Visit to Greece – Athens and the Parthenon

This holiday we decided to visit Greece. Our main interests were:

• the Acropolis
• Delphi
• Meteora monasteries
• the island of Naxos
• the island of Santorini

In a series of blog posts I will tell you more about the interesting things we saw. First stop: Athens

Athens
We flew with Olympic Airways from Schiphol to Athens airport. The flight takes about three hours. Olympic Airways did not provide on board entertainment, but they did serve a free lunch! We stayed at Arion Athens City Hotel, located right in the old center of Athens.

A few minutes walk from the hotel is Monastiraki Square. Here you can see Hadrian’s library, the Roman Agora and the Tower of the Winds – but more on that later.

Our first visit was The Acropolis. We made sure we were there when it opens: 8 o’clock in the morning. The light is right (not too harsh) and more importantly the busloads of tourists have not been dropped off yet.

First you have to climb the steps at the entrance of the Acropolis – the Propylaea.

Don’t forget to look up when you walk through the entrance.

And after a few steps you have your first view of the Parthenon.

We were lucky that most of the scaffolding was taken away. For the first time you could see the side of the Acropolis without any obstruction.

Next to the Acropolis you can see the Erectheum and it’s porch of maidens.

 

Some wise guy decided to set up his office there.

Note that these ladies are copies of the original. The originals are in the New Acropolis Museum.

The columns of the Acropolis are very special. Notice the sides run not parallel to each other, but they are slightly curved. One wonders how they have carved it like this out of marble.

Here are some details of the upper part of the Parthenon.

A side view of the Acropolis

We had the place for ourselves until about 9.00. After that it becomes more and more crowded. This is what you get if you visit the Acropolis later in the day. We are going down, the busloads are climbing the entrance.