Cape Town-Johannesburg-Nairobi-Zurich-Athens in 5 Days

Yesterday, I returned from a Business Trip (capitalization makes it sound important) to Athens for a conference that featured one of our site staff members as a closing speaker. I was supposed to help with logistics and generally making sure that everything went smoothly, so last Wednesday I left in the wee hours of the morning for Nairobi via Johannesburg, followed by a nine-hour layover in Jomo Kenyatta airport and then a red-eye flight to Zurich and then from there to Athens. I was in Athens for two days (just under 40 hours) and then repeated the trip, with a night in Nairobi instead of a red-eye, before heading back to South Africa to celebrate a few hours of my birthday.

The trip was incredible, if exhausting (and the cause of a nasty cold, which feels a bit incongruous back in the Cape Town summer weather), and I got to spend a little time wandering the city. Apart from the cold weather (I forgot what real winter is like), a short-lived stint of being lost, and one protest that complicated transportation plans, I really enjoyed it. I've been dying to go to Greece since I was little and was introduced to Greek mythology (thanks, Mrs. Munzig and Mrs. Peck!), so that was exciting. Our walk through central Athens started...

...in Plateia Syntagmatos (Constitution Square), where a lot of the riots have been going on. The Parliament Building (above) also houses...



...the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. From there, we headed past the National Gardens and saw...



...typical Athens grit, such as beautiful, abandoned buildings covered in graffiti...



...ruins unearthed while constructing a metro stop...



...and random statues and monuments nestled in between tram lines and traffic lights. Then we came across...



...the Temple of Olympian Zeus (just to peek through the fence)....



...and Hadrian's arch (you can see the Acropolis peeking through).

Then, we headed uphill towards the Acropolis, which closes, unfortunately, at 3pm, foiling my plans. So, instead, we went to the new Acropolis Museum and checked out the surviving pieces of the Acropolis (warning: art history nerding out will now occur). There were tons of painted vases, votive offerings, kore, and other works. It was exciting to see the half-renovated Caryatids from the Erechtheion (minus the one in the British Museum).

The best part was the top floor, which houses what Greece owns of the Parthenon in a mock-up of where the friezes, pediments, and other art history vocab I can't remember would have been placed. Included were plaster casts of those pieces that are still held in the British Museum (the Elgin Marbles, which I saw when I was a teenager), a pretty transparent continuation of the argument for their return to Athens.

The views from the top floor were breathtaking, stretching across the jammed, whitewashed city on one side and up to the Acropolis on the other. The museum did not allow photography, but the sun came out for the only time during my stay and I sneaked a quick snap.



As my traveling companion said, "These people were giants."



We ended our time by doing some shopping in the Plaka...



...grabbing a quick Greek coffee to stave off the cold near the Cathedral, which was scaffolded, unfortunately (below, a detail on a side building...a vestry? baptistry? no clue), and eating a delicious dinner of grilled cheese (actual cheese that was grilled, not the sandwich), oven-baked chickpeas, grilled chicken, and potatoes, along with an unidentifiable dessert.

We rushed back for the hotel shuttle from the Plateia Syntagmatos, only to find that it had been canceled due to protests in front of Parliament. We managed to find our way home with a very kind woman who was also staying in the hotel and flew out the next morning for Nairobi.