Selfies in Athens

There is a craze we have noticed, the annoying craze of selfies and it is infecting the tourist population. And to facilitate this craze you need a new gadget, a stick.

And they are for sale everywhere, on every street corner some grasping a fistful of them. Susana was actually given one as a leaving present, but we haven’t really used it much. We just don’t take that many photos like that. I suppose it is a social media thing. ‘Look, I was there, in front of that monument’.

We have never thought that was really important, but it seems a lot of people do.

But it also seems these tourists do real damage, back in March a couple carved their initials in the Colleseum and then took a selfie. I trust they are now in an Italian jail somewhere, they should be.

Also in Italy, at the beginning of this month a pair climbed a three hundred year old sculpture, they then knocked its crown to the floor smashing it. All for a selfie. Beggars belief.

But there is another thing we have noticed, which we find really strange. Has anyone else noticed this? Maybe you can give us more details, maybe you have done this. We have come across these rather strange human behaviours maybe half a dozen times so far on these travels.

It mainly seems to be Asian couples that are afflicted. They go to the tourist spot is their finest clobber, some even look like they are dressed for their wedding days.

And then they pose, in some horrendous hello magazine type posture, in front of their boyfriend-partner taking photos as if he were David Bailey.

It is hilarious to watch, this young maiden must have been frozen, it wasn’t a warm day. They didn’t seem that interested in the Parthenon, as long as they got that picture.

Now look at the inappropriateness of those shoes for a days sightseeing, they don’t even appear to fit. For a wedding maybe. Is that what we have here a enactment of her wedding day, every Asian girls dream come true, wedding pictures in front of the Acropolis, one problem, no groom.

The denim, not sure it goes with the dress love, but who are we to judge.

And there she is again. We found others that saw this as peculiar and hilarious behaviour. I do hope someone can tell us what is going on here.

A guy in the distance also saw her. He immediately took a shot of this girl’s rather narcissist’s complex. He noticed we saw him and we all laughed with complicity. I like to point out that this man was western. So maybe it is us, there is something we miss about the Asian culture. SM

The acropolis had been amazing, but we had so much more to see.

It so dominates the Athens skyline.

But just below it is an area called the Ancient Agora, just before you get to the city proper, and it has that small temple just sitting there amongst the trees.

On our way there we find a church, quite bright, with this crazy image projected onto the dome. How scary is that?

The ancient Agora also has a museum with these beautiful plaster models which show the development of all the surrounding buildings at various points in history. Now that is a useful visual tool.

And a serious of models following this one displaying the look of the agora in different eras, all within hundred years gap.It is fascinating how little dwellings changed at that time. SM

There were also lots of marble heads on sticks, and conversely torsos with no heads!

But it is the little temple that we have come to see.

This is the temple of Hephaestus.

Amazingly complete.

But there is a problem for me about temples, the religious problem in that I am just not interested in what they happened to be worshipping. For me these are the most indulgent, waste of time buildings humanity bothered to construct.

I suppose they are somewhat beautiful though, considering their age.

It has been a tough morning of sightseeing and we are in need od some sustenance. We have done our research and what we are looking for is a gyros, essentially a kebab, chicken or pork, with chips wrapped in a pitta.

We are on the search.

We find a weird antiques area, but no gyros.

A run down bit, but a completely gyros free zone.

A landscape we have frequently found in Athens. Greece has been traditionally a socialist country, and you can breath that by just looking around and watching at people, especially young people. Later on our travels we have seen many manifestations of people demanding… who knows money, sovereignty rights… I bet all directed to Merkel. SM

This is looking more like it, tourist heaven, lots of food around here.

The place we choose to eat, straight out of our guide book, Thanasis. The place is packed.

In fact it is not one restaurant, the whole street is littered with them, Thanasis restaurants one after the other.

And inside a hive of kebab industry.

But there is a problem, we cannot find them on the menu. Just this kebab plate at €9, which is what we end up having.

Don’t get me wrong, it is delicious and really filling, and in a short while.

Gone.

Clean plate.

But it wasn’t quite what we are after. People around us are having these wraps and I have found them in the take away menu.

Tomorrow we will have to try again.

We move on to the Roman Agora which is just closed at 3.00pm, part of the Greek austerity measures, but we can see pretty much everything from outside anyway.

Some more really fascinating restoration where they insert new into old, I really like this but wonder whether it is contentious within the archaeological community.

We should have taken more note of that building, under wraps, in the background.

We walk around the backstreets to experience some of the cafe culture.

And eventually find our next objective. No, not really this one Hadrian’s arch.

But the one that sits behind it.

The temple of Olympian Zeus.

Only a few columns remain, but this used to be bigger than the Parthenon, not quite in such an impressive location, but the elegance of the 17m columns, much more slender, but took 700 years to build.

You have to be quite patient for some of these building projects.

One has toppled over. I am surprised it was stolen by that thug Elgin as he carted off the rest of the Greek ‘crown jewels’.

The things you could get away with in the past.

 

 

 

We then head to the Panathenaic stadium, the home of the modern Olympics, you might say.

It can seat 70,000 people and is the largest all marble stadium.

And just the purest piece of geometry, which for me, makes it particularly beautiful.

All those tightly sweeping concentric curves.

And note the slight curvature along the straight. Probably another one of those optical allusions they were trying to iron out or reinforce!

Really stunning, but I am not sure about the modern escape stairs at the top, which could have been designed a little more sensitively!

 

And you can still see the remnants of the Olympic rings from 2004.

Tomorrow, maybe we will get the opportunity to climb that hill. It should give such a good view over the city.

We are pretty much exhausted, but we have one more stop on our list before heading back to the beach, back to Dora.

To get there we pass through the national gardens which bizarrely is third on the list of top sites in our guide.

It is a haven of tranquillity away from the noise of Athens, but it is just a park.

It does have a pond full of terrapins though.

And this is our last port of call. The parliament building and the tomb of the unknown soldier.

This is about the only clear memory I have of Athens when I visited with my parents as a teenager.

Here we have a soldier saluting the tomb. But the show is not really about him, he just makes sure the tourists behave themselves.

These are the guys this is all about.

They are on duty for just an hour.

Most of that hour is spent like this, standing stock still.

When like this they will let you have your photo taken next to him, but don’t get too close or he gets a bit stroppy, crashes his rifle to the floor and you have the soldier in green on your back.

Then, on occasion, they go walkabout.

The precision and control is incredible, but there is something very comical about the choreography, you couldn’t make it more hilarious if you tried, which is even more unfortunate as this is meant to be such a serious and respectful event.

After they have been out and about, away from their little shelters, they might be a bit untidy, so need a bit of sorting out.

And then, on the hour, every hour, a new bunch comes along to replace them.

I have speeded up some of the action, not top make it more comical, but so it doesn’t take up too much space.

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GDR