Two Days in Athens

My Greco Roman Holiday March/April 2011

Two days in Athens March 24-26, 2011

(Starting with Greece and our global volunteers project and then heading back to my week in Italy with my daughter, Carolyn)

All the good photos are by Peter Armstrong.

Peter met my flight from Rome on Thursday morning after his overnight trip from Minnesota. Looking a bit wall-eyed and punchy, he steered me to the train terminal for our metro ride into central Athens. The train is a direct line from the airport but makes many stops so it took about 45 minutes to get to the center of town. We had been warned not to take a taxi as it would be very costly and you never knew what route they might take. The metro is very clean and new (a by-product of the 2004 Olympics) as is the airport. We emerged from the metro with our roller bags and backpacks in tow and tried to make sense of the streets and the direction of our hotel. After many false starts trying to decipher street names, we finally got oriented and found the Hotel Adrian, a quiet and friendly establishment right at the base of the acropolis.

We spent our first day exploring the neighborhood with lots of tourist shops and tavernas and walked up the side of the hill towards the acropolis, which gave us great views of the sprawling white city. The buildings look nice from a distance…then you see the graffiti up close, which is endemic all around Greece. Is it a result of restless, unhappy and unemployed youth? That, along with feral cats and dogs and garbage on the streets, makes one think more of a third world country than a member of the European Union. Of course, that is the problem with Greece – most economists agree that the country shouldn’t be part of the euro zone and that there is little hope for any kind of recovery in the near term with such a weak GDP and imbalance of trade. Our Global Volunteers project was changed from teaching English to elementary students to working with mentally disabled adults because all the teachers throughout Greece have been on strike for the past month. The average school teacher earns just 700 Euros a month and, with the cost of living on par with other European countries like France and Switzerland, that just isn’t realistic or sustainable. You can see why no one trusts the government and most are working several jobs for money under the table.

Friday was a national holiday in Greece and we were pleased to find out that the Acropolis and the New Acropolis museum were free for the day. It was also a brilliantly clear and cool day and perfect for climbing around ruins. The Parthenon and the other ruins on top of the Acropolis are truly spectacular but the biggest treat for me was the New Acropolis Museum, which lies at the base of the mountain and mirrors the Parthenon. The third floor has a replica of the Parthenon and is the Greek Government’s plea for the return of the Elgin Marbles, which currently reside in the British Museum and were taken from the façade of the Parthenon by Lord Elgin in 1801. The stunning modernist building, which opened in 2009, floats over the ruins of an ancient Athenian neighborhood, discovered while excavating for the new building. You walk on glass floors and can look down directly at the excavation sight. The museum was full of Greeks (rather than foreign tourists) with many young children in adorable national costumes.