Athens and Sounion - Saturday September 27
The morning dawned sunny and warm but with enough of a pleasant breeze to make the day perfect.
Our Air Bnb had a Nespresso machine and a drip coffee maker, both of which we put into service. But we had no milk. When Ryan and I ventured out into the Plaka to find Casey a latte and a croissant, I found the leather sandal store where I’d purchased a pair of barefoot sandals a couple of years earlier; it’s called So What!.
Back at the house, I grabbed Chris and took him there to see if I could find another pair of leather flip flops to replace the pair I purchased in Ierapetra, Crete, back in 1990; flexible and beautifully aged, those were my Baton Rouge pool shoes for many years until I unaccountably got rid of them. I’ve been looking for a replacement ever since. This morning at I found a pair of untanned leather toe-ring sandals with flexible soles. Maybe those will stay with me another couple of decades. Not to be outdone, Chris bought himself a belt. It should wear well.
Acropolis Museum
Our day’s big plan was a ride out to Cape Sounion to visit the Temple of Poseidon, which left us with a few hours to kill in Athens. Ryan, Chris, and I decided to walk out to the Acropolis Museum while the rest of the gang rested to adjust to the time change.
Casey and I visited this museum back when it first opened, and we were blown away by its thoughtful and elegant design. It truly is one of the world’s great museums.
We stole a couple of photos in the mid level before a docent shut us down. You haven’t had a complete visit to Greece until you’ve been scolded by a museum docent. We don’t know why photos weren’t allowed in that section - they’re fair game in most of the museum, and god knows there aren’t enough docents in the world to pre-empt ALL phone photography in that space. Please enjoy these stolen images!
The museum’s key attraction is a full-size model of the Parthenon with replicas of the Parthenon Frieze in their current state. (The actual Parthenon Sculptures are housed in the British Museum; Lord Elgin bought them from the Ottoman Empire between 1801 and 1805, and the Brits continue to hold them despite repeated requests for their return from the Greek government. We will not delve into the ethics of this situation here.)
The educational materials include copies of the sketches that Jacques Carrey made in 1674, thirteen years before the Parthenon got blown up in 1687. (Occupational hazard of using an ancient temple as a munitions dump….) These sketches are marvelous because they provide the only existing source for what some of the sculptures looked like; the current versions are pretty busted up. Apparently they told a comic-strip version of a battle between gods and giants, with the gods winning every skirmish.
That must have been one HECK of an explosion!
Cape Sounion
That afternoon, we all walked down to the entrance of the Roman Agora to meet our driver, Kennedy, who took us out to Cape Sounion. It’s a pleasant drive there, past Glyfada and the new construction going up on the Greek coastline - the so-called Athenian Riviera. (Apparently there’s lots of money coming in from Russia and the Gulf States.)
Cape Sounion is the site of a Temple to Poseidon, famous as being the location from which King Aegeus hurled himself into the sea when his son Theseus sailed back from Crete under a black sail. It’s famous today as a great spot to watch the sun set.
It was so windy!
One of the temple’s claims to fame is that Lord Byron allegedly carved his name into one of the columns. SOMEONE wrote the name Byron, anyway. We see no reason not to assume it was the man himself; no one else would be motivated to bring a hammer and chisel all the way out to Sounion and sit there for two or three hours carving this name out of the marble.
After we had seen our fill of the temple, Kennedy drove us to a seaside restaurant to have a feast of fishes. The squid ink risotto might have been the best part of the meal!
We drove home by way of the airport, faster and more direct than going back along the coast. And that was our quick visit to Athens!