Adventure has taken a bit of a hit. 

But England is pretty much planned now – we’ll be here for five days, and have a full schedule that combines sight seeing with visits to some dear friends.  Furthermore, we’ll be getting hooked up with a second computer later this week, and we are twice as powerful when we each have a keyboard!  So stay tuned…

An amusing anecdote, and a laugh at my brain...

We are currently staying at a decent hostel.   For the purposes of this story, it doesn't matter where this hostel is.  We have a room for just the two of us, but we share common toilet and shower facilities.  The shower room is pretty basic: four showers, each with its own curtain, and a shared pre/post-shower area, with a bench along one wall.  The Men's and Women's Shower Rooms are across the hall from each other, and labeled with a subtle sign (font size ~40 on an 8.5 x 11 sheet of paper, no joke).


We've been here for two days now, and I have taken two showers with great success.  I have seen other women in this shower room.  It is not the shower room that Kee-Min uses.  Clearly, I have been doing something right.  


But this morning, I pulled open the door and saw someone (fully dressed, but with wet hair) shaving with an electric razor.  Before I could even register a conscious thought, my hand let go of the door and I backed away, embarrassed.  Uhhh...he was shaving his face. 


So what did I do?  I double checked the sign on the door.  Then, I walked over to the other shower and check the sign on that door, too.  Finally convinced that I was right, I re-opened the door, by which time my new friend had also realized something was wrong and was making a hasty retreat, poor guy.


As for me?  I stepped into the now-vacant shower room to do my thing.  But I spent my shower chuckling over my own reaction.  It's incredible how quickly something that I knew, with absolute certainty (that I was in the Women's Shower) was abandoned for self-doubt in an "Ack!!  I'm In The Wrong Bathroom!" moment.

A Farewell View (Athens Day #5)

As Kee-Min mentioned in a recent post, we’d arrived in Athens with tentative plans to see all the Acropolis sites, take in a number of museums, and get away for at least one day-trip out of the city.  But now, we were on our final day in the city, and despite having been turned away from numerous sites and museums thanks to holidays and inaccurate guidebook/website information (see here and here), we were enamored with the city. 

We loved exploring the twisty, multiply-named side streets, even when our ability to read Greek failed us and left us lost briefly disoriented.  We felt welcomed in the city, starting with Tony's enthusiastic welcome and dinner that first night at the Ugly Duckling.  Everywhere we went, people were kind, welcoming, and happy to help us - and just about everyone spoke excellent English.  We'd fallen for Athens, for Greece, and for the Greeks - and we didn't want to leave.

But we had a plane ticket, and there were murmurings about impending airline strikes in Italy, so it was time to say our goodbyes to Athens.  Our flight was scheduled for 6 PM, so we needed to leave for the airport in the early afternoon - giving us one more morning to fill.

One thing we'd been putting off all week had been a trip up to the highest point in the city - Lykavitos Hill.  We’d actually spotted this lookout point from the Acropolis (also a hill, but not as high) on our first day:

Don't mind the haze. That was pretty much normal for Athens.

If you look closely in the picture, you’ll see a series of switchbacks winding their way up the hill.  Now, I’m a member of the Fleet Feet/Salomon Endurance Trail Running Team (meet us here, if you're on Facebook), so…if you put a hill in front of me, I’m going to want to run up it.  I’m also my father’s daughter, so…if you advertise the top of that hill as a scenic lookout, I’m a goner.  And I'm going.  To the top.  No matter what.


My first choice would have been to use the climb as part of a hill workout.  In fact, I was itchy to break out my sneakers and explore the twisty, hilly residential sections of Athens.  But although I’d recovered from the double bug attack, my aerobic system wasn’t anywhere near 100% on the athletic front.  So Kee-Min nixed a run, but we figured that a walk/hike would be OK.

So first thing Thursday morning, we headed for the subway station - although we were super close to the Acropolis, the base of Lykavitos was about 2 miles away.  But when we reached the subway stop near our hotel - at 10 AM on a weekday morning - we found it closed off by a metal gate, locked up tightly.  Ditto for the next station down the road.  We also noticed an unusually large number of people crowded at the bus stops, and heavy car traffic on the roads.  Whoops - Metro Workers' Strike. Welcome to Greece!!

We did a quick recalculation and plan adjustment, then set off on foot for Lykavitos Hill.  We knew we wouldn't have time to walk there, hike up and down, and walk back, though - so we decided to take the funicular to the top of the hill. 

Simply put, a funicular is a tram system used for transportation up and down a hill.  Usually, it has one car on each end of a cable, and the cars counter-balance each other as they run up and down the hill, sometimes with a few stops along the way.  Smart use of physics + "fun" in the name = I couldn't be too disappointed about missing the walk.  Plus, we'd already rode one in Japan, and I was excited to add to my funicular repertoire.

The approach to the funicular station still required some climbing, of these steps that a built right into the hill between buildings, like a sidewalk (this was all over in Athens - it's a hilly place!):

This is going back down. Obviously, at this point, we were going UP.

When we arrived at the funicular station, I was disappointed to discover that the funicular was underground/undercover.  We weren't going to get to watch the scenery go by - we'd be sequestered in a little tunnel the whole time. Boo!  But, it was too late to turn back, so we purchased our tickets and hopped on board:

Funicular car.

Kee-Min is ready to go!

The ride to the top took approximately 3 minutes, and looked pretty much like this:

I told you it was dark!

As we pulled into the station at the top, we were greeted by this sign:

"Lycabettus" is "Lykavitos". Thanks to an older and newer alphabet,
the Greeks often have 2 spellings for the same word.  Extra exciting.

OK, so 277 meters isn't much (Mt. Doom back in New Zealand was nearly 2,000 meters and lacked a funicular) - but it was sufficient to afford us a great look-out spot.  The day was a bit hazy, which compromised the view and photo taking somewhat - but it was still pretty magnificent:

On a super clear day, you can see out to the sea.  On this particular day, you can kind of squint and catch a few glimpses of it, out in the distance:

The space for scenic over-looking was pretty limited, and I suspect it gets tight up here in the summertime.  But on this particular day, we had the place to ourselves.  Man, it was cold up there (temp dropped a solid 10-15 deg. F from bottom to top), and super windy. Like, "couldn't set the camera up on the tripod" windy, so we had to make do with a shot from arm's length:

In fact, I think I was using both arms to hold the camera steady.

There's also a chapel up there from the 1800s, the Chapel of St. George.  I have no idea what the place is used for today, but it certainly has a special spot at the top of the city!

Small and, on this particular day, rather chilly. But there was still an elderly
caretaker keeping an eye on the place and making sure the candles were lit.

There are also a cafe and restaurant at the top of the hill. Again, I suspect these are pretty popular in the summer (the last funicular leaves the top at 3 AM), but when we stopped in for some coffee, there were only 2 other guests there.  We warmed up, took in more of the view, then headed back down the funicular.  We decided to stroll back to our hotel to take in the sites of Athens one more time.  As we walked along streets that had grown incredibly familiar in just four days, I spied something I had to try.  A yogurt shop.

Fresko Yogurt Bar sits along one of the main tourist drags in Athens. You know the kind - a street (in this case, Dionysiou Areopagitou, Fresko is #3) that runs adjacent to the main attractions, lined with souvenir shops and restaurants whose representatives stand outside and try to lure welcome the tourists in.  We'd walked the stretch many times, but never stopped - until I spotted this place.  We ducked in (thankful, no one was outside soliciting for them, or we might have walked right past), not quite sure what to expect. Well, we were not disappointed.

It is, indeed, a yogurt bar.  You start by choosing your yogurt (they offer Traditional, Low Fat, and Goat's Milk), which is served up from large pots, so thick it is literally scraped into the serving cups.  Then, you select your topping(s), from fresh fruit to nuts to chocolate to traditional Greek "spoon sweets" (preserved fruits in thick, sweet syrup).  After much deliberation and discussion with the super friendly and helpful gentleman who was manning the counter, I opted for a traditional honey and walnut combination. Kee-Min said he'd just share mine, but when I excused myself to use the restroom, I returned to find him paying for his own...

Spoon sweets on the left, honey+walnuts on the right.  Deliciousness all around.

I think the 15 minute walk back to the hotel while eating this yogurt might have been my favorite walk of the entire trip.  And it left me with just one single thought: Fresko, can you please open a branch wherever I settle next?

Breakfast Around The World, Part II (with coffee)

I wrote the first post with this name about Japan as a one-time thing.  But as our travels have continued and we’ve found ourselves waking up in various places across the world, I realize that we’ve hardly scratched the surface of breakfast diversity.  And, as you all have probably realized already, I’m a bit partial to breakfast.  So I think we’ll be bringing the topic back now, and probably a few more times, before the end of the trip.  Further, I’ve used my position as Executive Bloggess for OBA to slightly broaden the scope to include coffee and “hot beverage culture”, as well.

So let’s start with this: Athens is not a morning place.  First of all, dinner starts late.  I don’t think that we sat down for dinner before 8 PM any night we were there, and walking into a restaurant for dinner at 10 PM on a weekday seemed perfectly normal.  Secondly, Athenians don’t really believe in breakfast – unless you consider coffee and some concoction of butter-and-flour-and-air to be breakfast.

We didn’t sit down for a “proper” American breakfast (however you chose to define it: cereal, eggs, pancakes) the entire time we were there.  We didn’t have many nearby breakfast options, particularly since we were staying in a residential, rather than tourist, neighborhood.  Most mornings, we popped into a bakery en route to our first destination, and selected a pastry that served to fortify us for ~45 minutes.  But what they lacked staying-power, they made up for in taste.  I would say that these were some of the best, freshest breakfast pastries I’ve ever had. [Disclaimer: I don't usually eat pastries for breakfast, so it's not like I'm a connoisseur or anything.] We sampled a variety of items, from baked pretzel-like offerings, to fried donut-like goodies, to rich, buttery pastries.  But I didn’t have my very favorite until our last day.

Shortly, I’ll be sharing our itinerary for that last day.  But before embarking on any sightseeing adventures, we popped in to a bakery.  With my digestive system back in order, I decided to indulge in a chocolate chip croissant.  It came out of the bakery case still warm, and its center section (minus the horns on each side) was as big as my fist.  I took my first bite and knew I was in for a treat.  The outside was crispy and the inside was soft and chewy.  I got chocolate chips in every bite – enough to satisfy my chocolate tooth, but not so many that they masked how good the pastry itself was.  When I tried to pull a piece off, it unrolled and unraveled in light, thin sheets.  Eating such a creation for breakfast felt…positively decadent.  But it was so fantastic, all warm and fresh and sweet and melty, that I couldn’t even bring myself to save some for later.  In retrospect (we’re three weeks past this now), I can tell you that this remains, hands-down, the best breakfast pastry that I have enjoyed on our trip. 


We were eating and walking, so unfortunately, there's no photo. But I can assure you that, as photogenic as that croissant was, it tasted three times better than it looked.

Occasionally, we’d supplement our pastry with a stop for coffee.  Now, while they may not consume any actual food, Athenians will happily linger with you over coffee – in fact, their visits to a coffee shop rarely last less than an hour.  Offerings include Greek coffee, which Kee-Min has previously discussed (here), or an espresso/espresso drink.  Such drinks may have different names from their American counterparts, but the contents are the same: espresso, water, milk, and foam – in some combination.  The menus, or waitstaff, can help you sort things out.  There’s also the infamous and incredibly popular frappe (instant coffee, sugar, water, optional evaporated milk), a concoction that appeared to be tremendously popular with the locals, despite the cold snap.  [New Englanders, I know this is not what you call a frappe. I'm sorry.  But please don't have a canary, and we are not making this blog a forum for frappe debates.]

But a word to the wise: Don’t ask for your coffee drink “To Go”.  Greeks do not eat on the run/walk/stroll/meander.  We seldom saw people with any kind of travel cup, and they certainly do not walk down the street munching granola bars, ice cream cones, or even - contrary to what we may think in the US - gyros (which are eaten, of course, but always sitting down at a restaurant).  

The Greeks are definitely a people that believe in connecting with friends and family over food, and they are sure to give both elements ample time and attention.  

And really, when you think about it, isn’t this how life should be??

Day #4 in Athens - Seeing More Sights (and the Riot Police)

By the time Wednesday rolled around, it was our fourth full day in Athens. We’d seen quite a bit of ancient Athens: the Acropolis, Hadrian’s Arch, the Temple of Zeus. But it was (and still is) a little astounding to think that we had seen less than half of the great Athenian archaeological sites. When we had been sitting in a café in Singapore planning out our trip, I had thought that maybe we’d be able to hit them all during our four and a half days in Athens, and maybe even have time to take a side trip out to Delphi. By our second day, reality had set in – we’d be leaving Athens with plenty still unseen.

We did, however, want to at least check out the Ancient Agora on this trip. The Agora was, at one time, the major civil, political, and commercial center of Athens. When the Romans took over, they built a new one (which the archaeologists somewhat unimaginatively called the “Roman Agora”) right next to the Ancient Agora, but until then, the Ancient Agora was the heart of the city (I guess you’d call the Acropolis its soul). It was about a fifteen minute walk from our hotel (twenty minutes going the other way because that way's uphill).

For any Singaporeans reading this blog, you’ll be proud to know that my Singaporean instincts kicked in shortly after we paid our entrance fee and walked in. Our first stop? Arguably one of the world’s first shopping malls – the Stoa of Attalos.

Okay, not as big as Takashimaya, but still pretty impressive, no?

Up close, lots of columns and marbles.

These days it’s been restored/rebuilt and now houses the Ancient Agora Museum. But at one time it housed shops, much like you’d find in a shopping mall today (when we blog about Rome, we’ll tell you where to find the world’s oldest United Colors of Benetton store—at least, the oldest building in the world where you can find a UCB store). The museum itself is relatively small, as compared to the National Archaeological Museum or Acropolis Museum. But it afforded a pretty intriguing look at the finds in the excavation of the Agora, and helped explain some of the history behind the area (which predates even the buildings that the ancient Athenians put up in the 6th to 4th centuries BC).

After we'd toured the museum, we started wandering through the Agora. It’s pretty big, certainly bigger than the Acropolis and with more ruins and sites to visit. We weren’t able to complete a tour of all the sites (though we probably covered most of them).  Two of the ones we did see are worth singling out: The Church of the Holy Apostles, and the Temple of Hephaestus.

Church of the Holy Apostles.

The Church of the Holy Apostles was not part of the original Ancient Agora, but was instead built over the ruins of an older building, probably around the late 10^th century (at least, according to Wikipedia). In both Athens and Rome, it was pretty common to just build over ruins and repurpose older buildings for contemporary uses (you know, kind of like how the Turks used the Parthenon in 1687 as a gunpowder magazine). The church isn't all that big, and probably couldn't contain more than 200 or 300 people (and some of them would have to sit/stand behind walls and pillars out of sight of the altar), quite a contrast from some of the larger cathedrals we visited, particularly in Rome and the rest of Europe. Yet, the church was beautiful in its own simple way. What I found especially mesmerizing, was this stucco painting of Jesus looking down on you from above, framed by the light streaming in from the windows all around the cupola:

This was sitting in the garden outside the church.
No idea where it came from or what it used to be,
but the ornate patterns caught my eye.

On the other side of the Agora grounds, on a slight hill, rises the Temple of Hephaestus. This is a much, much older building than the Church of the Holy Apostles, built in the 4th century BC. It is, in fact, one of the best surviving pieces of ancient architecture and was even in active use up till 1934. These days, it's cordoned off while restoration goes on inside, but it still looks pretty impressive from the outside:

The Temple of Hephaestus. What got us, was thinking that
the Temple of Zeus that we'd seen the day before,
could probably swallow up thirty of these, stacked three deep.

And up close. Compare this to the photo in Holly's post on
the Temple of Olympian Zeus, showing her next to the remaining columns.

As with the Parthenon, there are incredibly detailed friezes on the inside
that depict stories from Athenian history and myth.

 And then, in an unmarked opening, there were these:

We posit that these were formerly part of the radical
2nd century BCE sculptures known as
"Homer Eats Some Donuts".

Before we left the Temple of Hephaestus, we did take a look towards the Acropolis. This is what the view looks like:

It must do something for a city's political identity,
to be able to look up from wherever you are and see
the soul of your city, the place that defines who you are.

We'll skip over our lunch for now and deal with that in a separate post. After lunch, we visited the Benaki Museum to try and learn more about Greek history and culture. We didn't take any photos there, but a word to the wise: If you want to see everything and not rush your way through it, plan on spending most of the day at the Benaki Museum. Anyone interested in Greek history and culture definitely should visit the museum though.


On our way to the Benaki Museum, however, we did have to pass Syntagma Square, which is right in front of the Greek Parliament. Now, you may have heard that the Greeks aren't very happy people right now, due to the austerity measures that have been implemented. In fact, there were riots a week or two before we arrived. With that background in mind, we weren't quite sure how to feel when we saw this:

Athens' finest.

Should you feel comforted to know that the riot police are out in force in case things go wrong, or should you be alarmed that they're out there at all? The photo doesn't really begin to do justice to the police presence that was out there that day, from the Parliament building, all the way up the street that went past the Benaki Museum, and up to our next stop, the Panathenaic Stadium. There were quite a number of buses full of riot police (shields, batons, the works), riot wagons, paramilitary police, dogs, etc. Not being savvy as to our rights under Greek law to photograph public officers, we decided to be content with this surreptitious photo from a safe distance. 

Just beyond those officers though, was the Panathenaic Stadium. Essentially a huge sports stadium (it seats up to 45,000), open on one end, and made almost entirely out of marble. From a distance, on a sunny day, it literally gleams. The Athens Classic Marathon (which begins in Marathon and tries to replicate the route of Phidippides' original run) ends in the Panathenaic Stadium - that run is definitely on my to-do list, some day.

Flat Stanley standing on the winner's podium.

By the end of the day, we had walked through half of Athens. Our feet were a little tired, but our hearts and minds were full and happy. The beautiful weather, the remarkable sights, all combined to make for yet another wonderful day in Athens. And we haven't even talked about that day's food. Stay tuned!

Museum + Food. What Could Be Better?

After spending the morning checking out Hadrian's Arch and the Temple of Zeus, we headed over to The Acropolis Museum. We (and Stanley) were pumped:

Stanley is that shiny thing in Kee-Min's hand.
Lamination was important for his protection, but sometimes makes photographing him a challenge!

As we approached the museum, we went from walking on standard paving stones to clear glass/acrylic.  Looking down, we saw this:

Zooming in a bit, you can really start to see how clean the excavation is:

Basically, ancient ruins have been unearthed under the museum and are currently being excavated.  Eventually, they will be open to the public as part of a visit to the museum.  This is still a work in progress, but I must say – based on what we could see, the excavation looks awesome already.  And the area covered is generous – the excavation that we could see spanned from the entry all the way under the museum itself, and there were clear viewing floors covering approximately half of the ground floor of the museum itself.  If I weren’t already considering another trip to Greece, the thought of touring this as a completed exhibit would be enough to lure me back!

After oogling the ruins for a bit, we headed up to the café for a bite to eat.  [We were learning that neither our brains nor our marriage appreciated us tackling a museum on an empty stomach.]  Kee-Min enjoyed an apple tart-pastry thing, which was good, but not that remarkable.  But me?  I had perhaps the most delicious pile of Greek yogurt I have ever eaten.  Granted, I was still eating cautiously and in the mood for some good pro-biotics, but this yogurt was amazing.  It was served on a plate (that’s how thick it was), in a less-than-attractive heap, smothered in thyme honey and walnuts.  But the presentation didn’t matter one bit.  The yogurt was rich and creamy, with the perfect degree of tartness, complemented beautifully by the sweet honey and fresh, crunchy walnuts. The portion was generous, but I could have easily eaten two servings!  I fear that, when we return home, my Fage and bear-honey will not be as good as they were before this trip!

Properly fortified, we turned to the museum.  The (new) Acropolis Museum was completed in 2007, replacing a dilapidated and inadequate facility (apparently - I was never there).  The new museum boasts 14,000 sq meters of exhibition space, and every bit of that is well-maintained and fresh.  Honestly, I can’t speak highly enough about our museum experiences in Greece (especially having now seen a number of museums in other European countries – but those are stories for subsequent posts!).  We found the Greek museums to be well-planned, organized, clean, and multi-lingual - everything was always translated to English.  Additionally, admission is incredibly reasonable - $6.50 USD each, and we spent 3-4 hours there.

The museum is strictly focused on Athens and the Acropolis.  The first exhibits include a variety of small artifacts excavated from the area: jewelry, pottery, cookware, etc.  We then proceeded through The Archaic Gallery, which displays at least 100 statues, carvings, and portions of friezes from the time when Athens was developing into a democratic city-state (~700-480 BC).  There are floor-to-ceiling windows in this area, and viewing these pieces in bright, natural light is a privilege.  I’d show you some photos, but a multitude of signs warned that photography was prohibited (although our fellow museum-goers seemed to pay that rule no mind, see Point #9 in this post).

We moved upward through the building to displays describing the major buildings on the Acropolis site (the Propylaia, Temple of Athena Nike, Erechtheion).  The additional information and artifacts complemented our trip up to the Acropolis TWO DAYS EARLIER.  We try to do some pre-research before visiting a site, and bring an eBook guide with us:

Kee-Min and Stanley, getting smart.

 But the museum provides a more complete and thorough view than any Guide to Greece could.  The statues and artifacts in the museum have been moved from the actual outdoor sites for safety and preservation (usually they are replaced by reproductions on the actual site).  We also got a glimpse into some of the restoration that is being done on some of these pieces, in particular the use of lasers to remove layers of black pollution covering the light marble surfaces.  We actually saw this technique being used to restore stonework again and again as we moved through Europe.

Finally, we reached the top floor and crown jewel of the museum.  When viewed from afar, the museum building itself looks a bit unusual.  Here’s a photo we took from up at the Acropolis site on Sunday:

 Notice how the top floor is oddly offset?  This is not an attempt at modernity in design (at least not primarily), but rather a very specific decision that aligns the top floor precisely with The Parthenon (long sides parallel).  I didn’t know this - and wouldn’t have really appreciated it - on Sunday, looking down at the museum.  But on Tuesday, standing in the museum and looking up at the Parthenon…the effect was staggering.  The top floor of the museum is floor-to-ceiling windows, and the view to the Parthenon is unimpeded. 

Furthermore, the museum’s top floor is designed to mirror the Parthenon.  Columns line the outside of the room in the same numbers and with the same spacing as they would have had in the intact Parthenon.  The segments of frieze that were originally mounted near the ceiling between the columns are also preserved (in their proper location), as are many of the carvings that decorated the Parthenon.  These carvings include the scenes that decorated the peaks on each of the “short ends” of the structure.  One of these depicts the birth of Athena Nike, while the other documents the infamous battle between Athena and Poseidon.  Only a fraction of the pieces survive, but those that do have been arranged as true to their original positions as archaeologists can determine.  Illustrations “fill in the blanks” for visitors, depicting what researchers currently believe the entire scene to have looked like.  Previous proposed iterations are also shown, making it clear that this is a work in progress, and that over 2,000 years may have destroyed any conclusive evidence.  My hat goes off to the archeaologists!!

Another set of carved tiles that stretch the entire perimeter of the building show the Panathenaic Procession, an annual parade from the city center of Athens that ended at the Acropolis site. 

You can get glimpse of the top floor here, although that really doesn’t do it justice.  The whole museum was educational and impressive, but that top floor was jaw-dropping, and truly impressive in how it conveyed the scale and stature of the Parthenon in its prime.  I would strongly encourage anyone visiting Athens to make this museum a “must see” – preferably after a trip up to the Acropolis site.

Full to the brim with information and marble, but with depleted energy reserves, we headed over just a few streets to MANI-MANI, a well-reviewed restaurant that Kee-Min had scoped out.  It was purported to serve up Greek dishes with a modern twist, and with half portions at half price from 3-5 PM.  We took full advantage of this deal to sample quite a few of their offerings.  We started with an appetizer of the Lentil-Citrus Salad.  This was the only “whole” portion we ordered, although we should have stuck to half of this one, too:

 

It was fresh and tasty, although a bit too oniony for my preference.  The waitress seemed concerned that we didn’t finish it, although we repeatedly assured her that it was delicious, just too much.  The perspective is hard to see, but that would have been an entire dinner and the next day’s lunch, for me.  We could have finished it, certainly, but wouldn’t have had room for what was to come.  And saving space was worth it.  Our next dish was a fresh pasta ravioli stuffed with (I forget because it’s been too long, but I do remember that it was really, really tasty!):

 On the waitress’s recommendation, we also tried the fried ravioli in a light yogurt sauce.  An unusual crispy texture for pasta, and the filling flavor was overpowered by the crunch and chew of the pasta, but these sure were fun to eat:

 

For our “mains”, we shared two dishes: a smoked chicken pasta and a pork dish.  The pork definitely won the Dish of the Day, with subtle and complex flavors in each of the components that mixed surprisingly well.

We wanted every forkful to have a bit of the sweet pork, tart cheese, rice, and herb-infused cream.
This dish was ROCKIN', and I don't really eat pork...

We finished with a dessert that layered crispy sheets of phyllo with sweet cream and tart cherries.  

And thus ended one of my favorite meals in Athens.  Stay tuned, though, because Kee-Min will be sharing a few of his favorites soon!

Romans in Athens: Hadrian's Arch and the Temple of Zeus (Athens Day #3)

We awoke on Tuesday morning, hoping that, with Carnival and Clean Monday out of the way, we'd actually be able to visit some more sites around Athens.  One benefit of the previous day's unexpected museum closures was that I got a bit of extra rest, so I was also feeling more recovered from the double bug shenanigans and ready to take on Athens.

We stepped outside into some - like, a very, very few - flurries.  Tony, our host - who you may remember from this post - bemoaned the weather and assured us that this never happens in Athens!!  He apologized profusely, despite our assurances that it really was OK, and we weren't holding him (or Athens) accountable for the weather.

Grey skies and snow covered mountains in the distance...

Having become accustomed to winters in Upstate New York, we weren't about to let a few flurries ruin our day - especially if they kept the other tourists at home!  Truly, we are finding this time of year to be absolutely glorious for travel in Europe. Yes, it's a tad chilly, and no, it's not beach weather - but if you want to visit the "tourist spots" and are willing to put on an extra layer of clothing, you'll avoid the ridiculous crowds that we'd heard flood these places in the warmer months.


This particular morning was a perfect example.  When we set out, the sky was overcast and a few flurries were falling.  After a brisk 20 minute walk, we reached Hadrian's Arch.


At present, Hadrian's Arch sits right next to a busy Athens city street and sidewalk.  In fact, as disrespectful as it might seem, when we approached, there was a gentleman relieving himself in the bushes just next to the arch (and he wasn't a runner).  I guess that's just what the locals do?


That mental image aside, here's Hadrian's Arch:

Did I mention that the Arch was 18 meters tall?  That little speck in the lower left is Kee-Min.

There was a small sign identifying the arch (as if an 18 meter tall marble arch needs a sign to identify it, but whatever), and that was about it.  It's not even fenced in (again, at 18 meters high, there wouldn't be a point), so admission was free!  The trickiest part was getting far enough away to squeeze the whole arch into the photo.  The second trickiest part was getting a decent photo without too much traffic in the background.  I failed, but what the heck.  It was a busy Tuesday morning in downtown Athens.


Now, Hadrian's Arch was built by the Athenians around 130 AD, possibly to celebrate the arrival of the Roman Emperor Hadrian to Athens.  The arch actually spanned an ancient road that led between the Parthenon (see photo below) and the Temple of Zeus (see photos further below).  If you look through the lowest arch on this one, you'll see (from bottom to top) traffic, some modern building, and then the Parthenon in the background:

The Parthenon back there is only about 300 meters away.
Also? Note the bright, sunshiney sky.
Athens weather proved quite unpredictable during our visit.

Think about the engineering involved in building this kind of structure. The whole thing is made out of marble (Pentelic marble, for Megan G. and any other marble aficionados that might be reading) without the use of any mortar or concrete.  Personally? I wish I'd been privy to the conversation that went into the design: "And hey, after we put the that single arched passage, let's add some Corinthian columns on the top, just to be awesome!"

We next proceeded to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, a once-enormous temple dedicated to Zeus (duh).  When construction of the temple began in the 500s BC, it was envisaged to be the greatest temple in the ancient world.  Although it wasn't finished until the 2nd century AD, after Romans assumed rule of Athens, it was grand indeed, and housed one of the largest statues of a Greek or Roman god.  [Unfortunately, the statue is long gone, probably destroyed in a subsequent invasion.]  But the temple's glory was short-lived, and much of it was destroyed when the Barbarians invaded in the 3rd century AD.  

One of the remaining columns bears an inscription from the 1400s, stating that, at that time, only 21 of the original 121 columns remained.  In 1759, the Turkish governor of Athens (lots of power struggles and changes in rule back then) purportedly shot one of the columns down to reuse parts of it in a mosque he was building.  Tuck this tidbit in the back of your head, it's a theme that will come up repeatedly in Rome.

Today, 15 of the original (121) columns remain.  This is enough to give you an idea of the enormity of this building:

This is the most intact section, ~ 3 x 4 enormous columns.

How enormous? THIS enormous!

Here's another perspective, with the Parthenon in the background:

A sixteenth column remains at the site, having fallen during a storm in the 1800s.  Seeing it gives you a sense of the size and construction of these enormous columns - many small pieces atop one another:

Also note the distinct absence of any other tourists in all of these photos.  We saw about 8 other people at the site while we were there. And with the sun out, the day had warmed up nicely, as well.  So, I will reiterate: March is a great time to travel in Europe, if you want to miss the bulk of the tourists.

Now, back to the site, which also contained some other, partially unearthed ruins, like those of an ancient bath:

You can still see the shiny marble floors.  Crazy!

I cannot convey in words how surreal it is to walk around a city like this, with so much history, and realize that there is probably an enormous amount still undiscovered, sitting under the modern-day city.  Even walking around this excavation area, Kee-Min spied a marble step, only half uncovered, right along the path where we were walking:

Bet you never found one of these in your backyard...

And this concluded our morning Ruins Tour.  For the afternoon, we headed over to the Acropolis Museum. Check back soon to read all about it!