Stupendous Man

The first day
With nothing to do, we decided to walk through the city; like Mumbai, Athens starts early. By 7.00am it was already bustling with life; cafes were open, streets were being cleaned, people were already hurrying to their places. We decided to simply take a morning stroll across the Monastriki area in the morning and soak in Athens smell. Instead the roads we took led us to dumpsters, dogs and filth all around. For that fleeting few hours in morning, both of us were just disappointed, and were already re-thinking our entire decision to come to Greece. It was not a pretty sight, and our feeling was of that of despair.

However the view of Acropolis from anywhere on the street we lived in gave us hope that there was something good in the city after all. Coming back to hotel, we finally checked into Attalos hotel. Our room was on 4th floor, had a really small balcony with the view of Acropolis. We didnt care much for the balcony. Checking in, we again went off to sleep as we were dead tired at that point. We knew that trying to see Acropolis or do the Athens tour was out of the question for the day, hence we decided to book a half day tour to Cape Sounion, that would take us in a bus to the place and come back. It was a 40 Euro per person trip, and we used Hop In tours. This was the only tour that we had not booked in advanced before coming to Greece. The bus ride was supposed to start in afternoon around 3.00pm so it was pretty convenient. Anu and I got a good sleep by then.

Before venturing out, we decided to give the Greek food, Soulvaki a try. We decided to go to Thanassis, one of the most popular restaurants in the area we were in, known for its Soulvaki, Soulvaki is basically chicken or pork, with spices, cucumber-yogurt, onions and tomatoes rolled into a pita bread. It is one yummy wrap . Unfortunately there are two types of Soulvaki, and the restaurants are pretty darn smart about hiding the better one, which is incidentally also cheaper from tourists. If you go to the restaurant and have the soulvaki there, sitting in restaurant, you get a soulvaki platter, which is different from the wrap. You have the same stuff, but basically in form of platter instead of a wrap. What is the difference? Price. If you sit-in and eat the same stuff, you will be charged 9 to 10 euros per plate, versus if you do a take-out of the soulvaki and get it done fresh, you pay 1.70 euros for the same thing. Go figure this discrepancy!

Anways a good sumptuous lunch later, we boarded the bus to Cape Sounion; this was our first experience of such a guided tour. What we didnt know was that we were the first people on the bus; the bus made regular stops at pretty much all important hotels and picked up more customers. We spent an hour and half pretty much getting people. It did get pretty boring! Once everyone was picked up, our guide boarded the bus along with us. I was half expecting this to be a watch-on-TV guided tour, but there was a real human being going to be our guide. I was happy about it.

Over the next few days, every time we got out Athens and took a guided tour, we pretty much learnt by heart the things the guides were supposed to say while driving around. Which is basically this: Athens is a large city. Greece is 132000 sq Km area wise. The population of Greece is 11 million, out of which 5 and half million live in Athens. Yes, half the population of the country lives in Athens. Greece is also the only country in European union to still have compulsory 11 months military service for all men. 75% of Greece is mountainous. The 4 most important things for their economy is Shipping, Tourism, Agriculture and Industries, in that order. Nearly 20-25% of their economy is based on tourism. No wonder then that tourism is highly developed in Greece . There are 2 million cars on road in Athens, and roads are not that wide. So Government decided that on alternate days either odd numbered license plates or even numbered license plates could drive; Athenians were smarter and got two cars!

Anyways, with this bit of information relayed to us (and pretty much all times we took a guided tour), we were out of Athens city. Its kinda funny; the moment you step out of Athens, the mountains loom right there, and the traffic quickly subsides. On that day, were headed to Cape Sounion, to visit the temple of Poseidon, the God of Sea. We took the coastline route of Athens, which delayed us a bit as it was evening, and there was traffic. The coastline went through a lot of beaches around the area. Finally after boarding the bus at 2, we were there at Cape Sounion, a distance of less than 70 kms from Athens, at 5.00 PM. You can imagine our state, and though the guide was giving us interesting trivia (oh look the ocean, oh look that one!), we were bored.

One look at Cape Sounion and its location, and we felt fresh again! It was well worth the price of this long drive. Cape Sounion was the location atop a hill overlooking the Aegean sea. The Temple of Poseidon, the god of Seas was situated here. Pictures don’t necessarily convey how huge this temple was or its pillars were. Not to mention the fantastic location with the awesome views of the Sea.

A little bit of history about the place which serves as legends for two stories; The first one is regarding the temple itself. According to myth, Athenians built this temple to appease the God of Sea, Poseidon, who in rankings came only next to Zeus, the all powerful. The story goes that both Goddess of Athina and God of Sea wanted to become the main god of Athens. However Athnia had a symbol of Olive tree, which indicated peace and food, which was attractive to people. Hence, Athina became the goddess of Athens, while to keep Poseidon happy his temple was constructed at Cape Sounion. Like all other Greek Gods, you had to keep them happy if you wanted them on your side . Obviously Poseidon had all the magic powers to do whatever he wanted like – bring storms, tsunamis, basically anything to keep the enemy at bay in water.
The temple of Athina (or Athina Nike) is what is at Acropolis in Athens. Athina, Athens, you can get the drift of how Athens itself got its name. An interesting trivia here – Athens is plural, and not singular. Athens was made up of 13 different muncipalities which united to form Athens in plural form and not singular. BTW, the temple was build around 440 B.C.

The second legend belongs to how Aegean Sea itself got its name. Legend has it that King Aegeus sent his son to fight a monster. He had told his son that if he won against the monster, he should color his boat white and let him know of Victory. We all know how such stories go. The son did defeat the monster, however on his way back fell in love with a woman, and forgot coloring his ship white. King Aegeus was looking at the sea from Cape Sounion looking for the ship, and upon seeing the black ship, he despaired that his son had lost the battle. Depressed, he flung himself from Cape Sounion into the sea and died to commit suicide. (Cape Sounion is at a good 100-200 ft height from sea). Thus, the name Aegean sea was born. Aegean is a part of Mediterranean Sea. We can tell you first hand that this is one of the clearest seas possible. The sea is so clear that the visibility is almost 100-150 feet in water.

After staying there for nearly an hour and half, we drove back to our hotel. Disclaimer, much of my information above comes from two sources – our guide, & of course Wikipedia . The guides were knowledgeable and were good. In addition to the history, we were also given a lot information on how the pillars were constructed, the marble rocks they got from, the way the architecture was done. Of course, I had left the party behind after half an hour to do my photography; that was standard modus operandi. Anu would listen to everything that guide had to say, while I used the time to photograph without crowds, and later on Anu would fill me on it. We carried out this idea pretty much through Greece where we did guided tours.

Coming back to Athens to Attalos, we were dead tired and still jet lagged. We still made ourselves to the roof-top bar at hotel Attalos to have some ice-cream and soak in the views of the Acropolis that we were going to tackle the next day. It was going to be a very long next day

Continued to part 3….