Byzantine Tour 2011 Day Five: Amalfi to Athens

We had to wake up crazy early today.  How early?  In order to get to Napoli in time for our flight to Athens, we had to wake up at six in the morning.

Remember last night's view?  The Mediterranean sunrise is spectacular, and the three masted sailboat still has its lights on.

The restaurant of the Hotel Santa Caterina is not even open for breakfast yet, but like any respectable five-star they let us know that the person behind the front desk would take care of us.

The guy behind the front desk disappeared and reappeared with the above tray.  Considering the restaurant was closed, I would say he did magnificently for us.

We loaded into a car for the drive to the Napoli airport.  Yes, I am going to stick to calling it Napoli, not Naples.  I mean, we just spent two nights in Amalfi, not Amafles.

We went through many tunnels as we moved between the coastal Italian hills.  Whenever driving around Europe and seeing the infrastructure, I am reminded of the grim state of politics back home and the state of our roads, tunnels and bridges.  Not a fun thought.

Do you know how hard it is to get shots like this from a moving car?  It is almost an obsession.  I sit in that car and I think, "They have to see these signs, too.  They have to know what this ride is like."  I am certain the drivers consider me a bumpkin at best.

If I had a list of Surprisingly Good Photos Snapped With One Hand From Moving Cars this would be on it.

Napoli Airport.  Modern and efficient.

Napoli Airport breakfast snack.  Proscuitto and cheese in there.  It was quite delicious.

This Napoli Airport panorama shows all the fascinating modern design elements that they put into play here.  Especially those lamps.  It is like they want it to feel like a living room, not an airport.

There sits our itty bitty ride to Athens.

Greece.

We landed in Athens.  Athina?  Αθήνα?

I quite enjoyed this Athens men's room sign.  It is not just a man, it is a man in position to pee.

Welcome to Athens.  Note that crazy Greek alphabet.

No matter where you go, you will see an Ikea.

Athina.  What is most interesting to me about English speakers calling Athina "Athens" is that we can say the word Athina, or Athena, without difficulty.  We say it all the time when discussing Greek mythology.  So why did the British mispronounce this city's name?  No clue.

We arrived at our hotel, the King George Palace Hotel.  And before you start making assumptions, allow me to clarify two things.

One, the name of the hotel refers to King George of Greece, not England.  He was King of Greece from 1863 to 1913.  You know how the Greeks love to brag that they brought the world democracy?  Well, they might have tried democracy first, but it is not liked they stuck to it.  Feudalism and monarchy ruled this land for centuries like the rest of Europe.

King George of Greece, with epic moustache.

Two, the front and lobby of the King George Palace hotel are not palatial.  Therefore, no palatial pictures of the lobby of the King George Palace.  However, the first thing that we did was go to the rooftop for lunch.

This is not a bad view for lunch.  Above the ugly 70's era buildings with zero style or taste you see one of the most significant structures on this planet.  On par with the Pyramids and the Great Wall, the Parthenon of Athens.

I started playing with this shot on my iPhone while we waited for our order and Barbie sent emails.

Red-ish.

Blue-ish.

Black & white.

We plan to head up to the Acropolis for the second time in our lives, and there will be more pictures of it then.  But think about this.  Human beings looked up at that sight two thousand four hundred forty-nine years ago.  In case numbers communicate better than words, people looked upon that temple to Athena 2,449 years ago.  And for a few years before that they watched it being built.  I will never tire of this thought.

Barbie enjoying her lunch with the Parthenon atop the Acropolis behind her.

By the way, two days earlier there was a huge crowd demonstrating in that square.  The demonstration filled the entire Syntagma Square (that you cannot see) to the right.  There is controversy surrounding this demonstration, as a handful of people there became very violent.  However, based upon the demonstration's devotion to non-violence, many suspect that the violent protestors were thugs hired by the right wing to tarnish the demonstration.  Impossible to say, but I have yet to speak to an Athenian who did not believe that these were hired thugs.

One thing is for certain, we have nothing to fear.  There are well-armed police on a few corners, and besides that, all the Athenians have told us that it truly was peaceful and we would have had nothing to worry about.  As a Los Angeleno, I am just glad that they were not demonstrating today as we drove into the city because think of the traffic.


Lunchtime.

Barbie and I both began with the Risotto with asparagus and parmesan leaves.  The words parmesan leaves makes me dream of an actual tree of parmesan.  That would be my Giving Tree of choice.

Barbie had the Grilled salmon with steamed vegetables, wild rice and sauce with avocado, tomato and lemon.

I had the Tagliatelle with chicken in mushroom sauce.

Lemon sorbet.

Raspberry sorbet.

We are meeting a guide later at the Acropolis museum; a guide Barbie has booked for clients before.  In the time we have before that meeting, we plan to do a few essentials.

Step one, Hard Rock Cafe.

While Barbie purchased her shot glass I admired John Lennon's tie.

Step two?

 Walk up the Acropolis of Athens.

The Athenian acropolis is often called The Acropolis, even though it is by no means the only acropolis in Europe or in the world.  Acropolis simply means high city, or as we say in English citadel.  Back when defending a city was critical to survival, building on high ground was the key.  Today a city needs a functioning economy to survive.  Perhaps this explains the demonstrations.  The survival instinct has shifted from fighting for your life to fighting for your economic life.

There it is, the Parthenon of Athens.  I once heard a college professor describe it as the perfect building.  He was referring to the design and dimensions.  More pictures to follow.

The Erechtheum, known for its use of Caryatids for columns.  These draped maidens you see are substitutes; the originals are inside the museum today.

Most of the buildings of the Acropolis were built during the Golden Age of Athens, from 460 BC to 430 BC under Pericles.  Between the Peloponnesian and Persian wars, Pericles lead Athens to truly be the educational and cultural center of ancient Greece, and by that, Europe.  I refuse to say the world, because in spite of the ethnocentric Euro-American view of the world, there were people living outside of Europe and doing quite well.

How many pictures can you take of the Parthenon?  The answer is clear.  You take them until you feel that twinge of embarrassment, then you take a few more, then you stop.

And you take an HDR shot of the Parthenon.

A temporarily unfortunate fact about the Parthenon is that due to restoration efforts, less of it is standing today than when we saw it in 2006.  They have been slowly taking it apart and then putting it back together, making an effort to accurately place the pieces together as well as replace missing pieces with new pieces that will be clearly marked as replacements.  What this means is that the Parthenon will be much, much more beautiful sometime in the future, but today she looks a bit naked and empty.  This being Greece, there is no timetable for the restoration.  It will take however long it takes.

Our hotel is right THERE.

An acropolis panorama.

Even half empty, you do get a feel for the dimensions and beauty of this building.

The Propylaea, which simply means entry gate.  Every European monumental gate/door owes much to the entry buildings of the Athenian acropolis.

We strolled down the hill and headed to the Acropolis Museum, which was being built during our last visit.  This museum might be the only museum that truly sits in the eye of a geopolitical storm.

How often is an urban museum also an active archeological dig site?

The heart on her hoodie is for love.  And the stone structures you see date back a few millennia, to the BJ era.  (BJ stands for Before Jesus.  Trying it out.)

We have time to kill before meeting our guide, and we spent it in the museum restaurant.  Note the view from the restaurant is better than most.

Since we are in Greece, I got the Greek yogurt with honey and walnuts.  Freaking tasty.

Barbie got a Hamburger and fries.


After we ate we met up with our guide, a cute young man whose name was, I think, Nic.

We entered the museum and saw many fascinating things.  Relics from the Acropolis, restored and beautiful.  Examples of the restoration process in progress.  But you get to see none of this.

I suppose the Athenians want you to actually visit Athens in order to see the museum.

Remember the geopolitical foreshadowing earlier?  I really do not want to waste too much on it.  It is just a little story about the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire getting a permit to remove marbles from the Athenian Acropolis and then taking around half of them to London between 1801 and 1812.  His name was Thomas Bruce, but his title was Earl of Elgin, and therefore these marbles get called the Elgin Marbles.  If half does not sound like a lot, think again.

Now, this story gets a bit complicated, because the British threw those priceless treasures of antiquity into the British Museum and rightly claimed that they were preserving them better than if the marbles had remained in Athens.  True.  In fact, many would have likely been destroyed in war or damaged by pollution.  (There was a horrible event in 1687 when the Ottomans stored explosives in the Parthenon and the Venetians hit it with a mortar, destroying a large part of the building.)  But now that Greece has completed the Acropolis Museum, basically designed to be the ideal home for presenting and preserving the marbles of the Acropolis, the issue has gotten intense.  The British do not want to return the marbles, and now the only argument against the return is that someone gave them permission to take them 200 years ago; someone who may not have had the right to grant permission.  But if museums get in the habit or returning questionably obtained artifacts every time their country of origin has a good home for them, well, that would start an insane process that would leave many of the world's great museums emptied.  And now we get slapped in the fact with the not-so-fun fact that most of the great museums of the world are filled with the spoils of war and theft.

The geopolitical ramifications of this museum have been addressed.  As always with geopolitics, there is no right answer but one.  The USA is #1!!!

The Parthenon at night from the front of the Acropolis Museum.

Barbie and Nic, our highly informative and very enthusiastic guide.  I have nothing but respect for those who can walk you through a museum and explain everything that there is to be seen.

I jumped into this one.  It was chilly, if you cannot tell.

Nic walked us back to our hotel through Plaka, the hip neighborhood of restaurants, bars, and shops.  It feels like Los Angeles' Westwood in its prime.

Graffiti in Plaka.  Nic thought it was odd that I took a picture of it.  Since most of our time was spent in the museum, he had no idea just how many pictures I tend to take.

Nearly home, I snapped this picture of Greek parliament.  Our hotel is directly to the left.  This entire area was filled with protestors just two days ago.  I am a little sorry to have missed it.  It would have made for a good story.  And memorable pictures.

Until tomorrow.