Athens: Day Two

 

Day two on my daughter's pre-printed and studied upon plan was to visit the Athens Archeological Museum that contains some of the artifacts found from various ruins around town over the years. It was okay but wasn't my favorite stop. I find museums like this hard to understand from a historical aspect. I can stand there and read each and every description card next to every display and come away knowing about as much as I went in there with. My brain just doesn't have the capacity to remember that much information thrown at me in a largely random manner. Second, the display was quite small for such a large building. I'm guessing the rest of the building is mostly used for academic or archeological preservation purposes. So I wandered around looking at things mostly in an artistical light and then went down to the cafeteria which was open to the sky above, and sipped a carbonated lemonade as I waited for the rest of my family. I never knew there was such a thing as carbonated lemonade but it is about my most favorite thing in the world now.

Next up on the list was something called the Museum of Illusions which turned out to be a few rooms in a building along a crowded touristy sidewalk crammed full of optical illusions for kids to discover. My youngest daughter had a grand time but it was a bit beneath the level of my eldest who planned the trip. It was crowded with bored parents and their kids as one might expect so I didn't get any pictures that didn't include my own family. 

For lunch, we stopped at a sidewalk café specializing in traditional Greek sandwiches. They stack slabs of pork (left) and chicken (right) on giant spits and they spin around near a burner. As the meat chars and becomes cooked on the outside, the "sandwich artist" will use a tool to scrape away the outsides of the meat so that the next layer inside can behind charring. The meat is wrapped inside a grilled pita bread (far left) and topped with vegetables, French fries and a cucumber yogurt sauce. We each ordered a sandwich to go and then walked a ways before we could find a place to sit and enjoy our sandwich. In the chaos of different languages, somehow, my sandwich never got put in our sack and so I bummed half of one of my daughter's sandwiches, which I know wasn't as delicious as the ones described above which she didn't order. It was more than she could eat anyway so the only person who went partially hungry was me.

From there, we paid admission to walk through the ruins of the Agora, a large complex of ruins near the base of the Acropolis. The temple above is dedicated to Hephaestus, patron of metal workers, and one of the best preserved temples from that era in all of Greece. 

I am not much of a Greek scholar and so don't know much of the details behind any of the pictures I show you but a good blogging friend of mine, Toirdhealbheach Beucail is and wrote about his journey here back in 2023 if you would like to read the details HERE.

We spent a couple hours walking around the site including up close and personal to the temple on the hill. Then I found a shady bench among the ruins and sat to people watch until the rest of my family had their fill and we could move on to the next scheduled item.

On our way to that next thing, we happened to walk right by the Greek Parliament building where they were about to start the Changing of the Guard ceremony, much like the one found at Arlington Cemetery at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. My understanding that the Greek version is to all war dead and not to just unknown soldiers. It was quite the elaborate affair as the drug the spiked feet across the marble and kicked their legs up high. I later read in a Rick Steve's Guide that every movement and costume detail had symbolic meaning. 

Continuing on, we grabbed a bite to eat at another small café, no pictures this time, and ate it near this building while waiting for our next appointment to start. As we ate our supper, the sun was going down and highlighted Athena and the person on the right that captured my attention. I was told what this building was for but have forgotten. I think it had to do with a local University.

Since our second day in Greece happened to be a Sunday, our final stop of the day was attending mass at the only Roman Catholic church in all of Athens, that we could find anyway. The English mass was 6:30 in the evening and so that it why it was our last stop of the day. Up until we were walking towards the cathedral, we had noticed the lack of ethnic diversity that we had seen up to that point in Athens. Almost everyone was white with dark hair. But as we neared the cathedral, suddenly we started seeing groups of Filipinos also heading towards mass. In fact, probably 75% of the congregation turned out to be Filipinos. 

It was a long mass for our weary feet and after it was done, we walked to the nearest subway entrance and rode it back to the stop a block and a half from our suite. All in, we walked 17,400 steps according to the app on my phone.