Greece! The Acropolis and Borf

I have never in my life been as thirsty as I was on our first day in Athens. I mean this seriously. I drank an INSANE amount of water that day. We decided that I was plagued by a water vampire that kept draining me whenever I wasn’t paying attention. I imagine he looked something like this.

(Though Britt and I decided that Jared Leto would undoubtedly spell it “vampyre.”)

After we stocked up on water, we started our walk up the Acropolis. The first thing we came across was the Theater of Dionysus.

by britt

by britt

The bleacher areas were for the common ancient bottoms. There were fancier chairs for the fancier ancient bottoms.

There was also a beautiful relief carving.

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And there were poppies everywhere. It smelled like heaven.

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Here are a few more things we saw on our walk up to the main part of the acropolis, including some ancient graffiti, stairs, and another amphitheater that is still in use.

"lord byron wuz here"

by britt

by britt

by britt

When you first get up to the Acropolis, there’s a gateway that you walk through.

there is pretty much not a single existing attractive picture of me from this trip.

britt!

Then you reach the main part of the Acropolis.

Here, have some pictures!

parthenon

view of the theater of dionysius from above

view down

by britt

parthenon by britt

parthenon by britt

either the parthenon or the temple of poseidon i think, by britt

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athenian sprawl by britt

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by britt

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by britt

the porch of the maidens on the temple of athena nike

This is the temple of of Athena Nike. It is actually split into two temples—one to Athena and one to Poseidon. This is very unusual. Gods don’t usually like to share. The people of Athens did this, though, because both Gods were so important in Athens. Athena had a little garden with an olive tree that was tended by a maiden, though I didn’t get pictures of it. The temple of Poseidon has a hole in the porch of it to symbolize the spot where Poseidon struck the earth and made the ocean rise out of it. Here’s some of Poseidon’s temple.

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We climbed this hill later in the day. More on that later.

like... we walked from the location where this was taken to this hill, climbed it, and walked back.

And here is the hill where democracy was founded. I overheard a tour guide explain it. (I developed a habit of stalking English-speaking tour guides, as we didn’t have one of our own.) Democracy in ancient Greece wasn’t quite like what we have now. Instead of freedom, they were interested in quality—quality of speech and things like that. Basically all of the men who owned property met on this hill and talked and argued until there was nothing of quality left to say. Then they made decisions.

 

Also, walking up to this spot, we saw a bit of graffiti that said "BORF." There was a lot of speculation as to what borf means, exactly, and a lot of bellowing it at odd moments until we thought that maybe it was a Greek curse word or insult or something.

BORF!

More about the Agora and old things coming in the next post.