Rick and I just got back from dinner and so I am going to try and get another post done. There is so much to see and I don't want to get too far behind.
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Pile of column tops
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Pile of column bases. Where do they all go? How many buildings were there here? The amount of unidentified blocks and building pieces is enormous.
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Acropolis cat. On the plane we met a retired vet, from Oakville, who was traveling for a year helping animal rescues. She had been in Crete had said that in one year they neutered 3,000 cats.
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Sometimes you are walking on gravel paths and sometimes on the bedrock that has been worn smooth by years of weather and foot traffic. It is so smooth it can be slippery and, I imagine, even worse if it is wet.
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When George and I were here in 1981, this building was covered in scaffolding.
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Some lovely intricate relief work but my favorite part of the whole Acropolis
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is the little temple at the side with the Caryatides.
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A caryatid ( or KAIR-ee-AT-id or KARR-ee-AT-id;[1] Ancient Greek: Καρυᾶτις, pl. Καρυάτιδες)[2] is a sculpted female figure serving as an architectural support taking the place of a column or a pillar supporting an entablature on her head. The Greek term karyatides literally means "maidens of Karyai", an ancient town on the Peloponnese.
The best-known and most-copied examples are those of the six figures of the Caryatid porch of the Erechtheion on the Acropolis at Athens. One of those original six figures, removed by Lord Elgin
in the early 19th century in an act which severely damaged the temple
and is widely considered to be vandalism and looting, is currently in
the British Museum
in London. The Greek government does not recognise the British Museum's
claims to own any part of the Acropolis temples and the return of the
stolen Caryatid to Athens along with the rest of the so-called Elgin Marbles is the subject of a major international campaign. The Acropolis Museum holds the other five figures, which are replaced onsite by replicas. from Wikipedia
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We had completed the circuit and Rick continued to wander
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while I sat for a while and wondered what it must have been like for the ancient Greeks to have climbed this hill and entered these temples to worship their various Gods.
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We headed back out
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feeling a bit reluctant to leave
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but knowing that there was still more we wanted to see today.
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We climbed up on to an nearby hill that gave us good views back to the Acropolis
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and down to the Agora
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which was where we were going after refueling with lunch.
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