Athens: The Acropolis, an Empty Stadium and the Evzones

We never wrote this day up at the time. Twelve years on we went back through the photographs, and there turned out to be sixty-seven of them from Athens alone — enough to put the whole day back together, hour by hour. So here it is, late.

The Silhouette was alongside at Piraeus not long after six, and we were down the gangway and standing on the concrete by a quarter past nine. Sensible people had booked a tour. We had not.

The bow of Celebrity Silhouette towering over the quay at Piraeus, the ship's name in black on the white hull

What we did instead was take a taxi, negotiated at the pier for the day, and it turned out to be the best decision of the cruise. The first thing our driver did was pull over at a viewpoint above one of the Piraeus marinas so we could look back over the masts and the long palm-lined seafront. The parapet had been sprayed, in enormous red capitals, with the name of the local football club and the number of its most famous stand.

Chris and Jen on a terrace above a Piraeus marina, red Greek graffiti reading Olympiacos Gate 7 along the parapet — Above the marina at Piraeus. The graffiti reads “Olympiacos – Gate 7”.

Seventeen minutes later we were at the Acropolis. Chris photographed the back of the taxi before we got out, which is the sort of thing you do when there are forty identical yellow Mercedes in the rank and you would quite like to find yours again in four hours.

A yellow Athens taxi photographed from behind at the Acropolis rank, more taxis and two tour coaches beyond — Ours. Photographed on purpose.

Up the rock

The walk up is shaded and lovely and quite steep, over enormous irregular flagstones laid between the olives and the pines. Jen found an agave roughly the size of a small car.

Jen beside an enormous agave on the flagstone path up to the Acropolis, olives and pines overhead

Then you come out of the trees and it is simply there. The Parthenon is a building everybody has seen ten thousand times and it still does not prepare you for the scale of the columns, or for how honey-coloured the marble is close up. There is scaffolding and a crane at one end, permanently, and we found we didn’t mind it at all — it is rather cheering to see a two-and-a-half-thousand-year-old building still being looked after.

The long north colonnade of the Parthenon against a blue and white sky, restoration scaffolding at one end

A word on the crowds, since nobody ever tells you: at half past eleven in July the top of the rock is heaving. Coach groups, guides with numbered paddles held above their heads, a slow-moving river of people along the path. It is worth it. But if you can be up there at eight in the morning instead, be up there at eight in the morning.

Visitors packed along the path across the Acropolis rock, the white sprawl of Athens and hazy hills beyond — Athens going on forever behind, and everybody in it apparently up here with us.

Somewhere between the taxi and the top, the hats came out. We had both been bare-headed at the marina an hour and a half earlier. There is no shade at all up on the rock, and by midday the marble throws the heat straight back up at you.

Chris and Jen in white sun hats in front of the Parthenon columns

Our favourite thing up there was not the Parthenon. It was the Erechtheion, off to the north side, which is a stranger and more delicate building altogether — and its Porch of the Maidens, where six draped women stand in for columns and hold the roof up on their heads without appearing to notice.

The Erechtheion seen from the west, its tall Ionic colonnade and the caryatid porch at the left

The Porch of the Caryatids, five draped figures carrying the roof above the ancient wall — The Caryatids. These are copies — the originals are in the museum at the bottom of the hill, and one of them is in London.

You leave the way you came in, down through the Propylaea, which is a gateway on the scale of a cathedral and does a very good job of making everyone walking through it look small.

A monumental doorway through the Propylaea, visitors coming down the marble steps and more queueing beyond

Down the hill, and a stadium to ourselves

From the bottom of the Acropolis you can walk to almost everything else, and after the crush on the rock the rest of the day was startlingly empty. The Temple of Olympian Zeus sits in a huge dusty enclosure with fifteen enormous Corinthian columns still standing and a sixteenth lying where a storm dropped it in 1852, its drums scattered along the ground like vertebrae. Hadrian’s Arch stands at the corner of the site, on the pavement, with the traffic going past it.

The Acropolis rock with the Parthenon on top, and Hadrian's Arch standing at the lower right — The rock from below, with Hadrian’s Arch in the corner.

And then the Panathenaic Stadium, which is the strangest and best twenty minutes of the day. It is built entirely of white marble, it seats fifty thousand, it hosted the first modern Olympics in 1896 — and at half past twelve on a Saturday in July we walked in and had the entire thing to ourselves. Nobody. Just the two of us standing in the middle of it feeling faintly ridiculous.

Chris and Jen alone in the middle of the marble horseshoe of the Panathenaic Stadium — Fifty thousand seats. Two people.

The Evzones

We walked up to Syntagma without any real plan and arrived a few minutes after the hour, which is exactly when the guard changes at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier below the Parliament building.

Three Evzones marching in file across the marble at Syntagma in red fezzes, pleated kilts and pom-pom shoes

The uniform is red fez with a long black tassel, pleated white kilt, white stockings and shoes with enormous black pom-poms on the toes, and it would look comic if the men wearing it were not so completely serious. The walk is a slow, deliberate, impossibly high kick, held at the top, then set down hard. Two of them do it in unison and the marble rings.

Two Evzones mid high-kick on the steps below the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

Afterwards you are allowed to stand alongside the guard at his box for a photograph. He does not move, he does not blink, and he certainly does not smile. Jen managed both a photograph and a straight face, which is more than can be said for the rest of us.

Jen standing beside an Evzone at his sentry box, the guard rigidly at attention

Lunch, and back down to the ship

Our driver took us back down towards the coast and we ate by the water: a great dish of mussels, a plate of small fried things, two lots of tzatziki because we could not agree to share one, lemon, and a glass of cold white wine. Blue chairs, white cloth, light coming off the sea so hard it washed the photograph out. Twenty euros or so, and better than anything we ate that week.

A table of mussels, small fried seafood, two plates of tzatziki, lemon and a glass of white wine

Back at the ship by half past two, which felt early until we worked out we had been off her for five and a half hours and walked most of central Athens in the heat of the day. The Silhouette sailed at six for Mykonos.

Jen small in front of the Silhouette's bow on the quay at Piraeus

What we’d tell you

Piraeus to the Acropolis is about twenty minutes. A taxi for the day, agreed at the pier, gave us more of Athens than any coach would have.
Do the Acropolis first and everything else afterwards. The rock is packed by eleven; the Olympieion, the arch and the stadium are all but empty at lunchtime.
Hats. There is no shade on the rock at all.
The changing of the guard at Syntagma is on the hour, every hour. You do not need a ticket and you do not need to be early — just be there.
The Panathenaic Stadium costs almost nothing and hardly anyone bothers. Bother.

Tomorrow, Mykonos.