If you want to see some of my pictures from Greece, visit this Flickr webpage:
I've put up about one third of the pictures I want to share and this week I'll put more on. I have to resize them first, so it takes a little while.
Since this was my fourth trip to Greece I was taking different pictures this time. Up until this trip, I was taking pictures of quaint scenes, but since we were staying near Athens and not going to any islands, the quaint scenes weren't available, so I took pictures of things that interested me. Sometimes you may wonder WHY I took the picture, but that's just my style. I like color, graffiti, odd pairings, irony. (My son will question what I mean by irony.)
I am glad we didn't get out to the islands because we experienced so much of Athens and the nearby area, that I realized there is much more to see on the mainland than I had realized. The mainland isn't as pretty as the islands and I will never want to have a trip to Greece where we can't visit at least one island, because the beauty and the quiet makes them the best places on earth. Michael's cousins say they are touristy, but the locals can't control the color of the water or the sky or the temperature and feel of the air or the smells of the olive trees and the beaches. Yes, the towns have lovely little tourist trap shops, but I still love them and the Bougainvillea is incredibly bright against the white-washed buildings which sit against the brilliant blue sky. It is breathtakingly beautiful and I ain't gonna give it up! The postcards don't lie--but most of them are taken on the islands. Athens is a different story.
We visited the National Museum of Archeology one day in Omonia, with Michael's cousin, Mary, who is my best friend in Greece. She is very cultured, speaks French, Italian, Spanish, perfect English, as well as her native language. She co-owns a pharmacy. More on that later. The museum was extraordinary, one of the best I have ever experienced--better than NYC Metropolitan, better than our own SAM, better than the tiny museum in Las Vegas's Bellagio, have never been to the Louve, so I can't say, or to any museum in London. But I'd make a bet on those as well. Of course, Greece has some of the most ancient artifacts and statues in the world, but they display them in a way that allows for a person to breathe on them--there are no ropes, except around the most fragile items--you are not supposed to touch, but you could if the watchers were looking the other way. And the watchers are not wearing uniforms, only name tags, so I didn't feel constantly watched like I have in other museums. No flash cameras, like in every museum, but cameras without flash are allowed and I took tons of pictures. The statues from 400 BC were the most fascinating to me--the veins on the arms and the feet, the perfect depiction of anatomy 18 centuries before Michaelangelo dissected dead bodies to see how the tendons and muscles lay beneath the skin. The perfect little limp penises--no fig leaves here! It was interesteing to see the change in sculpture when the Romans arrived. Up until then the faces on the statues were idealized, beautiful men and women, no flaws. The Romans did "portrait" sculpture and the heads showed real faces, jowly, broad, long nosed, bald. They still often used the idealized bodies to put these heads on, making some interesting and odd compositions.
Mary was thrilled that the Thera exhibit was open. Thera is more commonly known as Santorini, the island that is the rim of a volcano, and probably the most famous of the Cyclades islands and the most dramatic. Her father has a tiny house there that he used to live in and now rents out. We stayed there in 1994, during my first trip to Greece. We visited the archeological dig while there--I stood in one of the dig sites and declared, "Ema archeologo!", the only two words besides hello, please and thank you that I knew at the time. The Thera exhibit contained two walls that were intact from this ash buried site from 1500 BC. The colors were still as vivid as they had been when painted and depicted life in the village at the time--sophisticated and beautiful art. There were also household implements, jewelry, a huge olive jar and other artifacts that were found in the village that was abandoned before the volcano erupted. No bones were ever found there, so all the residents escaped. No one knows where they went.
Michael kept asking Mary, as we made our way through the rooms looking at the incredible statuary, what kinds of tools the sculptures used--he couldn't wrap his mind around what tools they used and how the tools might have been made. Mary explained that iron was available to them, as well as other metals. I hope one day we can find a museum that shows the tools. We saw many other practical items--a strainer, spoons, knives, forks, cups, bowls, cooking "pans", all the things that people in every century all over the world used in their daily lives. All of these things dated from many centures BC. The jewelry was incredible. One regret is that we didn't visit the gift shop because jewelry replications can be found there. Anyone who knows me, knows that jewelry is one of my favorite things!
We will go to this museum again. We missed the Cyclades art, ancient but modern looking. The famous Cyclades head was used as a symbol in the opening ceremonies of the Athen Olympic Games in 2004 and we have a replica on our fireplace mantel. And I want to visit the gift shop!
No comments:
Post a Comment