A day at the Acropolis

Another early start because today was our Athens trip, which I was very excited about. I have never been to mainland Greece before and I have always wanted to visit the Parthenon. (James has just pointed out that I have been to Athens briefly in 2010 on my sad and lonely journey home from Lesvos when Mum was dying, but that airport transfer does not count as a visit!) We docked at Piraeus before dawn. Piraeus has been the port of Athens since the 5th century BC and it is very busy compared to the other ports that we have visited on the cruise. While we were having breakfast in our stateroom we could see lots of ferries going in and out.
We were ushered speedily onto our bus and were on our way by 7.15 a.m. We travelled past the harbours of Piraeus with their open air cafés and tangerine trees. From Piraeus we could see some hills in the centre of Athens, which is generally quite a low rise city on account of seismic activity. On one of the hills we could see the outline of the Acropolis. Our friendly tour guide Kris explained that "acro" means "top" and "polis" means "city" so the Acropolis is the highest part of the city, regarded as the best part, which is why it was used as a fortress and then dedicated to the Gods.
We saw the temple of Zeus on the way with its Corinthian columns which have flowers at the top. We stopped at the horseshoe shaped Panathenaic stadium; the only marble stadium in the world, which was built in 1896 on the same lines as an ancient stadium, for the 1st modern Olympics.
We also passed the government buildings which were peaceful today - yesterday on the news we'd seen people rioting around there and tear gas being used.
Soon we arrived at the Acropolis and walked up the hill on marble steps.
We passed the Odeon where Maria Callas and Pavarotti have performed.
The first temple we came to is dedicated to Athena Nike (victory) Ionic columns have a spiral scroll at the top. Next we passed the Pandroseion and Erechtheion temples, which are just down the hill beside the Parthenon. Athena struck a rock with her spear here to produce the first olive tree in the world! And there is still an olive tree here in her honour although this one was planted at the beginning of the 20th century. She was having a contest with Poseidon over who could offer the city of Athens the most precious gift, and her olive tree beat his salt water spring.
I particularly enjoyed being one of the fittest people on the tour although this wasn't saying much, because some of the others were so infirm or overweight that they were really struggling. It meant that James and I could wander around taking photos with absolutely no fear of being left behind! Also useful were the nifty radio headsets through which Kris's voice rang clear as a bell even if we were several yards away. Another bonus was being there so early in the morning; our tour was brought forward because of our change of itinerary but the benefit was that the acropolis was fairly quiet and pleasant when we arrived - by the time we left two hours later it was jumping.
And then we arrived at the Parthenon itself at the top of the hill. It was built in nine years and was inaugurated in 438 B.C. - most of the buildings on the Acropolis were built about the same time when Athens was quite strong after the Persian Wars, during which wars the previous temples had been destroyed. It is just amazing in its beautiful hilltop setting with the city of Athens spread below it. Its name means temple of the virgin Goddess. (Athena had many personas). The sides have twice as many columns, plus one, as the face. They are Doric, tapering in to the top to give the impression of height, and they are not monolithic; they are in slices, joined by iron in the middle. All the horizontals curve slightly upwards to give the impression of being horizontal, otherwise they would give the impression of sagging. It is such an impressive building but of course it has no roof. In fact the Parthenon was intact until 1687 when the Turks were using it as a gunpowder store. Oh dear, can you guess what's coming? Yes, the Venetians attacked, lobbed cannon balls at it and it blew up, with lots of damage including losing its roof. There is an ongoing restoration project using the same marble (from a local quarry) the marble starts white and matures to beige; it was a beautiful gold colour today in the sunshine. The sky was an amazing dark blue. We walked down a pleasant avenue to the new Acropolis museum, which is only three years old and of a very high standard. Kris gave us a very interesting talk as we went round; I was fascinated to find out that ancient Greek sculptures were brightly painted, because they were into realism, and it's only because the paint wore off that we have come to think of them as white. He told us so many interesting stories; Elgin (famed for his marbles!) is not a popular figure in Athens - they see him as a vandal as well as a thief and there are lots of reproductions in the museum to fill gaps where the originals are in the British museum.
Our final stop on our trip was the Plaka (which means "old"), it's the old town of Athens with narrow shopping streets. We had lunch in a very pleasant restaurant called Diogenes in the square beside the cathedral, then did a little light shopping. What a fantastic day.