Athens - Puppies in the Temple

I’m not sure exactly when the day started—somewhere in the dark over the Atlantic when I advanced my watch from Eastern US time to Greece time, I suppose—a seven-hour time difference. Eventually the sun rose and we flew over Europe and landed at the Athens airport. We disembarked, got ourselves to the luggage pickup area and rejoiced that our luggage actually arrived with us after switching planes twice. We were waved through customs, changed money, found the metro to Athens, and boarded without a hitch. There was some confusion regarding if we were on the right train. There didn’t seem to be anybody in charge there. The only passengers were tourists—perhaps because it was early on a Sunday morning. I asked a few if we were on the right train and they seemed confused as we were. A few people asked us, too, and we no doubt seemed confused as they were.

Kathy slept on the ride into Athens and I looked at the landscape until we went underground. We arrived in Syntagma Square, the large square in front of the Greek Parliament building in central Athens, got off the train and found our hotel without too much trouble. At first we got a little lost & confused among all the little streets that meandered willy-nilly off the square. We were at the point of finding someone to ask for directions when a gentleman decided we looked like confused tourists and pointed us in the right direction. We thanked him for his help and when he started promoting his tour services we told him that we were not interested since we already had one booked..

The Astor Hotel was about what I expected—a little worn about the cuffs, but clean, more or less, the staff was hospitable, more or less. Regardless, it was nice to have a bed to lie down on after having been cramped in the cattle-car environment of the plane for hours and hours. We felt dirty and wanted to shower, but had no towels in our room and the hotel could apparently only provide towels on their schedule, not ours. We took a nap and then, still grimy but somewhat rested, we went out to explore Athens.

We ate at a little nondescript outdoor restaurant on Syntagma Square—I had a beer and a sandwich, and then we looked at the ruins excavated from the site of the Syntagma Square subway station. It is amazing that pretty much anywhere you excavate in Athens, you’ll not only find artifacts, but you’ll find artifacts from a variety of periods. I guess that goes along with Athens having been continuously occupied for over 3000 years.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

After looking at the Syntagma Square artifacts we went back to our hotel for a rest and then went hiking through the park behind Parliament—the National Garden. We wound up down by the ruins of the Temple to the Olympian Zeus. The temple was one of the largest temples in the ancient world and the massive columns scattered on the ground bore testament to that. The Greeks started building it in the 6th century BC, but it was not until 700 years later that the Emperor Hadrian oversaw the completion of construction. The temple at one time contained two large statues, one of Zeus, and one of Hadrian, who obviously had ego issues. The ruins now are home to some feral looking dogs. One of the dogs had a den with six puppies beneath some collapsed columns. The puppies weren’t at all shy. Kathy ooed, cooed, and made friends.

We took puppy pictures and ruins pictures and pictures of Hadrian’s Arch, which was also located there. Hadrian built the arch as another way for him to demonstrate his claim on the city. The inscription on one side reads, “This is Athens, the ancient city of Thesus.” The other side is inscribed, “This is the city of Hadrian, not Thesus.” We walked past the arch, once the official entrance into the city, and entered the ancient city. The area of steep winding streets on the slopes of the Acropolis is the Plaka, and is now home to millions of outdoor restaurants and souvenir shops. We wandered around the Plaka looking at touristy souvenirs, ate at a little sidewalk café, and finally found our way back to the hotel after dark.

Puppies!

The hotel had a rooftop (10 stories up) restaurant with a great view of the Acropolis, which is illuminated at night. Our final activity before calling it a day was to have apple pie and coffee on the roof while looking at the view. The coffee was OK, the apple pie was a little suspect, but the view was incredible and will be one of those images that I carry with me the rest of my life.