2010.10.16For about an hour, the airport shuttle took us to the Athens’ metro station, Syntagma. From there, after a short taxi ride, we arrived in our hotel, Airotel Parthenon. The streets around the hotel were very lively at 10pm, so we decided to have a walk and get something to eat. We chose the hotel within the walking distance to Acropolis, but we didn’t know it’s this close – just walking one block from the hotel and looking up, the bright and magnificent temple on top of the mountain is there. It is the famous Acropolis. Many people were on the street having coffee or ice cream. We picked one restaurant that seemed having a party with people singing and shouting loudly. We ordered a chicken soup and a kebab. It turned out to be one of the most mediocre dinners we had of the whole trip.

We had only one day in Athens and we planned to spend the day just around the Acropolis area. The second day, Saturday, was the free entrance day, so we’d better get there as early as possible before the crowd. We had the breakfast buffet at the hotel, then after about 20-minute walk, we got to the entrance of the Acropolis. On the right was The Odeon of Herodes Atticus. At the southern slope of the Acropolis, this is a 5000-seat theater that provides the superb setting for annual Summer Festival as well as internationally acclaimed performances.

The remains of the Acropolis can be divided into three main areas. From Odeon of Herodes Atticus, we ascended to the entrance of the temple, The Propylaea. Before it was a flight of steps, a good place to admire this monumental gateway and take pictures. On the right, as we entered the Acropolis, was a small but graceful temple called Temple of Wingless Victory or Temple of Athena Nike overlooking the city.

Passing through the gateway, on the left is a temple called Erechtheum. The most famous feature is its south portion, The Porch of the Caryatids. It is a porch whose supporting columns are built as six draped female figures (caryatid). All these caryatids in place are in fact replacements. The original pieces were moved to Acropolis Museum for restoration and display.

The main temple of the Acropolis is Parthenon. This grandiose temple has transcended its architectural greatness and become the symbol of classic and perfection. It’s almost unimaginable that the temple maintained its shape until 1687 when a bomb was thrown into the temple as Turks used it as the ammunition and rendered the temple into the ruins as it is today. Parthenon was undergoing the second round of restoration project. Huge machineries were visible from any angle. It’s quite disturbing and impossible to take a shot of the whole temple.

Sitting on a flat-topped rock 490ft (150m) above the sea level, the Acropolis provides a fantastic view of its surrounding city. Compared with the temples and monuments that we had just visited in Egypt, the Acropolis didn’t impress us very much. It is not as old as the Great Pyramids, not as majestic as the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak and not as well-decorated as those tombs in Valley of the Kings. However, what makes it stand out is its symbolic meaning. The Acropolis is much more than a historical ruin, but a symbol of aesthetics, philosophy and value of Classical Greek culture, which is widely considered to be the foundation of modern western civilization. It is really amazing to imagine that Greek civilization at its Golden Age has reached such a pinnacle that people were doing and thinking things that no one tried to be doing and thinking for the next 1500 years.

Exited the Acropolis from its north gate, paid a small entrance fee, we entered the Agora (marketplace). It’s the political and cultural center of ancient Athens. Speeches were delivered here, law court, schools, and theaters were built here. It even had a mint and state prison. Hephaisteion is the best-preserved temple in the area and looking the Parthenon into the distance. Stoa of Attalos is a building with a long colonnaded walkway. It was reconstructed in the mid-20th and used as a museum now.

The area surrounded the Acropolis and the Agora is called Plaka. It is a nice neighborhood but quite commercialized area mixed with small shops, cafes, churches and a few ancient ruins. It’s an easy and lazy afternoon as the sun was warm and many people sitting outside of the cafes on the street. The alleys are never straight, it is easy to get lost, but you can always look up and see the Acropolis then know where you are going.

We had a snap at the hotel then took the subway to Syntagma. We thought we could find high-end shopping district in this area, however, it’s indeed more like a city hub. The street we walked on were crowded but the shops were not very attractive. There was only one subway stop between Syntagma and where we live, so we decided to walk back and eventually we reached Plaka area. Again, we found the restaurants here were just typical tourist places, we enjoyed the environments rather than the quality of food.

Before going back to the hotel, we took a sidewalk to the Temple of Olympian Zeus. It is the largest temple in Greece, exceeding even Parthenon in size, however now only 15 columns remain standing, another one collapsed in 1852 and broke into pieces. The detail of the columns and the view of the Acropolis through the columns were very impressive, so I decided to pick up my tripod left in the hotel. As I went back to the temple, it started dribbling but soon stopped. A rainbow appeared in the eastern sky – a nice reward for my effort to take the tripod.

The park closed at 7pm. When we passed Hadrian’s Arch, I noticed the arch was painted with the bright golden color by the sunset. My wife went back to the hotel by herself and I was almost running to the entrance of the Acropolis. I should have asked her to join me because she missed a once in a lifetime sunset scene. The last ray of the sun rendered the Acropolis and the surrounding city in the glorious colors, the color transited from golden to red to purple. Glory, that’s feeling filled my heart.

This was the last day of the trip. We left Athens the next day morning and arrived home at night. As I finally complete my travelogue, there are still a lot of more to be digested. It was such an unforgettable trip that we will be proud of for many years.

2010.10.15The wind stopped the next day and the sky was crystal clear. I walked down stairs to other hotels beneath us on the cliff. They have undisturbed view of the full circle of the caldera.

Because it had been too windy and too many people at Oia the previous day, we decided to go there again in the morning. It’s only a 20-minute drive from Firostefani to Oia. One of the villas at the northern tip of the island claims to be “the most popular site for marriage proposals” – that might not be an exaggeration.

Coming back from Oia, We had lunch at another cliff restaurant. When we checked out the hotel, I asked the owner what he would do in winter. He said that he would close the hotel and go back to Athens in two weeks, and then he would come back to the island again the next year. Most hotels and restaurants will be closed in the low season. The owner told me that late May and early October were good time to visit the island, “you cannot imagine how crowded the street is in summer”.

Our flight was at 7pm. We still had a lot of time. For the past two days, we only drove around the cliff side, so we decided to see the other side of the island first. Unlike Corfu Island, Santorini is mostly barren. While the cliff is decorated with the dazzling white buildings, at the end of the slow slope going down from the cliff, there are all black sand beaches. We stopped at Monolithos beach, which has some strange sand stone formation. Only a few people on the beach, some of them took off their clothes. This might be one of the nude beaches on the island.

We continued driving sort of randomly. We drove around Emporio’s town square a bit, then at Akrotiri, we failed to locate its archaeological site. Sitting in the small booth by the beach, we figured this was still not the end of the road yet, so we decided to keep on driving to the very south of the island. Along the road, we could see the Caldera from another direction. Those white houses on top of the cliff became just a white line. There is a light house at the road end. It is called Cape Akrotiri. From head to toe, we covered almost the whole island.

We arrived at the airport before it’s getting dark. This was the fourth small airport we had been to in the trip, Luxor, Abu Simbel, Corfu and Santorini, their airports all have merely one building with no more than two gates. From here, we were going to the last stop of the trip, Athens.

2010.10.14It’s already 10pm when we stepped out of Santorini Airport. Although it’s very late, there is only one road from the airport to Firostefani, where our hotel is located, very close to Santorini’s town center Fira, so we couldn’t miss it. As we were ramping up along the zigzag street, we realized we were climbing to the cliff top. We asked a local resident (who has a tiny cat:-) for direction and parked our car by a small church. The church’s shape and color was in typical Santorini style – white walls, blue domes and the tower bells. Passing through a narrow alley, stepping down a few stairway, here was our hotel, Efterpi Villas. I had never seen a hotel so compact, yet so elegant – it should only appear in fairy tale. In fact, all hotels around us were like this. The narrow alley that we passed by leads to the Fira along the cliff top. At 11pm, many people just walked back from the town. We had a dinner at a family restaurant by the cliff. The breeze was warm, you could smell the romance in the atmosphere.

We waked up the next day morning with a perfect view of the island Nea Kameni, (the only thing less perfect was there was a power line running through in front of our window). The owner of the hotel cooked the breakfast and brought it to our room. Santorini is the remains of a massive volcano eruption around 1450 BC. Nea Kameni island in the middle of the crater emerged after very recent activities in 197 BC and 1707. After the devastating earthquake in 1956, Santorini’s central town, Fira, was rebuilt with churches, hotels and restaurants cling to the edge of caldera to enjoy the magnificent views. The view of white-washed wall and the blue-domed churches with the Aegean sea as the backdrop is so unique that anyone who sees the picture of Santorini for the first time cannot believe such a place does exist in this world.

After breakfast, we walked along the Agiou Mina street, the ally by the crater edge, to Fira. Fira is the hub of the Santorini island. Like other town centers of Greek Islands, its narrow streets are packed with small shops, restaurants and bars. We did some shopping, visited catholic quarter and had lunch at one of the restaurants. Octopus is a typical local dish but we didn’t expect it was so huge on the plate. The view was unbeatable. The only regret was that it seemed the bad weather followed us here, the sky was cloudy most of time.

By the afternoon, the wind gradually cleared the sky. We drove to the north of the island. It is said that the northern tip is an ideal place to watch the sunset. We passed an lovely square with a church and several shops, so we stopped to take pictures. One of the best scenes I saw on the island was a roof paved with white cobbles here. Looking over the roof, the sea was shining and the remote island became a little blurred. It’s one spectacular view I will never forget.

Kept on driving for another 300 feet, I noticed a few tour buses dropped hundreds of visitors off at the parking lot. It meant there must be something worth seeing. We followed the tour group into the alley, until then we realized we were at the town Oia, where all those postcard photos are taken, not at Fira but here. The lighting of the afternoon sun was wonderful, but there were too many people, I had to wait in line to get a spot to take pictures or hold on several minutes for a view with less people in the frame.

There were only a few restaurants and hotels at the very northern tip of the island. The sun was low. Many people were either dining or standing by the cliff to wait for the sunset. However, I found the cloud gathering at the horizon and getting darker and darker. I doubted very much that anyone could see the sunset so I took some photos at the windmills and left. While driving back to the hotel, the wind became very strong and the cloud was moving fast from the cliff side. At some points, the dark cloud was so dense that we couldn’t see the road. The fierce wind kept on blasting throughout the night. We fell into sleep accompanied by the whistling sound made by the wind blowing through the power line.