After seeing all the big hits yesterday, todays plans weren’t quite as impressively grand. We headed for the Temple of Olympian Zeus, taking in some lovely gardens on the way. It was impressive, but more so for how it must have looked with all 104 pillars standing. It’s got quite the history.
After an unsuccessful bid to explore the ruins next door, I split off while the girls shopped and instead explored a little near our hostel. The strange thing about Athens is that it doesn’t look distinctively Athens, most buildings are in a generic style that could be found in any period in other part of the world. So aside from the ancient stuff, it’s not a very unique or attractive city. And it’s full of noisy scooters.
We headed out in the sun to explore the cemetery at Kerameikos and its small museum, the later of which was better received, though the heat didn’t help. Lots of pottery, lots of gravestones. The ancient Greeks started to get quite carried away with their grave stones, creating larger and more intricate dedications, and they were eventually outlawed in favor of the small column ones as they ran out of space.
The walk back in to town was punctuated by a very welcome ice chocolate, and again we split as I lost track of the girls while they were shopping for shorts for Clare. I gave up hunting after a while, and walked off to Roman Agora to explore alone. I loved it! It was almost entirely empty of people, the sun was getting lower and I had the time to explore at my own pace, which as I was killing time was a fairly relaxed one. The Tower of the Winds was cool too, a water clock that seemed far ahead of its time.
There are so many clever little details in these constructions that I just love, like the shape and position of the holes for attaching columns upon each other, or the way the drainage was cut and considered along the tops of beams upon columns. Good geeky stuff that I spent far too much time crawling over.
The girls showed up as I was thinking of leaving, which was rather good timing. Another stop back at the hostel, then out to my last dinner with the girls. Bex and I picked random things off the menu, I think hers had something to do with a shoe? Mine was randomly bambi again, I think, and were both pretty great.
We grabbed crepes on the way home, a half hour wait for absurdly overfilled Nutella heart stopping awesomeness. And it was actually my first crepe, after passing on one at Notting Hill with Lorrie. We were pretty sure the guy making them was drunk. It was awesome. Farewell, Athens!
From August 30, 2010.