Athens - Arrival, Archeology Museum, Parthenon

"I think that one is our hotel." "Which one?" "That one, with the two prostitutes out front."

We arrived late at night in a somewhat seedy part of town. Our hotel seemed nice enough at first, but there was only one electrical outlet that we had to climb on the nightstand to reach. And the AC hummed incessantly. Eventually (at like 3am) we went down to reception to have it turned off. Ugh.

So it was a slow start in the morning, made slower by discussion of moving and laundry.

In the early afternoon we went to the Archeology Museum, which was great. They had wonderful statuaries ranging from the most ancient which looked very Egyptian, up through Roman. There was also a gallery with the very impressive finds from Mycenae, starting with the Mask of Agamemnon, which I'm sure you will all recognize, along with a wonderful collection of jewelry and gold leaf. Upstairs was a wonderful array of pottery, and at the back was a bronze collection including pieces of what seems to have once been a geared astronomical clock, a good 1500 years ahead of anything else similar.

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

We took so long at the museum that we found ourselves in a big rush to get to the acropolis, since we thought we wanted at least 3-4 hours there before closing time at 7pm. Well, it was a bit of a let down after Paestum. As promised, there were cranes and a lot of scaffolding, though less than there might have been. The Parthenon is in pretty bad shape. The Caryatid porch was smaller than it seemed in class, and they are doing work in the ceiling, so it wasn't that picturesque. The temple of Athena Nike was completely scaffolded-in. The entry gate, the one building up there you get to go into, however, was pretty amazing.

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

The day really made me think of my high school Humanities teacher, Mrs. Mortland. I'd like to tell her about visiting the wonderful places I learned about in her class. She asked us to keep in touch and gave us her email address right before graduation, but it was her address at the school and she has moved on to somewhere else. Even google doesn't know how to find her.

On the way down the hill we stopped to see a variety of minor ruins.

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

From Athens

We could see this temple in the distance. Should try to go over to it tomorrow.

From Athens

In the evening we walked through the districts of Plaka and Monastiraki, which are supposed to be some of the nicest in Athens. This strikes us as not a great sign for the city. They weren't that nice.

Plitvice Lakes National Park and Croatian Coast

Before today, we thought Watkin's Glen (New York) was the most beautiful place in the world. We were wrong. The most beautiful place in the world is actually Plitvice Lakes National Park in Croatia.

From Plitvice

Plitvice is a series of 16 lakes connected by a series of travertine waterfalls. (See side topic on travertine.) The park was well done too, with boardwalks over the fragile travertine getting us right up close to the action with minimal environmental impact. It all felt very wild and was very clean. The water was crystal clear and full of fish. We were a little disappointed that swimming wasn't allowed, and I'm sure anyone with a love of fishing was disappointed that wasn't allowed either, but with over a million visitors per year, keeping everyone on the boardwalks is surely what we have to thank for such a beautiful park. The other thing we have to thank for the pristine condition of the park is the recent war, during which the park saw few visitors.

Additionally, unlike so many other places we've been, it really looked like we could see our entry fee at work: there was a boat ride connecting the upper and lower sections of trail in a nice big (though slow moving) electric boats, buses connecting many points throughout the park so you could easily hike one way, and park rangers conducting tests of the water. The boardwalks were beautiful and in excellent condition, plus the routes were well chosen such that you could almost never see any other stretch of boardwalk or the tourists walking upon it, making the park seem like it had a lot fewer people in it than it really did. I don't think we saw a single piece of litter. Kudos to whoever is running this place.

Anyway, in order to beat the rush we started our hike just after opening time, 8:00 or 8:30, I think. Our hike started at the bottom of the series of lakes with a steep down hill into the gorge. On the opposite side of the gorge from the path was a tall waterfall that is not actually part of the series of lakes.

From Plitvice

Among the first things we noticed were all the many fish swimming in the brilliant water. Does this look like a healthy river or what?

From Plitvice

A bit further along was a series of caverns up the face of the gorge. There was a path, but we didn't take it since it went away from the waterfalls and we were racing the package tourists.

From Plitvice

Just beyond we came to a row boat sunk in one of the lakes. We stopped for breakfast within sight of it and in a little bit some men came and dumped the water out and set it floating on the lake.

From Plitvice

These incredible lakes and waterfalls just went on and on.

From Plitvice

And there were great blue dragonflies.

From Plitvice

Some of the lakes were very still and provided amazing reflections.

From Plitvice

Although there were many other people on the trail, often we seemed to have this magical place all to ourselves.

From Plitvice

"How did you find out about this place?" Mom and Dad wanted to know. They brought the Rick Steves guidebook, but didn't notice Plitvice with its small black and white photo.

From Plitvice

"I watched a bunch of Rick Steves PBS travel programs off NetFlix before we left," I replied. "I thought the Balkans seemed like a nice place to visit, but a week after watching the only specific place I remembered that I wanted to go was here."

From Plitvice

Josh had fun playing with his big camera.

From Plitvice

After hiking the suggested route up the 16 lakes we took the bus part way back and then walked along part of the ridge trail which provided an entirely different set of views. From here you can actually see how the lakes flow into each other.

From Plitvice

We had breakfast right along there.

From Plitvice

Would you take a look at that crowd? Sure glad we arrived early!

From Plitvice

Back at the beginning again we have the tall side waterfall in the upper right and the lowest of the waterfalls between lakes in the lower left.

From Plitvice

And here are a couple very happy travelers.

From Plitvice

After Plitvice, we moved on to the Croatian Coast. It was very pretty, although we were along a section of coast that no one goes to. We stopped at a little town and did some swimming from a pebbly beach. We also admired the fish and other sea life from the dock. This looks like a nice area for snorkeling, but we had neither the gear nor the time.

From Croatian Coast

From Croatian Coast

From Croatian Coast

We arrived at our hostel in Ljubljana (back in Slovenia) around midnight, after wandering around the pedestrian zone looking for parking. The town was still hopping, but we checked into our hostel and went right to sleep.

Florence - Uffizi, and Pisa - Leaning Tower

Dreading the extra-long queues, and unable to reserve tickets (sold out), we got up early, breakfasted, and queued up at the Uffizi twenty minutes before opening. There are only around thirty people in front of us. Given the page space devoted to the museum in our guidebook, we expected something the size of the Vatican, but it's quite a lot smaller (but still really nice). Notable paintings include The Birth of Venus, Primavera, Venus of Urbino. The famous Venus statue was indisposed when we were there. So it goes. We had a Rick Steves audio tour here too, which highlighted the important works and changing styles and methodologies employed in painting as the Renaissance got going. The Galleria exhibit was the work of Caravaggio.

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence

The museum took less time than we expected (only a couple hours, perhaps Lonely Planet's 4 hour estimate was assuming a long wait in line and the need to elbow past crowds?), so wandered around Florence poking into whichever churches we could find that were open to tourists (not many, as it was Sunday). They have a lot of really lovely churches in Florence.

Next we decided to head over to Pisa for the afternoon. Pisa is a cheap (5.70 Euro) and fast (1 hour) train ride from Florence, and the tower is around a mile from the train station, so we walked. On the way, we picked up some gelato (chocolate and hazelnut, yum). The tower is quite a bit shorter than Mary had remembered or Josh had imagined. And it leaned more than either of us had expected, even though Mary had seen it before! There's a very nice green space around the tower (which is part of the Duomo complex). Here, we relaxed and enjoyed the sun and shade and views before we headed home. The leaning tower looks just like the photos, except it's not until you see it in person that you discover that you never really believed that it leans that much.

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence

From Florence