Greece – Putting History in Context
September 15, 2011
It’s been a month since we returned from Greece, but it has really stayed with me. I know it’s the cradle of civilization, and the home of Zeus and his buddies and some cool old ruins. But I don’t think I had realized how much Ancient Greece was a part of everything I knew. But everywhere you look it has a million different connections to what we Westerners know. I also don’t think I had realized HOW advanced their society was, or how much of what they accomplished was lost. I kinda always thought it was just another stair step in human progression. But really it was quite the leap, most of that progress was lost almost immediately. Even the Romans didn’t have the skill or creativity that the Greeks did. Mainly they just copied the Greeks, and those copies tended to be inferior. Then the dark ages, and even that was lost.
Okay, philosophy lesson over. Now for the light travel fluff. Mark met me in Thessaloniki, the second largest city in Greece. This is not a tourist only city, this is a real city, that just happens to have a lot of old stuff in it that is worth going to see. Like all of Greece you scuff your shoes without finding old stuff. The city was an important port during the Roman age, has tons of Byzantium churches and history from the Ottoman occupation. Not to mention classical Greek ruins. Oh, and name your own price internet sites didn’t get us a brilliant deal. Our 5 star hotel turned out to be a Holiday Inn on a street undergoing major construction, next to the red light district. Oh well, you get what you pay for. Oh, and going to a country on the brink of economic collapse is pretty expensive, not a great deal. And the taxi drivers were on strike. Yet, we still had a great time.
Next we went on to Delphi. Before this trip I thought that Delphi was actually a fictional place, associating it with Oedipus and the Greek mythology. But turns out it’s real. A nice little hill side town catering totally to tourists, but we really seemed to have most of it to ourselves. The ruins were nice and manageable…good thing, it was boiling hot. The museum excellent. As a matter of fact all the museums we visited in Greece were incredible. And the view from the town down onto the Corinthian Bay was lovely.
Then on to Athens, the one of the Parthenon and olive trees in Greece, not the one of football and townies in Georgia. We really saw a ton of stuff – the Archeology Museum and the Parthenon museum, the Agora, Temple of Zeus just to name a few. We walked every inch of the Plaka several times, got to know the subway system and Starbucks. We did the Acropolis on a very hot, crowded morning. If it wasn’t for the walking tour podcasts I downloaded I think I would have been miserable and unimpressed. But thanks to Rick Steves it turned out a lot better. But our favorite spot turned out to be the Keramicos. Old ruins of the city that almost nobody goes to, yet it is right there next to everything. It used to be the pottery section of town in ancient days, which then turned into a cemetery. I told Mark he didn’t have to go, since I’m the one who has a thing about cemeteries but he came along. I actually ended up having to drag him out of there.
We spent an entire week in Greece and stayed completely on the mainland. There is so much more to see on the Peloponnese and the islands. Guess we’ll just have to go back again.
