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!