Marders in Greece: Day 11 Athens (final chapter)

Phil & Patty at the Parthenon (Acropolis) in Athens, Greece

Marders in Greece:
Day 11 Athens

(Final Chapter)

We woke up this morning for our last full day in Greece. We decided that the best way to spend it would be a city tour of Athens. Unfortunately, our tour company, Friendly Planet, did not provide this for us. Can you imagine a visit to Greece without a tour of Athens? We couldn't either so we signed up at the hotel desk for a commercial tour with ten others from our group. We got on a tour bus and set off for a morning of visiting some of the important spots in this city of 5 million Greeks. Our first stop was at a stadium that was built in 1896, for the first modern Olympic Games. The is known as Panathinaiko Stadium. It's a gorgeous stadium (and the only one in the world) made entirely out of marble. It holds up to 80,000 people on its 50 marble steps. As you may remember, Athens hosted the 2004 Summer Olympics and this stadium was used for the archery competition. It was not used for the opening and closing ceremonies of those games as a new, modern stadium had been built (that we did not visit). After viewing this stadium, we re-boarded our coach and headed to our next stop, the ancient Temple of Zeus. Construction of it began in the 6th Century, BC. Not too much of it is left except for the columns. Even so, it still provided a good photo opportunity as it is colossal in stature. From here, we could also see the famous Acropolis as well as Hadrian's Arch. The tour bus then took us around the central city and pointed out to us various sites including the parliament building and the beautiful National Gardens (city park). We exited our tour bus at its final stop, the Acropolis. The magnificent venue of ancient buildings is a site to behold. Located high on a hill, we climbed many rock stairs to get to the site. At the top, or Acropolis, we listened to our guide describe how the main building, known as the Parthenon (aka, Temple of Athena), was built with an unusual design during the 5th century BC. She also described its decline from earthquake and war accidents. It's currently undergoing reconstruction as evidenced by the scaffolding. Some major items from the Parthenon have either been destroyed (the larger than life statue of the goddess Athena) or moved elsewhere (the British Museum in London). As we stood on top of the Acropolis hill, we were afforded a beautiful view of the city of Athens (albeit smoggy) as well as the surrounding mountains in the area. After viewing the Acropolis, we continued our tour of Athens by joining two other couples for a wonder lunch in the "Plaka" shopping district. We ended the day by taking a short walk through the National Gardens and observing the changing of the guard at the parliament building.This concludes my BLOG of our trip and tour of Greece. It was both beautiful and highly educational for us. We would highly recommend visiting Greece to any and all of our friends and relatives. Thanks for taking the time to read these descriptions and view our photos.

See Slideshow for this section by clicking HERE
see movie of changing of the guard: HERE

Marders in Greece: Day 10 Meteora

Patty & Phil at St. Stephen's Monastery in Meteroa

Marders in Greece:
Day 10 Meteora

We visited two monasteries during our visit to Meteora. The word Meteora means literally 'hovering in the air'. The monasteries are built on natural rock pillars in central Greece. The rocks are composed of a mixture of sandstone and conglomerate. They were formed about 60 million years ago when a series of earth movements pushed the seabed upwards, creating a high plateau and causing many fault lines to appear in the thick layer of sandstone. Continuous weathering by water, wind and extremes of temperature turned them into huge rock pillars, marked by horizontal lines. First, we drove to the summit of one of these rock peaks and visited the monastery of St. Stephen's. These monasteries were built in the 16th century AD. This Greek small orthodox center stood at the peak of one of these hills. All the women in our group had to put on temporary skirts over their slacks before being allowed into the monastery and church. Our guide described to us the paintings and religious icons along with the history of this period for the Greeks. Interestingly, there are no sculptures in these Greek Orthodox churches but rather are adorned with these paintings or "icons". We learned during our visit that the icons each tell a religious story and were meant to be educational for those early followers who could not read or write. They are quite beautiful and abundant in these little churches. The view from the top of the monastery to the town of Kalambaka was outstanding. We also visited another monastery, that was called "Varlaam". This one was built on a different rock hill and was quite a bit larger than the one at St. Stephans. Also, there were many more steps to climb in order to reach the entrance. We again entered and as before, the women in our group had to put on temporary skirts. The most interesting part of Varlaam was the fact that there was no direct way up to this monastery from the base of the hill. Today, we crossed a bridge at the apex in order to enter. In olden times, visitors were put in nets and raised or lowered to a "receiving dock" at the monastery. Could you imagine what that must have been like? No photos were permitted inside either of these monasteries. After visiting the monasteries, we rode in our motor coach a little way and visiting a craft shop that created these icon replicas for souvenirs. From there it was a seven hour ride back to Athens to stay for two more nights in Greece. Along the way, our guide pointed out the area where the famous battle of Thermopylae was fought between the Greeks and Persians (480 BC) as well as that of Marathon. Interesting, Marathon is exactly 26 miles from Athens, thus creating the namesake for this type of long distance foot race.

See Slideshow for this section by clicking HERE

Marders in Greece: Day 9 Delphi

View of Delphi Theater & Temple from above

Marders in Greece: Day 9

Delphi

We left our hotel in Delphi and went straight to the historical site known as Delphi. Very unlike the geography at Olympia, this site is built into the side of a mountain. As legend goes, the god Zeus released two eagles and had them fly around the world. He then assumed where they met was to be considered the center of the earth. That very spot was right here in Delphi. They thought of this place as the "navel" of the world. As our guide Helen was describing this to us on this site, Patty commented, "then we must be the lint" sending our group into laughter. Luckily, our guide did not get offended by the joke, as she did have a very good sense of humor. Anyway our guide led us up the side of the mountain describing the ruins of this beautiful site. By the 6th Century BC this site held many stone buildings including a Greek theater, stadium, and a large temple, dedicated to Apollo. Here's where the story gets interesting. The history shows that in the basement of the temple was a middle-aged woman who spoke in many unconnected words and riddles. People from all over Greece would come to this place to learn the meaning of their lives and perhaps what the future held for them. This woman was called The Oracle of Delphi. Each visitor would then be granted an audience with her and through the help of an interpreter, (who would translate these unconnected words) would receive the information that they were looking for. The trick was (as it is today by palmists, tea leaf readers, etc.) that the information was given in very broad terms that could be interpreted in many different ways. So the person who received the Oracle's information (and some time it was royalty!) had to decipher the actual meaning for themselves. This became one of the very important places in all of Greece and thus was claimed later by the Romans (who erected their own statues) and later destroyed by the Christians and Moslems as pagan relicts. We hiked through the ruins and were struck by the magnificent beauty of the locale. It seemed like you could see the whole world from this very spot. After our tour of the grounds, we went into the associated museum and viewed a few of the recovered sculptures that were discovered during the archeological digging of this site. The sculptures were again astounding in their beauty and detail. Following our visit to Delphi, we got back into our motor coach and drove northwest through a rugged mountain pass to our next destination, Meteora. It was about a 4 hour drive through the mountains and plush agricultural plains before we arrived in Meteora and the nearby town called Kalambaka. The striking geography of Meteora was in our view as straight-up hills of rock in the center of a former river flood plain. We learned that this geography was probably due to earthquakes and erosion. We rode our motor coach to check into our hotel, have some dinner, and spend the night.

See slideshow for this section by clicking HERE

Marders in Greece: Day 8 - Olympia

Phil at the track & field stadium of the "original" Olympic games

Marders in Greece: Day 8

Olympia

We woke up this Saturday morning to sunshine and mild temperatures. What a welcome change from the dreary, cool weather of yesterday! After enjoying our breakfast and packing up the motor coach, we took a short trip to the historical center of Olympia, home of the ancient Olympic games. This was the weather that we had hoped for our entire trip. It was cool and sunny. The red buds were in bloom and the wild flowers were filling the grounds of the archeological site with color. Our guide, Helen took us into the museum where she gave us a very nice escorted tour through the highlights of the museum. She described how this Olympia was erected by the Greeks in 776 BC as a tribute to Zeus. It was the local leadership's view to start these games as a friendly competition between the city states of ancient Greece. In the museum we saw artifacts unearthed from this site including pottery and sculptures from the very oldest and most primitive to those from hundred of years later showing very fine and beautifully detailed art that we learned was often copied by the Romans and then by the Italians like Michelangelo during the renaissance. Incredibly, they permitted photography albeit without flash. After visiting the museum, Helen escorted us on a tour of the grounds. Here we saw the ruins of all the surrounding structures including that which housed a giant statue of Zeus once considered one of the 7 Wonders of the ancient world. The highlight of the walking tour, of course, was seeing the original track and field where the ancient Olympic games took place during those times. To this day, the Olympic flame is lit here every 4 years and carried by foot to the site of the new games. Last week, when we were on our Greek island cruise, the flame ceremony took place on this very spot and began its journey to Beijing, China. After visiting this site, we had lunch and made a 5 hour drive northeast to our next hotel in Delphi. During this drive, we crossed the Corinth bay (at Patras)) on a new suspension bridge and saw some breathtaking scenery, including more snow-capped peaks. I never thought that we would see such mountains during our visit to Greece. We arrived at our destination in Delphi around 5 PM. Delphi is a high mountain village and historical site. We strolled through this small town that reminded us of a mountain sky resort in Colorado.

See slideshow for this section by clicking HERE

Marders in Greece: Day 7: Corinth, Epidaurus, Mycenae

Patty at the Epidaurus Amphitheater

Marders in Greece: Day 7

Corinth, Epidaurus, Mycenae

We disembarked from our ship and joined our new guide, Helen for our 4 day, "Classical Greece Extension" tour. This was a motor coach tour of some famous geography from the classical Greek period. The biggest problem we were to face today was the weather: cool and wet. When we booked this trip, we never felt like we would be enduring wet weather. Greece you see, has an arid climate. But here we were on Day 7 and it was the third day that we were having some heavy rain. Oh well.... We drove for about an hour out of our cruise port near Athens sort of west-northwest. Our guide (Helen) was a pleasant, older woman who had been guiding for over 30 years on trips just like this one. She also informed us that our bus driver was one of the best. That was good to know as we experienced a very rainy day driving on narrow, hilly roads. Our first stop was near the town of Corinth. Here we saw a canal that was built to connect the east and west shores of the Greek shipping lanes. Although Greece was in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, on the west of Greece lies the Adriatic Sea and Italy and on the east, the Aegean Sea and Turkey. So this canal was an important improvement for the shipping industry. The canal is way too narrow for big cruise ships but it serves its main purpose well. It also serves to completely divide the most southern portion of mainland Greece from the north. This lower section is called Peloponnesia. Somewhere in your memory, you may recall the Peloponnesian War from school. Well, here's where the land of Peloponnesia is. It was named after the mythical king from Greek mythology, Pelops. This area was also home to the Myceneans, the second oldest culture from ancient Greece (the Minoans were oldest) dating back to 2000 BC. Our next stop on our tour was at Epidaurus. Epidaurus was an ancient medical center of the Myceneans dating back to this period of 1600 BC. It was supposedly the birthplace of Asclepius, son of Apollo and god of healing. We got out of the bus and hoofed (in the rain) to its most famous landmark, an outdoor amphitheater that could hold a 14,000 person audience and had perfect acoustics. They still hold classical Greek tragedies and comedies in this theater. We also visited the museum on this site where we saw beautiful sculptures most notably of Asclepius, with his famous snake in hand. We re-boarded the bus and drove for another hour until we were in the heart of ancient Mycenae. During this journey, our guide recounted the well known history of the war between the Mycenaens and the army of Troy. While still raining hard, we visited an excavation (from the Bronze Age) of the Mycenaens, viewing their lion-gated sculpture at the entrance and tombs built for their royalty dating back to 1300 BC. After this, we drove the rest our journey across the mountainous terrain of Peloponnesia, viewing the burnt out forests (from last summer's great fires in Greece) until our arrival on the west coast in Olympia where we de-boarded for our overnight stay at a very nice hotel.

See slideshow for this section by clicking HERE

Marders in Greece: Maps of our travels

I've told you about the places that we visited during the first half of our trip to Greece. They were all seen during our 4 day cruise of the Aegean Sea. Before I tell you about our land tour, let me show you where these places are on a map:Map of our 4 day Greek Island cruise

Map our our land tour.

In the next posts, I tell you more about the places in mainland Greece that we visited during our tour of some areas made famous during the times of Classical Greek culture that occurred more than 2,000 years ago.

Marders in Greece: Day 6 Crete & Santorini

Patty & Phil in Santorini

Marders in Greece: Day 6 Crete & Santorini

Our ship docked in Crete in the port city of Heraklion (named after Hercules). Crete is the southern most island of Greece and is quite close northern Africa. We boarded a motor coach for our morning tour of the ancient city ruins of Knossos. More than 4,000 years ago a new people arrived on this island who were most likely from northern Africa. These people are now called the Minoans. While the artifacts of these ruins were first discovered in 1878, it wasn't until 1900 when the British man, Arthur Evans excavated this ancient palace. The legend of the leader of this area, King Minos however proceeded the excavation. Minos, a son of Zeus and Europa, was thought to be a wise and peaceful king. The Minoans were not "Greek" in the present sense as they had dark complexions and arrived here long before the Macedonians. The first palace on this site dates back to 1900 BC and a second place was built on the earthquake-made ruins lasted until around 1350 BC. We strolled through the ruins as our guide described what we were seeing. The palace was built using many short, winding hallways that lead to the mythological story of a labyrinth. From recovered frescos, it was discovered that the Minoans had a sport of jumping over live bulls' horns. From these two tales arose the mythological creature, the minotaur which was thought to be half bull and half man. It was believed that the bull lived within the labyrinth and ate human flesh. Archeologists learned from studying these ruins that the Minoans were an advanced civilization. They had a complete plumbing and sewage system built within this palace (we saw the pipes!). We continued to stroll through the ruins and observed that it was built on the side of a large hill. Off in the distance we observed high mountains with large amounts of snow still showing on their peaks. After about and hour, we re-boarded our motor coach and headed back to our ship after a very brief stop in downtown Heraklion. The ship pulled away from the dock at noon for a four hour sail to our finale port of call, Santorini. At around 4 PM, our ship arrived near the island of Santorini. This island was the most extraordinary geography that we visited so far. The island of Santorini partially imploded in 1450 BC when a huge volcano erupted. The result of this is shear cliff landscapes that defy description. We left the cruise ship via tenders and then proceeded to take a cable lift to the top cliffs of the island. Others chose to use donkeys. Views from the top were awe inspiring making this the most famous of all the Greek Islands. We strolled the island and Patty purchased a print from a local artist. We stopped and had a refreshment at a roof top restaurant that gave us a view of the volcanic hill on the island of Santorini before returning to our ship via tender.

To see the photos from this section click: HERE

Marders in Greece: Day 5 Rhodes & Lindos

Phil & Patty in Lindos (Rhodes)

Day 5: Rhodes & Lindos

We arrived a little later than planed in Rhodes due to high seas delaying our departure from Turkey. We left the ship by dock at 8:30 AM and proceeded to our tour bus to meet our guide for the morning, Daphne. Daphne was an excellent guide whose command of English and knowledge of the area was outstanding. We learned that Rhodes was an island in the Aegean Sea, 48 miles long by 19 miles wide. It's been inhabited continuously since the 5th century, BC Rhodes is probably best known as the home of the "Colossus of Rhodes" once one of the Seven Wonders of the World. This statue was over 100 ft. tall and stood on a 35 foot base. Built around 300 BC, it collapsed less than 100 years later. Still, nearly everyone has heard of this. The main city in Rhodes also shares the same name. There is a modern city of Rhodes and a well preserved old city dating back to the Medieval times. We drove through Rhodes city to travel to our first stop, a pottery factory and shop where we observed the craftsmen and Patty purchased a small handmade vase. We left the shop and traveled the rest of the way to a small town called Lindos. This 35 mile drive was well worth it as we visited a beautiful site of an ancient acropolis. We learned from Daphne that the word acropolis was derived from the Greek word "acrop" meaning extreme and "polis" meaning town or city. So the word acropolis means the most extreme or highest point in the city. The scenery around Lindos was breathtakingly beautiful. It is an extremely rocky area with high rocky cliffs running down to the sea. At the highest point lies the acropolis thought to be built originally around 600 BC. We climbed by foot to the peak on a slippery stone walk and stairs. It wasn't an easy climb but nowhere near as difficult as our 2006 climb up the front slope of Masada in Israel. At the top lies the ruins of the ancient temple of Athena where we had a spectacular view of the sea and enclosed St. Paul's Bay. We climbed back down the path/stairs in a light rain shower making our footing particularly difficult. We re-boarded our tour bus and drove back to the old walled city of Rhodes where our guide escorted us on a walking tour of this quaint and beautiful still living town. Then, it was back to the ship for lunch and a rest. After our rest we went back out for a stroll through the old city of Rhodes. We saw a Jewish synagogue and stopped for a liquid refreshment before heading back to our ship.

To see the photos from this section click: HERE

Marders in Greece: Day 4 Kusadasi Turkey (Ephesus)

Phil at Celsus' Temple in Ephesus


Patty in Kusadasi (Turkey)

Day 4: Kusadasi Turkey (Ephesus)

We docked in Kusadasi (port city in southern Turkey) at 6 AM in the morning and at 7:15 am we met our guide for our excursion to the ancient ruins of the city called Ephesus. There was something very exotic about entering Turkey. I've always heard good things about Turkey but who knows? The weather was another issue. It was windy and quite cloudy. We got off our ship and boarded a motor coach with our local guide. We were headed for the ancient city of Ephesus which was about 10 miles from our dock. Our guide was pleasant young women from Turkey. Turks have an unusual, exotic look about them. They are not Arab or Greek looking at all. They are fair complexioned and quite attractive people. Their spoken language and written alphabet is also quite unique. We learned that in ancient times, the sea was much higher meaning that the shore line was miles inland than at present. Ephesus was an ancient city (first inhabited in 6000 BC) and was a major city for the ancient world. What we saw was much of the ruins of the Greeks and Roman civilization. This excavation was much like that of Bet She'an in Israel. The highlights of our walk through Ephesus was seeing the carving of the goddess Nike, including the derivation of the "swish", the ruins of a huge library built by Celsus, and an amphitheater that held over 20,000 people. The latter indicated that this city was once home to >200,000 people. At the end of our tour of Ephesus, it started to get windy and rainy. This unpleasantness made us hurry back to the motor coach for our ride back to the ship at 11:00 AM. T he last stop before boarding was a visit to a carpet making shop. The staff spent a good 20 minutes showing us carpets and telling us about their craftsmanship. It was much like we experienced in Cairo last year. We didn't purchase a thing. When we got back on our ship, we were informed that due to the poor weather, our departure from Kusadasi was being delayed until 6:30 PM and the ensuing trip to the island of Patmos had been cancelled. So after lunch, Patty & I walked back into Kusadasi city and strolled leisurely through town. This was a lot of fun. We chatted with the shop owners, watched the school children walking home, and had a liquid refreshment. We decided that the Turks were very friendly and happy people. We then headed back again to our ship and prepared for this evening's entertainment, Greek dancing, singing and bouzouki playing.

See photos for this section by clicking HERE

Also, see video of Greek dancing on the ship HERE

Marders in Greece: Days 1,2,3 Arrival & Mykonos

Windmills in Mykonos A decorative plate from Mykonos


Days 1,2,3: Arrival and cruise to Mykonos

We drove from Fort Myers to catch our flight out of Miami Int. Airport. About halfway across "Alligator Alley" it started pouring rain. It rained very hard, making the drive quite difficult. We parked the car in a long term lot and waited for our departure in the Miami Int. Airport at 8:55 PM aboard Swiss Airlines. It took about 8 hours to reach our intermediary connection in Zurich. From there it was another 2 hour flight to Athens airport. We collected our luggage at 4:30 PM local time on Sunday, met our guide, and bussed to our hotel in Athens, The Athens Imperial Hotel. While not first class by any means, it as very comfortable and had a large bathroom (unusual for Europe). After checking in, we had a brief meeting with the tour staff and then had dinner across the street in a small restaurant they call here a "Taverna". Then it was to bed for a fitful, jet-lagged sleep at our hotel. We woke up at 5:30 AM in order to pack and have a quick breakfast. We boarded our motor coach for a short ride from our hotel to the port city called Piraeus. Piraeus really just seems like a sprawling suburb of Athens. We didn't get to tour Athens at this time although you could see that it was built on the side of a small mountain. Strangely, on these two days it was somewhat hazy which our guide said was due to sand blowing north out of Africa. We exited our bus and entered the cruise ship terminal. Our ship, the "Aquamarine" is a fairly old vessel probably dating back to the early 1970s. The cabin was comfortable yet we really did miss some of the niceties we were used to from Celebrity and Princess. We sailed out of Piraeus at 11 AM. We enjoyed our buffet lunch and then proceeded back to our cabin to try to catch up on our much needed rest from the trans oceanic flight to Greece. At 5:15 PM, our ship approached the island of Mykonos. Due to wind, we had to take tenders in to shore. We strolled through the narrow, white painted streets of this small port town. All the buildings are white-washed and are built on a hill. We saw the famous windmills and watched the sun go down in the west. Patty purchased a hand-painted plate for a souvenir and we stopped and had some fried zucchini appetizer. At 8:30 PM we head back to our ship via the tender.

See Slideshow for this section by clicking HERE