We’re currently sitting in Piraeus, the port of Athens, probably around 10km away from Athens itself. I’ve just watched a Costa Deliziosa cruise ship, head out to its next destination.
Moving from west to east around the Mediterranean you notice the changes in Architecture from distinctly European in its look and feel as I know it to more middle eastern look and feel. Malta certainly reinforced that point of view and Athens seems to support that, I’ll reevaluate my point of view in Istanbul.
Today’s journey was a trip to the Acropolis. Our guide Georgie was very good. I give her 100 out of 100 for her greeklish!
Q. So Georgie, how did you learn English? Watching American movies. It’s not the first time I had heard this.
Well, off to the Acropolis, however, first stop the stadium for the modern Olympic games built in the 1800’s. We’re encouraged to take pictures from the outside rather than go in, as it was too expensive!
Umm, first major insightful thought and question for the morning, I said to Keith, looking at the seven tourist buses there, I would have thought the way the economy was you would want to have tourists go sit in the stadium? Do the math, seven buses while I’m standing there by 50 people per bus multiplied by 10 euros per person = 3500 euros. Considering the state of the nation, and tourism being one of their big money earners, why wouldn’t you leverage the tourist dollar for all it’s worth? We both agreed.
Our guide stressed several times the impacts that the Global Financial Crisis has caused, so to me, they need to look at more creative ways of engaging the population in income production. Georgie told us, people are creating and selling more organic foods as a way to diversify income.
So after several economic points of view from Georgie on the situation and the views of iconic Greek buildings around Athens from our bus, we arrived at the Acropolis.
Armed with our headsets and comms kit back to Georgie, we headed up the hill. The two things I wanted to see was the Parthenon temple and the Areopagus (Mars Hill) found on the North west corner of the Acropolis site.
Stop one, the Parthenon. Up the steps and fighting the hoards of tourists we climbed to the top to see the main temple. What an impressive bit of Architecture. Here’s the thing, it was made in 15 months! It has withstood, several kingdoms, the Ottoman Empire using it for a Gunpowder store blowing the roof off it in the 1600s, and several other power struggles even in World War II.
They are currently doing some archeological restoration work on the temple site. Interestingly enough they have cleaned off some of the pillars to reveal the early white marble, it looks impressive.
With 15 minutes to spare it was off to the Areopagus, Mars Hill. This rocky outcrop has served as a high court of appeal in Greek times for criminal and civil cases. By the time the Romans arrived they referred to it as Mars Hill, it was still functioning then as body for civil issues. There was obviously some kind of building there.
The most famous reference to the Areopagus is in the Bible’s New Testament history book, the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17: verse 24. The story is told of Paul the Apostle, making his way from Corinth to Athens, ends up stopping at the Acropolis, noting the worship to lots of gods and statues, notices that they covered their bases by having a memorial to the unknown god to by chance they had missed one.
Paul takes the opportunity to discuss with their philosophers, who the unknown god is and shares with them the story of the Christian God. This all happened at the Areopagus. There is a plaque there with the speech the Apostle Paul spoke that day in Greek, you’ll see me standing next to the plaque with some other pictures from the top of the hill looking back to the Acropolis site and the Parthenon.
Things I’ve deduced from today. If they built the Parthenon in 15 months, they had some special architecture and processes back in the day, foreign to want we know now.
If you’re in this part of the world, its definitely worth a look.
Chris