Ode to the Octopus

Today was our last day in Athens, and the street market and Plaka felt a little bit like a ghost town.  True, it was mid-morning on a Tuesday, but it just drove home that this is the off season.  Clearly, the numbers on the weekends are driven by domestic tourists on weekend trips and the locals who venture down to these bustling restaurants and markets.  

We walked all the way to the Archaeological Museum, about 45 minutes away, savoring the sunshine.  Josh was also looking for his next donut, as he was delighted to discover that they are sold on street corners here.  We had high hopes for the Archaeological Museum, which gets rave reviews, and it did not disappoint.  The first room was utterly magnificent and was worth the price of admission by itself.  Gorgeous gold leaf decorated statues as headdresses, hair, inlay on daggers, everything.  

A single one of the cases was noted to hold over 30 lbs of gold foil - and there were over a hundred cases in the room (though not all filled with gold).  The detail of these pieces was also incredible.

The rest of the museum was mostly filled with statues and pottery, some dating back to 7000 BC.  The oldest pieces include tiny, primitive sculptures of women with either stout or violin-shaped bodies.  The contrast between these early pieces and the later sculptures is striking.  Things have come a long way. My favorite statue was this one, a korai (female figure).  The drape of her chiton (tunic-like robe) is perfect, and I loved the detail on the robe (there are shapes etched in and painted, if you look closely), the belt, her necklace - everything.  She also retained some of the paint used to decorate the statue, which I hadn't seen before.

A few other notes on the museum:

(1) There were pictures of octopuses* everywhere, and I loved them all.

(2) The first traces of olive oil were found in a lamp on the Cycladic Islands and are over 3000 years old, and that lamp is in the museum.

(3) Large chunks of the museum were unfortunately roped off, which was unfortunate, and one of the large rooms was under renovation.  Still, there was plenty to appreciate, especially in combination with all the other sites and museums that we have seen.  The collections in Greece have complimented each other nicely, often referring to one another as displaying a particular piece.

(4) The museum has a beautiful courtyard downstairs.  Especially in the summer, I could imagine relaxing there for a few hours.

On the way to our afternoon museum plans, we crossed a few other foods off our Athens bucket list.  First, we stopped at a Caffe Vergnano to buy calzones, which were utterly delicious (try the veggie one!).  As soon as we had purchased these, we realized that one of the restaurants we had been eager to try, Falafellas, was just a few doors down.  So... we got lunch immediately after our calzone snack.  The line was quite long, but the wait was worth it.  

I got a pocket and Josh got the giant size, and we oohed and aahed over all the things that they stuffed into our meals.  The falafel not only included falafel balls and tahini, but lettuce, tomato, cubes of grilled eggplant, cucumber slices... it was glorious.  Every bite was incredible.  And cheap!  If they had one of these in Baltimore, I would probably eat there every day.

Our second museum of the day was the Acropolis Museum.  

This museum is only about a decade old, and a lot of the final touches were added around 2010.  The Museum isn't huge, but it does a good job of guiding you through the remaining statues and carvings from the Acropolis.  As mentioned in a previous post, those that remained intact were suffering mightily from the smog, so they have been moved into the museum and (in some cases) replaced with casts.  We saw a cool video on how they have restored a lot of these pieces using a specially-designed laser technique to zap soot without harming the marble.  Anyway, the museum starts with a ramp up to the first main floor.  Along the ramp on both sides are four rows of objects.  On the right side are pieces of pottery and small statues from the area.  Below your feet are glass panels showing the excavation site beneath; the museum sits atop the excavation of the town at the foot of the Acropolis.

The left side was where things got interesting, because it was material that we hadn't seen or heard before.  It discussed all the wedding rituals in ancient Athens.  Weddings were three-day affairs, including not only the day before the wedding but the day after.  The day before (proaulia), a sacrifice was made to the gods.  The bride also offered her childhood toys the Artemis as a sign of passage into adulthood as a married woman, which I thought was pretty interesting.  The next day - the day of the wedding - the ladies bedazzled the bridge.  The groom had a best man (I wonder if they laughed at childhood shenanigans during his speech?), and together with the groom's whole family they went to the house of the bride.  There was a huge feast and afterwards, the bride was unveiled.  This unveiling marked her passage into the custody of her husband, and at dusk she was led to the home of her groom.  They occasionally went by carriage (probably not dragging cans, but possibly bearing a "Just Married" sign?) and were surrounded by singing and dancing relatives.  When the bridge got to the groom's house, the groom's parens rained walnuts, figs, and coins down on the bridge, and they devoured their first sweets as man and wife (sort of like we eat cake?).  The next day (epaulia), the bridge received visitors in her new home, and everyone brougth a gift.  The same day, her dowry was given to the groom, often including money, furniture, clothing, precious objects, and slaves.  What was so striking to me about all of this was how little things have changed.  Sure, it would be really awkward if my dad showed up the day after my wedding and gave someone slaves (something I absolutely cannot imagine him doing), but the bedazzling, the feast, the unveiling, the carriage?  The order may have changed a little bit, but a lot of the elements are still there.

Anyway, back to the main point of the museum: the Acropolis.  At the end of the ramp is the first main floor, which houses sculptures from around the Acropolis.  I wasn't allowed to take pictures after this point, so I'll try to paint a picture.  The museum uses a very modern, open floor plan.  The walls are stark white or sheer plates of glass, letting in a lot of natural light and providing views of the Acropolis, theater of Dionysus, and surrounding city.  Statues are arranged around the floor, so you sort of squeeze your way between them as you explore the exhibit.  There are statues of young men (kouroi), Zeus, Hercules, and obviously a ton of Athena.  The descriptions of each peice are short, but the historical context provided at various points throughout the exhibit was invaluable.  Up two floors (the middle floor is a restaurant), the third floor is basically the Parthenon away from the Parthenon.  The entire floor is built to be a large rectangle the size and shape of the inner columns of the Parthenon, with a outer rectangle to represent the outermost columns.  Along these two rectangles are placed all of the carvings that would have sat atop the rows of columns.  Most of the metopes - rectangular slabs of marble depicting scenes of battle or other stories - have been preserved, and they were placed in order, showing that each side of the Parthenon had a different theme (i.e. the birth of Athena out of Zeus' head, or Greeks vs. Amazons - strangely the Amazons always seemed to be winning).  It was a really amazing way to experience the Parthenon.  We were slightly skeptical of some of their recreations, wondering how they could know so much about scenes that were defaced by the Christians, fragmented by the Venetians-attacking-Turks explosion, or which were simply missing.  It turns out that detailed drawings were made in 1674, just a few years before the Venetian Explosion Incident.  This and ancient texts describing the Pathenon have allowed them to piece things back together.

While all of this was impressive, I think that Josh's favorite part of the museum was what we stumbled upon on our way out:

Lego Acropolis!  It was made by a group in Australia, and it includes all of the different parts of the Acropolis, from the theaters to the Porch of the Caryatids.  It also melds ancient and modern characters, so you see Roman soldiers hanging out as well as Elton John performing in the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.  I'll admit, it was a pretty amazing reconstruction.  As one little kid pointed out, though, they didn't include enough stray cats.

Spotted: Money scanners.  A lot of businesses - from the grocery store to Falafellas - scan every bill that they are given before accepting it.  Perhaps counterfeit money is a big problem?

Spotted #2: According to the Acropolis Museum, in Greek statues, blonde hair indicated a god or goddess, while white skin represented grace and purity.  I guess I would have been a graceful goddess!

*From the internet: There are three plural forms of octopus: octopuses [ˈɒktəpəsɪz], octopi [ˈɒktəpaɪ], and octopodes [ˌɒkˈtəʊpədiːz]. Currently, octopuses is the most common form in the UK as well as the US; octopodes is rare, and octopi is often objectionable.