Phidias Hotel - Athens

The Phidias Hotel is nicely located right near the Acropolis and the Ancient Agora. It is very close to Thission subway station, which is a nice bonus (despite the fact that they are doing construction on the subway system). The area around Thission Station is home to quite a number of outdoor cafes, which are extremely busy midday, but the crowd tapers off at night.

The hotel itself is nothing too amazing. It is a budget hotel in every sense of the word. The rooms are clean, but you can tell they are very old. They don't hold heat well, and the walls could use some new paint to liven them up a bit. The bathroom is pretty small, but we're used to that by now. They do offer breakfast, but the highlight for me was the elevator. The elevator was absolutely ancient. It was about one step away from the lever operated ones from the 30s. You press the up button hard in the lobby, then you wait to see the small window in the door light up, you get in, close the door (there is no safety gate), and it goes up.

Other than that, there is nothing spectacular or horrible about the Phidias Hotel. It was one of the easiest for us to find this trip (bonus!). We want to stay in the Plaka (the old part of Athens) when we go back, but there was nothing wrong with the Phidias. I would stay there again.

My Big Fat Greek Vacation

And now the end of our trip. We made it through three countries in 2 months (Mongolia, Russia, and Turkey), and now for the last month we'll spend time in Greece. Back when we were planning our trip, Richard and I thought it might be a good idea to work on an olive farm on the island of Evia, north of Athens. Our flight from Turkey got into Athens at 6pm, however, so we then decided to spend one day exploring Athens before heading out to the farm. We stayed right next to the Agora, in the Phidias Hotel on a popular cafe street.

Our first night we explored the cafe street and some of the Plaka, the historic center of Athens. We ate at a tiny restaurant and discovered how cheap wine is! ½ liter of red wine for 3 euros! We ate moussaka and fish along with our wine. We continued to stroll along the lit-up streets and slowly made our way back to the hotel.

Welcome to Athens!

3 euro wine and moussaka

Hadrian's Gate at night. Hadrian built a shit load of stuff.

The next day we got up early to see the Acropolis before it got too touristy. Well, we later found out, that was not a problem. It's December now, so there were barely any tourists there. We saw the Odeon of Heracles, the Theater of Dionysus, the Parthenon (naturally), and the Propylaea (entrance gate). We found the Acropolis to be slightly interesting. It's been in Athens for as long as Athens has been around. Control of the city changed hands with the Persians and Ottomans. They both disregarded the Acropolis; the Ottomans blew it up when they used it for munitions storage. It wasn't until the 1880's and 1890's that the Germans began to excavate and partly restore the Acropolis. And it wasn't until the 80's or 90's when Greek teams began to plan massive restoration projects to build the monuments back up to what they used to look like.

After spending many days looking at ruins in Turkey, the Acropolis was actually not as breathtaking as it probably should have been. The ruins in Turkey began to be excavated in the 1920's, and they were all underground, so much better preserved than the Parthenon. Plus, by that time, people thought ancient ruins were interesting and efforts to excavate and restore were underway. So, for us, we found the ruins in Turkey to be much more interesting, at least to look at, than the ruins of the Acropolis. They were better preserved by being underground, and they didn't have years and years of exposure to the elements. The ruins in Turkey also weren't used as munitions dumps that blew up twice.

Odeon of Herakles, Temple of Dionysus, stairs to the Propylaea

After we saw the Acropolis, we went to look at Hadrian's Gate and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. The Temple reminded us of the Temple of Artemis in Turkey. The Artemis one was a wonder of the ancient world, but now there is just one column standing and a bunch of rocks lying around. The Temple of Zeus has 6 columns standing and a bunch of rocks lying about. We did enjoy this temple more, because the area around the columns is completely empty. From a distance it looks very majestic, and up close the columns are highlighted by the open space.

Emily making a face and me in front of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

For lunch, we ate at a cafe outside (eating outside in December...Yes!!), where we again discovered the cheapness of Greek wine. After that, we made our way to Larissa Station, the train station, to see if we could buy tickets to get out to the farm for the next day. They said only day-of tickets, so we walked to another ruins site. The ticket you buy to see the Acropolis also includes the Zeus temple, Hadrian's Library (which we didn't see), the Agora (also didn't see), and the Kerameikos. The Kerameikos, we found out, was actually a large graveyard and burial place. Everything we walked on once was a grave. OOOoooooh! They had a small museum that contained artifacts from the tombs, like pottery, metal works, and coins. But by this time we were tired and tired of looking at ruins. So we went to a cafe near our hotel and relaxed until dinner.

Souvlaki and a Gyro

These guys were everywhere.

They had these cool relief sculpture copies in the subway.

Graffiti like this was everywhere

The Kerameikos

The street next to our hotel on the weekends turns into a flea market of sorts. People are there selling “antiques”, books, jewelry both hand-made and not, and other assorted goods. It was fun to see the things people were selling, and relaxing to walk along the street and do some window shopping. If there is one thing we learned from this trip, it's that traveling for more than 2 weeks is tiring and you relish the times when you can relax and enjoy not doing the touristy things.

For dinner, we ate at Kuzina, a restaurant that apparently was featured in the Michelin Guide. They had a set menu, which was phenomenal. Salad with special cheese from an island (tasted like a mix of feta and goat cheese), cheese and spinach dumplings with a pomegranate sauce, pork that had been marinated for half the day, and tagliatelle pasta with wild mushrooms and truffles. They served a very tasty chocolate mousse for dessert.

The next day, we headed out for Halkida and the olive farm.

The Windy City

Pergamon is the ancient acropolis near the modern day city of Bergama. The history of Pergamon dates back to the Hellenic period when Greeks still lived in Turkey. Pergamon was named for the wind god, and let me tell you, it was extremely windy. Greeks occupied the city of Bergama until around 1922, when there was an exchange of Greeks living in Turkey back to Greece and Turks living in Greece back to Turkey. The Greek-style homes of the departed have been protected by the Turkish government.

The view from the acropolis.

Back to Pergamon. As with many things in Turkey, Pergamon exchanged hands many times. The Hellenic Greeks once owned the city, and then Alexander the Great stored his treasure there as he conquered Asia Minor. Eventually it was gifted to the Romans by an Anatolian king who was a bit touched in the head. That means, the Romans took it without swinging a sword. Finally, it landed in the hands of the Byzantines when the Roman Empire split. They would be conquered by the Ottomans, who would give way to the modern Turks, under Ataturk, in 1923.

There is a distinct difference between the architecture left by the Greeks and that left by the Romans. The Greek builders were much more diligent, and the walls that remain are solid, because the stone was cut to fit together flush. They didn't use mortar, because the stone used was so heavy. The Roman walls are much weaker. They were built with any stone they could get their hands on. Most of it wasn't cut properly, and they used mortar to keep it all together. They could get away with it, because they covered the walls with slabs of marble. The marble they used was taken by the Byzantines for the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople (modern Istanbul).

The solid walls of the Greeks next to the shoddy walls of the Romans.

The Romans did do one thing that the Greeks couldn't; they brought water to Pergamon. There are ruins of the old Roman aqueducts in the surrounding countryside, and there are terracotta pipes inside the acropolis. The Romans even turned the old Greek cisterns into hearths where they cooked soups and boiled water.

Most of the remains of the acropolis are old Greek foundations where Roman buildings once stood. Two of the most important of these being the former temple of Athena and the former temple of Zeus. The main part of Zeus' temple is now in Berlin. The relief sculptures are supposed to be among the finest from the ancient world. If I ever make it to Berlin, I will definitely have to see them. In addition to these foundations, they have excavated store rooms, prison cells, wild animal cages for the gladiators, and even a 14,000 seat amphitheater.

The main grounds of the acropolis.

14,000 seat amphitheater.

There are rooms here where they stored goods, live animals for gladiator games, and prisoners.

Terracotta pipes.

A view of the ruins.

The former site of the temple of Zeus that is now in Berlin.

Our tour guide used to be an English teacher, and his teaching side definitely came out. He explained the history of the city. He also told us a few anecdotes about things that had happened in the acropolis. Our guide is apparently the only guide that lives in the city, so he knows just about every person that works at the acropolis. It was a very fun and informative tour. Any history buff should visit. The city has been an important part of many different empires including the Greek's, Alexander the Great's, the Anatolian’s, the Roman's, and the Byzantine's.