April 10, 2005
April 10 Photos: Peter
Kleisto – After we all woke up this morning, we hoped to take care of some of the shopping we needed to do since this was our free day. Unfortunately, we discovered that all of Athens is closed on Sunday mornings, except the Laundromat.
A bagful of clean clothes is enough to put a smile on my face. The whole group is happy to say that we’ll be looking – and smelling – a lot cleaner for the next week or so.
With almost everything still closed, I decided to take a walk around Plaka. The Acropolis towers impressively over the streets and 19th Century buildings.
Along a quiet back street, I found this house completely overgrown with purple flowers that looked like hydrangeas. For Greece’s largest city and a major cosmopolitan center, Athens definitely has a lot of quaint streets.
Here you see Roman Emperor Hadrian’s Arch, and through it is visible the Acropolis. Hadrian built this arch in part to distinguish the city named for him, Hadrianopolis. Hadrianopolis was a part of Athens that was re-founded in Hadrian’s honor, thereby bestowing upon him the same level of honor as Romulus, founder of Rome, and Alexander the Great, founder of multiple Alexandrias, most famously the one in the Nile delta.
As if by magic, around one this afternoon the Athenians emerged from their homes, the shops opened, and the streets were filled with the music of accordions and the mandolin-like Greek mpouzoukia.
Pame gia psonia! Everyone seemed to either be selling or buying something this afternoon, and the shopper could find pretty much anything . . . for a price. Many things proved very affordable – the huge Louis Vuitton knockoffs you see on the sidewalk especially – but other places attempted to sell plain leather shoes for 90 Euros! Even worse were the places that sold “American fashion” and asked half again as much as I would have paid in New York City. Definitely a learning experience!
For dramatic contrast, here’s a view of the abandoned archaeological site of Hadrian’s library on one side of the fence and a throng of shoppers in the little storefronts that face the site.
The crowded plateia of Monastiraki – lots of Athenians intermingle with tourists while others watch the commotion from the shade offered by kafenion umbrellas. Despite the shade, most still had their trademark Athenian sunglasses on.
A view of the plateia from the opposite direction. The 5th Century BC acropolis towers over a 15th Century Ottoman garrison to the left and a modern subway station to the right. The Athenians move seamlessly through spaces such as these, perhaps wondering why Americans such as myself find the 2500 year gap between the three buildings in this picture so surprising.
A balloon vender was only part of the entertainment available for children on a Sunday in Athens. Clowns, giant cartoon characters a la Disney World, and musicians were all surrounded by crowds of small children and parents with open pocketbooks.
Something a little closer to home – a band of Peruvian Indian musicians were playing in the plateia and drew a huge mixed crowd of Athenians and tourists.
A large part of the plateia was taken up with parked motorcycles today. Able to navigate both the regular streets and the pedestrian ones with ease and cut through some of the narrower streets, the motorcycle is a popular way to get around the city.
As I walked up Ermou, the most fashionable street of shops near Syntagma Square, I realized that the street was crowded but nothing was open. Thus, it seems window shopping is a popular Sunday activity in Athens. The boys with their backs to you to the right are sporting Athens’ most popular young men’s haircut – something that reminds a lot of us of a shorter version of a mullet which is then heavily gelled.
For twenty Euros, even I could look like an Athenian. Well, except for the blue eyes, pale skin, and the haircut. Even on a warm day like today, everyone was wearing jeans and jackets – it doesn’t bode well for the temperatures to come.
This last one is actually from yesterday – it was just too beautiful not to share. Inside the fence to Professor Rutter’s site at Kommos, there were a handful of these purple flowers growing on the sandy berm between the site and the sea.