Exercise Minotaur - A Journal (Part 1)

General Comments

After a traumatising experience on the East Coast of America 10 years ago, I'd sworn off conducted tours and was thus somewhat apprehensive about this one. In the end, it turned out well. Travelling with other people inevitably involves making compromises - the level of compromise depends on who you travel with.

The group I travelled with was small - 13, so they didn't even send a redundant Singapore guide, and all of them were English-understanding, even if they didn't speak it all the time. We had but one Chinese meal, though that was probably due to there being no Chinese restaurants outside Athens, and many meals were not paid for, so often we got to choose what we wanted to eat. We had sufficient time, mostly, to explore the various archaeological sites, though we were rushed through the museums; but then it was a Classical Tour, after all (though I do wonder why people went on it if they didn't know much about Greek history and mythology). There was even time given on 2 separate days to explore Athens by ourselves! The hotels weren't very good (except for Europa Hotel in Olympia), but I'm not very fussy about that, so.

My sister says that you shouldn't go on a tour with any agency located in Chinatown. I suppose that's as good a rule of thumb as any other.


Greek food is nice, and my father has rescinded his previous opinion of it being "dog food", but I can't imagine eating it 24/7. As always, Singapore is a gastronomical paradise.

There were many *huge* dogs in Greece, and most of them were placid and friendly (sleepy, rather). I didn't see as many cats, though, but those I did see were very fat.

Even though images taken by my camera look over-exposed on the LCD screen, in reality they aren't. As a result, the shots I deliberately under-exposed (quite a lot) look quite dark. !@#$%^&*() It's all Hwa's fault *mutter*

A lot of cars in Greece looked like Thera had just erupted over them. Greece may not be very rich, but surely it doesn't cost too much to wash your car weekly?

Mt Athos is a theocracy and women are banned? Wth?!

Day 1 - May 1st - Singapore-Dubia-Larnaca-Athens

The flights to and from Greece were on Emirates, on which I was flying for the first time. Somehow, I always seem to get flights on Islamic airlines - besides the all-time favourite Ma-laysia Airlines, I've also travelled on Gulfair and Royal Brunei Airlines. They've all been fine, since the crews are recruited internationally, except that they don't serve pork, and there're the bothersome announcements in a non-English language which no one listens to anyway. Oh, and Royal Brunei keeps prefacing each flight with "The Trouble Prayer", making travelling with them a most dangerous experience.

For Economy class seats on Emirates flights, the controller for the personal entertainment system is stowed under the screen in the head of the seat in front of you. This is much more sensible than other airlines' locating them in the handrest of the seat. The in-flight entertainment is similar to what's available on other airlines, but Emirates has an interesting gimmick - cameras in the front and on the bottom of the aircraft, giving you something to look at when you tire of overly-censored movies.

Emirates also has funky special lifejackets for babies in cots, which can be seen in the safety vids.

The air hostesses are very naughty. When the plane gets off the ground, they take off their already-skimpy headgear, and put on blue aprons. Tut tut.


Observations aside, the only complaint I had about the Singapore-Dubai flight was the elbow room - or lack thereof. The flight was packed so fully that there seemed to be no empty seats - or at least none in my vicinity, and my seat was in between 2 others, giving me no breathing space.

The guy to my right set the radio to Bollywood music - at the highest volume setting, no less - and promptly fell asleep. On my left, my father had fallen asleep, and I didn't wish to wake him. Both of them had put their arms on the armrests - leaving me without a free armrest to put mine.

After a while, I got arm cramps, despite constantly adjusting my position from sitting down normally, to folding my arms on the head of my seat to stretching my arms onto the seat in front of me, to placing my arms on the seat in front of me and leaning forward. A headache accompanied the cramps, exacerbated, no doubt, by my prior ailments; cunningly cranking down the Bollywood music to a minimum volume by nudging the guy's touch-screen didn't help, for it remained audible. I was so agitated that I couldn't sleep on the flight at all.


A notice in the hotel we lodged in in Athens (Olympic Palace Hotel) informed us that the National Archaeological Museum (with the Mask of Agamemnon!!!) was closed till further notice. Many other museums throughout Greece were either closed till the Olympics for renovations or had only part of their collections on show (for the same reason). Oh well. That's what I get for not doing my research and for going before the Olympics. And museum closures is the reason it's good to have visited a museum with loot plundered from all over the world (the Louvre, British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art etc)

I called home on arriving in the hotel room: the obligatory "we're safe and sound" call, but couldn't get through. A call to my brother in law's handphone revealed that he was using the line to talk to my sister. He then proceeded to tell my sister that I'd called, and repeated to her what I'd told him, despite my protestations; in disgust at his blatant wastage of money on IDD charges (for we do not all enjoy corporate subsidies on mobile phone bills), I hung up on him.

After a suitable interval spent resting, my father and I went to walk around Plaka - the touristy district of Athens. The Library of Hadrian was closed, but I got a good view from outside the grills. I was looking for a good vantage point from which to take pictures for a PhotoStitch of the Acropolis, but there was none in the crowded squares of Plaka. What I found, instead, was a group of people dressed in what tortillas would recognise as vaguely American Indian-ish outfits, performing awful music and hawking a music CD called "American Inka".

Dinner that night was at a Chinese restaurant - our sole Chinese meal in Greece. It wasn't bad, actually - the classique egg-drop/seaweed soup, sweet and sour fish, curried chicken, fried eggplant, something else I can't remember, fried noodles, white rice. Yes: for some reason we were given both white rice and fried noodles. The fried noodles were... unique. Instead of the normal Chinese fried noodles, what we got was spaghetti fried with onions and some black sauce - cheap to make but eminently tasty.

Day 2 - May 2nd - Athens

The second day opened with a visit to the Acropolis - among other things, we saw the Propylaea, the Odeum of Herodes Atticus, the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. What frustrated me to no end was that they'd totally dismantled The Temple of Athena Nike in 2002 for restoration work, so we didn't get to see it. I was looking for the rock which Poseidon struck when he and Athena were vying to become the patron God of Athens, but didn't find it (apparently it's in the Erechtheion, but the public wasn't allowed to wander in, so).

The Acropolis museum was open, thank god, but I was shocked to discover that the Caryatids supporting the porch of the Erechtheion are actually plaster casts, and not the originals! Gasp. Horror. Shock. Anyhow I'd always wondered how they could leave the Caryatids in the open, what with the pollution eroding them. Putting them in the museum behind a glass pane sounds like as good a way as any and leaving behind plaster casts, especially since one had been carted away by Lord Elgin already.

After we left the Acropolis, I took a detour to mount the Areopagus - the hill where St Paul is said to have preached to the Athenians. Right now, the Areopagus is a small patch of treacherously slippery and uneven white marble, so I assume that there was an error in translation or miscommunication, kind of like what happened to Schliemann with Nestor's drinking cup.

After the Acropolis, we were taken to see the Olympic Flame where it resided in the Panathenian stadium, then to Syntagma Square where we witnessed the changing of the guard. We were then unleashed upon the City of Athens.

My father didn't have any place he wanted to go, having kindly gone on the trip mostly just to accompany me, so I set the agenda. The Temple of Olympian Zeus was nearby, so I trekked there. Interestingly, it was free to enter (as were all the other sites we visited on that day) as it was National Monument Day, or something like that. Only 16 of the original 104 Corinthian columns survive (and one is in pieces, lying on its side) but nonetheless it is impressive, in the Roman tradition of grandeur, though somehow typically souless (though that is probably due to the survival only of the columns). I then went looking for Hadrian's Arch, but found it with difficulty - for it was covered from head to toe in scaffolding.

After that, we walked to the Roman Agora, which contained the Tower of the Winds (Horologion of Andronicos) and a few ruins. The Ancient Agora, which we walked to later, was much more extensive and impressive, with such structures as the Hephaisteion (the only roofed temple remaining in Greece, so I was told) and the Byzantine Church of the Holy Apostles (restored). Naturally, the Ancient Agora's museum was under renovation for the Olympics, but at least some sculptures were left outside. While at the Ancient Agora, I was bored, so I went exploring - and ended up exhausting myself climbing to the foot of the Areopagus, while my father rested on a bench in the shade.

The last stop of the day was Kerameikos Cemetery - the official cemetery of Athens till late Roman times. I couldn't find the museum, probably as it - along with a part of the site - was cordoned off and closed, but at least I got to walk the Sacred Way of the cemetery. After that, we were done with walking the streets for a day, and trying to make our way to Monastiraki station, somehow ended up to the north, at Omonia station, and took a train back to Syntagma Square, whence we returned to the hotel. We were both tired, so I bought dinner back - a turkey ham sandwich from Everest, a sandwich shop, and a Greek Chicken Pita meal from McDonalds, which was delectable. Unlike my normal practice, though, I didn't have a McFlurry, nor did I have one in Greece.

The Athens Metro

At a flat 0.70 Euros per trip, the Metro was cheap, especially compared with prices in Greece in general. It was new, and the subway cars remind me of those in New York.

The archaeological findings from the construction works were displayed in some Metro stations. Nothing to write home about - the best bits were probably carted off to museums, but the drab amphorae and clay pipes added a nice touch to the otherwise drab stations.


Places I would like to return to Greece to visit one day:

Marathon, Plataea, Delos, Corinth, Chaeronea/Chaironeia (the stone lion!), Mount Olympus (if only to eat ambrosia, drink nectar and thus become immortal), Thessalonica, Knossus, Rhodes, Sparta, Thera

This ranks, of couse, in my priority list, at about the same level as ironing my own clothes and cleaning out my room thoroughly.

Coming at some point in the future - Part 2...