After a more-than-hearty breakfast, and enough caffeinated coffee to float the Titanic, we gathered in the hotel lobby and were pointed toward our assigned buses. As I get ever-so-horribly bus sick (a fact I hid from my students for 30 years), I always opted to board right away to get a seat as close to the front as possible.
On this day we passed by the Parliament Building, and what is left of Zeus’s Temple, then Hadrian’s Arch, or Adrian’s Gate, by any other name. My guide book had referred to the structure the first way, but some locals (like the cabby who got confused about where I wanted to go until I called it by the alternate na
me) prefer the second term.
There is a stark contrast here, with The Plaka (the older part of the city, with sidewalk cafés and small, unique shops), the parks, and the hustling metropolitan city, much like any you would find in North America or Europe.
But underneath it all is a sense of history, of the birthplace of democracy, of the ancient mythology and majesty of a culture thousands of years old.
And on this particular sunny day, our prime objective, right smack dab in the middle of a modern city, was the grandfather of all ancient Greek structures—The Acropolis of Athens!
The citadel is located on a high rocky outcrop above the city, and contains the remains of several buildings of great architectural and historic significance, the most famous being the Parthenon!