Greece

     On our first day in Greece we went up to the Acropolis. We walked up from our hotel, which was very near. It was the Acropolis Hill hotel, and the Acropolis was visible from the roof. We went up through the gate, between soaring marble pillars, and the Parthenon was in front of us.

     The most surprising thing about the Parthenon was how big it was. The tapered pillars make it look even taller from close up, because as they get thinner it looks like they are getting much farther away. I saw some of the friezes (the ones Lord Elgin didn't steal). After the Acropolis we went to the Acropolis Museum and saw a lot of statues and reliefs from the Parthenon.

Near the Parthenon was the Erectheon, with caryatids. The caryatids were my favorite part. I learned that fluted columns probably came from the fluting in the dresses of the caryatids. The ones on the temple turned out to be replicas, but I saw the originals in the museum. In the Acropolis museum we saw not only things from the Parthenon but statues from an earlier temple that had stood on the same site, and that the Persians destroyed.
      The evening after the Acropolis, we saw the Parthenon in the dark. It is lit up so it looks like it is glowing.

      After the Acropolis, my favorite place was Mycenae. It had a king, Agamemnon, but turned out to be a tiny hilltop fort. We saw the foundation of the palace, which was much smaller than I expected; Daddy and I went down the steps of the cistern, where water was stored; we saw the graves, and the houses; and we saw the lion gate. The stone over the gate, on which the lions are carved, is huge. It must have been hard to put up. The lions have no heads, because their heads were made of a blue and white stone and fastened on, and are gone now.

We also saw the tomb of King Agamemnon. It isn't really his tomb but it is fun to call it that. It is a beehive tomb, a stone dome sixty feet tall in the center. The gate was very big. That is me in it in the picture, on the left.

      Of all the museums we went to, my favorite was the Cycladic Museum. It was full of marble figurines from the Cyclades Islands. All of them looked pretty much the same except for size. The biggest was as tall as Bibi and the smallest was a few inches tall. Only the noses were carved; the eyes, mouth, and hair were painted.

With the Cycladic figurines we saw a statue of a person standing looking up, from 4000 B. C. - much older than the rest - and from the coast of Turkey. It was the oldest thing we saw in Greece.

      Athens is a very white city. We looked at it from our hotel roof, and all the houses are white with red roofs. The streets are lined with orange and olive trees, and feral cats. There are a lot of stray cats in Athens. There are also a lot of very good olives and feta cheese. We had baklava for dessert one night, which I think was Bibi's favorite part. I liked the feta cheese and the cats.