They say that sequels aren’t as great as the first book, so set your standards low for this one, and then maybe you’ll be satisfied.

Yesterday (Wednesday) we hired a tour guide, Dimitris, through toursbylocals.com. After blearily dragging ourselves out of bed, we got ready and met him out on the street. He met us in a black Peugeot van that fortunately had windows. Our first stop of the day was close to the Acropolis Museum to pick up our registered tour guide for the Acropolis and Agora. Dimitris told us later that he was working on getting his license to be a registered tour guide for the archeological sites. He told us that one time he took his mom to the Acropolis and was explaining the history to her. While they were walking, someone told him “Hey, are you a tour guide? You can’t be telling her about the history of this place.”

Our first stop was Areopagus, also known to us as Mars Hill. The first thing Helen started off with was that Areopagus in Greek means “Ares’ Ice” This name came from the fact that in ancient times the hill was white. Areopagus was the Supreme Court of Athens in Classical Greece, and in fact, the name of the Supreme Court of Greece is still called Areopagus. Another little tidbit from this explanation was the simple statement that “today we still worship Ares, the god of war.” She said, “When you play Counter Strike or some shooter video game, you are participating in an act of worship to Ares.” I thought this was really interesting. How many of the things that we do could be classified as idolatry and paganism? After her explanation, we guys walked up to the top of Areopagus and took a look around. We also saw a cat. It was a nice cat.

Areopagus is right at the foot of the Acropolis and its slopes, so after we were done there, Helen took us up the Acropolis. This was when we realized how cold it was going to be. Helen explained to us various old structures on the slopes as she hobbled slowly up the hill with her crutches (she was recovering from knee surgery). The first place we stopped was the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. Since the details are getting fuzzier in my mind, basically this was a building that looked like a theatre. This space is still used every summer for concerts and other events. An odeon is not an open air amphitheater, but was a building “built for singing exercises, musical shows and poetry competitions” (Wikipedia) So, I suppose it’s still being used for its intended purpose two thousand years after it was built. This “Herodeon” was to the southwest of the Acropolis. (no, I’m not that good at directions, but Google Maps is)

To orient you a little bit, we entered the slopes on the west side and walked up the slope a bit on the southwest side. The path then wends up the west/southwest side of the Acropolis toward the entrance gate. She also explained about another building on the south edge of the Acropolis which was the Temple of Athena Nike. This temple was built by the Athenians as a plea to Athena for victory during their wars with the Spartans. In their arrogance, however, they built the statue of Nike, the goddess of victory, without wings. Of course we don’t believe in all this mythology, but this arrogance did not help them in their war.

We continued on up the path toward the main gate of the Acropolis. Our tour guide, Helen, explained how the Greeks wanted to do difficult things to honor their patron goddess. She explained how, in the ancient days, the top of the arch was a coffered ceiling with each recessed “cell” containing a star surrounded by blue. This brings up another misconception maybe a few of you have about old buildings. The buildings of the Acropolis were very brightly colored. I mean, if you think about it, it’s a bit stupid to think they didn’t paint their buildings in the olden days isn’t it? I mean, do you think the paint job on YOUR house would last two thousand years? I doubt it. So once she explained that to us, we walked up onto the Acropolis proper.

Before she left us so that we could walk around shivering and complaining about the frigid wind, she explained another interesting fact I hadn’t heard about the Parthenon before. In order to make the Parthenon look good from a distance, the architects did several things. They curved the floor up slightly in the middle, in a slightly convex shape. They also, she said, “gave the pillars a belly.” In more “scientifically proper terminology” they gave the pillars a slightly convex shape. The pillars on the corners were also bigger. This prevented humans from seeing optical illusions when viewing the Parthenon from a distance. I thought this was very fascinating.

After we walked around on the Acropolis, and looked at a few other ruins there, we headed down the slopes back to where Helen was waiting. Our next stop was supposed to be a nice simple hop to the Ancient Agora, but instead our plans were ruined by a bunch of protesters close to the Parliament or Presidential palace. But, we eventually made it to the Agora, and got out to go explore. While walking to the Agora, she explained to us about the Theseo, the temple to the god Hephaestus who she described as a “workaholic” The reason this temple was known as the “Theseo” and not the “Hephaesteo” was because Hephaestus wasn’t a very interesting god, like Zeus. So they picked myths about Theseus, the killer of the minotaur in the Minoan labyrinth, to adorn the frieze in the temple to the workaholic god.

There are a few interesting points that stood out to me at the Agora. The first was something I will describe as the “first ever message board.” The official name for this monument is “The Monument of the Eponymous Heroes.” It served a rather interesting purpose. Ancient Athens was split up into ten neighborhoods, each represented by a different of these “eponymous heroes.” The statues of these heroes were on top of a “marble podium” (Wikipedia) Underneath each hero was a place where officials could write (or more likely chisel) news relating to each neighborhood. So, to get news and information about your neighborhood, you would make your way to the Agora and look for your hero. I thought that this was a very good user interface design.

The second point she talked about was the philosopher Socrates. This philosopher, who you, whatever your level of culture, have heard of, taught by talking to people in the Agora. He was a very clever man, but penniless. The story goes that he was put on trial for the charge of “corrupting the young” and then was put to death by being made to drink hemlock poison. Our guide told us that in her research, she found that Socrates was not forced to drink hemlock, but rather chose it. She likened it to being asked to pay a $100 fine or face the death penalty. Now, since Socrates was famous, he had many friends. His friends no doubt could have and WOULD have collected the money to pay this fine. But he did not do any of this. He chose to die because he wanted to die. In her words, the pinnacle of philosophy is the ability to accept your own death. Most likely, Socrates felt that he had reached the place in philosophy that he could die without fear. I found this all quite fascinating.

The third point she talked about was the government of Athens. Each neighborhood elected 50 people to “parliament” every year, for a total of 500 members. [A note here: Wikipedia does not corroborate this on a quick check, but I for one would be inclined to trust the registered tour guide more than Wikipedia. It’s also possible I have some numbers wrong] Every 35 to 36 a batch of fifty of these elected senators would take up residence in the “Tholos” in the Agora. These were the people responsible for dealing with emergencies that might happen during that 35-36 days.

After our tour of the Agora, Helen left us and we made our way back to Dimitris and the van. Right now, all the next sequence of events gets a little fuzzy. I think the next thing we did is went to the hill (Pnyx) where the Athenian Democracy would meet to discuss important events. Anyone, rich or poor, could speak there, but if the Athenians didn’t like you they had a way of being extremely noisy to drown you out. After that little excursion, we stopped at a place called The Bread Factory to get a quick bite and a coffee. I got some kind of bread ring with feta cheese in it. I also ordered a Greek coffee, which is known to the rest of the world as… wait for it… Turkish coffee. After our short stop at The Bread Factory, Dimitris took us down to the coast. We went through a marina and looked at some nice yachts, and then headed to the port of Piraeus. He told us that Piraeus is the second busiest port in Europe, after Rotterdam. We drove around by the sea, through a district called Microlimano (in Greek, little port) and just generally drove through the port town. To give you a little idea of “distance,” Piraeus is about a 30 minute drive from the Acropolis. After our little jaunt through Piraeus, we headed back to the city in hopes that the protesters had dispersed and that the traffic would be flowing better. We made our way to Hadrian’s gate and the ruins of the Temple of Zeus. We were going to go in, but the gate closed before we could go in. I was somewhat OK with this, having been there once before. After this, we went to the stadium built for the first modern Olympic Games of 1896.

Finally, after all that, we had our “lunch” at about 4PM. It was at a traditional restaurant where the owner brought us out several big dishes family style. The interior was also—ah—“traditional.” It had character. You know? CHARACTER! This was no Applebees. Anyway, enough with the pointless rant. I’m already at 200 more words than the last blog and I’m not even close to done with Wednesday yet.

After lunch, we headed up the third major hill in Athens after Acropolis, and Pnyx. This hill, or mountain was Mount Lycabettus. This hill offered great views of the Acropolis and Athens. I went into the Church of Saint George of Lycabettus while I was there. It was a very plain Greek Orthodox chapel. There were some prayer beads and such things for sale there. I picked one of them up and thought about the sinner’s prayer a bit. As I was in my reverie, picking up these beads and thinking about the Orthodox and their prayer rule, I looked up to see the lady that had been behind the counter standing about 1 foot to my left staring very quietly at me. This unnerved me immensely so I guiltily put the prayer beads back onto the table where they were. The only thing I can conclude is that she thought I would steal them. I felt guilty for no reason for a few minutes afterwards, of such intensity was her glare of doom.

After this escapade, I remember nothing more of note other than that we were dropped back off at our apartment. We relaxed a bit at the house, and then headed back down the Amazing Elevator of Fun and Games to eat and drink coffee at one of the cafes I found on europeancoffeetrip.com. A little note here about Greek coffee culture: The question is never “What flavor?” or “how many pumps?” but just, as one barista asked, “How?” To expand, the question is, “How much sugar do you want?” Anyway, I got one of the Greek classics, a “Freddo Espresso,” which is basically just iced espresso. After this, we went home and lounged about and eventually went to bed and stuff and that was the end of our Wednesday.

Today (Thursday), we headed down the Amazing Elevator of Fun and Games for the last time. We stored our luggage in a storage locker and walked around the city stuffing our faces with various things until 6PM or so. Some notable places were Dope Coffee Roasters, where I ordered the other Greek classic, a Freddo Cappucino. We visited a very tasty pastry shop called Veneti. There are lots of this Veneti pastry shop all over the city. We walked around Plaka then and spent way too much money on souvenirs–who needs those anyway? We also bummed around the Acropolis Museum for a bit, but I think we were at the point of complete information saturation. We flew out of Athens Airport to Chania at 9PM. I will cover more of our Crete adventures later, since, at the time of this writing, most of them haven’t happened yet.