6/9 - toupiotec

June 17, 2023

DIY pre-tour

Tourpiotec - that's "tourists" in Greek but without the Greek keyboard.

Today we were full-on tourists complete with sensible footwear, shorts and sporty t-shirts. No one could possible mistake us for locals. The only thing we were missing were fanny packs.

But first, breakfast at the hotel's rooftop restaurant.

Europeans know how to do breakfast. Breakfast was laid our in the shape of a "U" near a tiny kitchen. Here are three or those views. I skipped the area with the warmers because you couldn't see beneath the covers, but they had the usual eggs, bacon, sausages, etc.

Fresh breads (the Greek "bagels" were a curiosity, but not enough for me to try one because there were better baked goods).

Nut butters, jams, pastries, yogurt. cereals and toppings.

A complete honeycomb.

Fresh veggies and fruits including a greek salad that I was really loving.

More pastries including the requisite chocolate croissants.

After breakfast, we waddled off to meet our tour.

We did a lot of research and preparation for the time we would be spending in Athens. We planned two tours for our “pre-trip" in Athens, a guided tour of the Acropolis and a bike tour of Athens in the afternoon.

For our morning tour of the Acropolis, we used Viator, a site that we had used for the Michelangelo Museum in Florence. This site allowed us to book a tour with a certified guide. Certified guides in Greece have completed a two-year course of study that allows them to accompany us into museums and other sites sites like the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum. It is expensive, but much more interesting than wandering around on our own or using audio tours. We were also able to buy tour tickets that included admissions tickets in the price of the tour. This allowed to skip the lines. For the Acropolis tour, the line for tickets was minimal. It was a different story when we got inside.

At 9:00 it was hot and the place was a madhouse. Here are the lines going up the hill to the entrance of the ruins. This is looking up.

This is looking down at Mike and Stu trudging up the hill.

Our guide was pretty short, so she used a blue fan instead of a flag so we wouldn't get separated.

The ruins themselves were impressive, but it was hard to focus on them in the heat and the crowds. It was also pretty slippery so we spent a lot of time looking at our feet.

These pictures make it look hot. It was.

The Parthenon

The not Parthenon

The restoration work is never-ending.

Here are the lines exiting the ruins. Moo.

This ampetheatre is still in use. They have concerts in here every so often. It might be fun except for sitting on stone slabs.

The tour was four hours. We spent about two hours at the Acropolis and then two more hours at the Acropolis Museum.

At the entrance and inside the museum were displays showing the ruins underneath. All new construction in Greece has to be approved by the government to make sure any valuable artifacts are handled appropriately.

Inside, the museum was modern and nicely laid out. This display shows original pieces of the frieze around the Parthenon and replicas (whiter color). The pieces are laid out in the order of how they might appear if they were still on the Parthenon.

Much was made of the role that the museum would play in the return of artifacts that had been removed from Greece. One argument given by the British Museum was that there no place in Greece where the artifacts could be safely preserved. Constructing a world-class museum has eliminated that rationale. I find the entire discussion fascinating since it parallels the argument surrounding repatriation of land to former slaves in the south or artifacts looted by Nazis from Jews during WWII.

6/17 Update: on the flight home from Athens, I watched Monument Men, appropriate since it is about attempts by the US Army to save art that the Nazis had looted.

We took a break for lunch before heading off for the afternoon adventure - a city tour on bikes.

The bike tour didn’t quite work out as planned. We booked a tour through Tours by Locals, a company recommended by VBT, and took a cab to the meeting spot rather than risking getting lost walking there. We got to an interesting part of town that had been an industrial park but had been converted into a recreational area, probably not for tourists.

There was no obvious place where we would meet unlike the morning tour that started from a brink and mortar shop. The instructions were to meet at the metro station and there were two entrances. We got there 15 minutes before the meeting time, but no tour guide. We walked around to both entrances, but no tour guide. I asked a couple of people who were standing around, but no tour guide. We called the number multiple times. I took a selfie with the sign for the metro station in the background as proof that we were there and 15 minutes after the meeting time, we gave up and started walking back to the hotel.

The walk back was actually quite pleasant. We walked past the Agora and looked down into the ruins since there was an admission fee.