Athens - Day 3

A slow morning doing things like checking in for flights tomorrow and getting transit visas for Indonesia. Given how frustrating that process was, I might never bother flying through there again.

Today was for seeing a museum. Rather than the Acropolis or the even bigger national Museum, we chose the Kotsanas Museum of Ancient Greek Technology, which was highly rated, smaller, and not a very long walk away.

We walked through the old markets on the way - butchers, fishmongers, garlic sellers outside on the street. Interesting. One store owner complained that the government was doing nothing as the area was engulfed by hotels and restaurants, and she had a point. There seem to be whole streets with nothing else. Town planning may not be a forte: we saw one small, old church that was like an insect encased in the concrete of an ugly, modern hotel.

Great museum choice, if we say so ourselves. It had sections for musical instruments, armour, and technology, which then included astronomy, construction, hydraulics and telecommunications (!). There were hundreds of operating models of inventions, such as a wine-serving robot, an automatic clock from Ktesibios to the analog computer of Antikythera. And big surprises - like the Mycenaean armour of 1500 BC being very, very similar to medieval knights’ armour, and winches that made lifting stone for the Parthenon a piece of cake. Often the marble blocks at the Acropolis had roughly rectangular holes in the top: I thought it was for positioning, but it was how they attached pulleys to them with a wedge on a rope and a simple, metal block. And a 3rd C BC stone tablet that had the words and music for a memorial song... with a scale model of a water-powered pipe organ from the time that also played the tune.

We walked back past the Cathedral and a few small churches that had not quite been enveloped by other buildings, then the Roman Agora and Hadrian's Library, which are next to and under the Acropolis. It was good to wander down streets that used to lead to the Dionysus Theatre at the Acropolis. Some are still paved in marble, and most have gutters made with marble slabs. It seems out of place with the motorbikes, tourists, and general mayhem that comes when thousands of kilt-wearing Scottish soccer fans are in town and filling the time before tomorrow's match with Greece by (mostly) getting sunburnt and drinking.

A cup of tea at home, we braved the crowds around the shops for a final afternoon, then planned for dinner. We wandered about, and ended up at place very close to our street. We ordered stuffed peppers, tzatziki and souvlaki. The highlight was several Scottish bagpipers marching by: the food sounded good on paper, but was “average” if rated positively.

Just 15,768 steps, 12.2 km and 7 flights.Weiterlesen