Our Handy Transportation
Thursday, July 9, 2009
What a beauty - Renault something-or-other
This baby is loaded:
- auto locks
- 5-speed manual
- fm radio / CASSETTE stereo
- AC
- left / right indicators
Day 2 Acroplis - Photos!
Well, we finally got some internet. It wasn't working at this hotel in Tolo for the first 2 nights, but I helped them out with it - and it's working now.
Here's us during our first night in Athens. We are in a touristy area (Plaka) which is pretty hectic and full of people, but it's safe to walk around in and close to the good stuff. Most of the restaurants seem to be carbon copies of each other, and they don't serve the type of Greek food I was hoping for (greek potatoes and stuffed grape leaves). But the Greek Salad is very good. You don't need a fancy sauce, just oil and vinegar does it.
Pan's Cave, anything in there? It goes deeper than it looks!
This is me sitting in the Cave of Zeus, I guess I showed the proper respect as lightning didn't strike.
Here is the one and only Parthenon (going through some repairs right now). All the temples on the acropolis were starting around 450BC. There was lots of room for construction as pretty much the entire city of Athens and its acropolis were destroyed by the Persians in 480BC. It's been partially destroyed several times since then and the big statue of Athena (the Parthenon is her temple) has disappeared. The bloody Venetions bombarded it with canon fire in the 1600's while fighting Turks holed up there.
It wasn't as busy as I'd feared it would be, and since we took the long way around climbing up to the acropolis, we only really met 1 person for the first half hour or so on our way up.
Ancient theatre of Dionysus. Originally built around 450bc, added to for several centuries.
More later...
T
Made it to Athens...
Monday, July 6, 2009
But there's no internet at the hotel, and no SD card reader at this internet cafe! So no photos of ours for now!
Got to walk up the winding path to the Acropolis, which has lots of interesting things to see along the way. I think I'm the first person in at least 5 years to venture to the back of Pan's cave judging by the cobwebs that ended up in my hair and clothes.
(Acropolis, from wikipedia)
Once we got to the top we got to walk in the footsteps of Alcibiades, Socrates, Pericles... and Persian invaders.
There's alot of rebuilding going on but it wasn't as busy as we feared, so it was a pretty amazing afternoon. The ruins we see after this likely won't be as impressive but they will be just as interesting.
I'll upload photos when I get a chance.
T
At the cgy airport...
Friday, July 3, 2009
Just saw a movie set in Greece
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
"My Life in Ruins" by the Big Fat Greek wedding lady. Lots of good, ancient greek scenery in the movie. Can't wait to go and see it for myself!
BTW it's a good light hearted romantic comedy if you're into that.
T
A little 400-500BC Greek History Part 2 - Sparta
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Sparta!
The other big player in classical Greece.
Sparta was THE superpower of Greece, mainly due to it's flagrant use of greek slaves (a real no-no to the the rest of Greece). Having alot of slaves meant Sparta could actually support a professional army. Most Greek cities' armies were made of regular citizens who donned armor and spear whenever needed. Having a fulltime professional army paid dividends as they we trained from the age of 7 to adulthood in fighting (see the agoge).
Their moment in the sun was the battle of Thermopylae in 480BC vs the Persians - this is the famous suicidal last stand of King Leonidas and his 300 hand picked spartans as well as a few thousand allies (athens, plataea, megara,?). The spartans were all killed, but they are credited with inspiring the rest of Greece to victory a year later in Plataea. We will definately check out the Thermopylae pass on our trip! Check out the movie "300" for a fictionalized version of events, but still gets the main points right (I've read Herodotus's account). The book "Gates of Fire" is also highly reccommended. It was the 300 movie that really got me started on my love of ancient greece.
After a few decades of minor skirmishes, slave revolts and earthquakes, Sparta's next big moment in history is the Peloponnesian War, which is my favorite historical event - I'm very glad Thucydides decided to write it's history! More details will come up later, but Sparta ended up wining a hollow victory over Athens thanks to it's alliance with its longtime enemy Persia.
Unfortuneately, Sparta was pretty "spartan" (where do you think the words spartan and sparse came from). They didn't believe in fancy buildings and walls, so there are not alot of ruins left for for us. Thucydides wrote:
Unfortuneately, Sparta was pretty "spartan" (where do you think the words spartan and sparse came from). They didn't believe in fancy buildings and walls, so there are not alot of ruins left for for us. Thucydides wrote:
"Suppose, for example, that the city of Sparta were to become deserted and that only the temples and foundations of buildings remained, I think that future generations would, as time passed, find it very difficult to believe that the place had really been as powerful as it was represented to be"
