Athens

Having managed my excursions alone thus far, I decided to tackle the Acropolis one more time. Took the metro right to its entrance, on the south side next to the new Acropolis museum, and slowly slowly made my way up. It was much more humid and still than it had been on Delos or even in Ephesus, but I managed, and was happy to see that edifices that were covered in scaffolding the last time I went were not, any longer. There has been a lot of work done on not only the hill itself, but the slopes on the south side. The Erichtheum and the Propylaea and even the little Nike temple are all blessedly free of scaffolding. The south side of the Parthenon itself is deconstructed in the middle but the north side, so disassembled when last I was there, is now splendidly whole again.

i spent a fair amount of time there, slowly made my way back down and over to the new museum, where I collapsed in a chair at the tiny cafe by the entrance, avoiding the crowds in the lobby. I realized that there had been a Sunday lunchtime in Bangkok, in 1998, that I had collapsed at a cafe, similarly drenched in sweat, on my first trip abroad in several years.

in any event the museum was a delight. Well explicated in the signage, with that marvelous view of the acropolis, and all the pieces of The Parthenon that they have arranged as if they were on the building itself. Lovely to see the old friends again! Of course there is a fair amount of play about Elgin having stolen the marbles. But given the amount of damage done by pollution to the pieces that stayed behind,  before they were moved to protected museums, I am not certain he didn’t do them a favor!