Jack Adams

We had over thirty hours travelling, about thirty-three I believe. The first flight was fine, I think that most of us watched a film or played some games since it was only three hours. The stopover at Sydney was quite short, but then we had our fifteen-hour flight. Most people seemed to get a fair bit of sleep, I, however, don’t think I really slept at all for any long period. The food was very good, and we got two dinners, one from Auckland to Sydney and another on that flight.

Our three-hour transfer at Dubai was interesting. There were a lot of people and many shops, but I was expecting the terminal to be bigger. Then we took a train to another terminal, which was just as big as the last one to catch our flight, and I realised how massive the airport was.

The final flight to Athens was only going to be five hours, a relief after the previous flight. I finally managed to get an hour sleep then. Flying into Athens gave us a great view of how big the city was, how far it extended in each direction.

From the airport we bussed into Syntagma Square, which is roughly the centre of the city, and saw the guards, and their change, in front of the Parliament building. That was quite funny because of their great walk and all of the pompoms on their shoes and legs.

We went exploring around town before going to get some dinner from the local shops and saw some ruins that were excavated during the construction of a train station/tunnels. I found a great bakery for my dinner and we went through the flea market too.

We went into a few of the basilicas, which are dotted about in the city. One was the Kapnikareia, a Greek Orthodox church from the eleventh century A.D. What interested me apart from the great architecture, artwork and the fact that the front was covered up and there was scaffolding inside due to some sort of construction was that the level which it was on was significantly lower than that of were we were staying and the rest of the city, meaning that the average ground level has risen over almost a thousand years.

Finally, we walked, or raced, up Mount Lycavettos (I don’t think that that is correct). We got a great view of Athens at night. We could see the Acropolis and the 1896 Olympic stadium. Again we could see how far Athens extended.

We got a bit of history about the mountain from Waz, about how, when trying to increase the height of the Acropolis, Athena dropped the boulder she was carrying due to other pressing matters. There was also a bit of history from Mr Boyce and some info on Pericles, Socrates and Alexander the Great.

Today we had our day trip to Delphi. I had been looking forward to this, and hadn’t realised that we went on our first day of actual touring. We were up at six-thirty for a six-forty-five breakfast before the other guests. This start was not appreciated by all after the previous ten-thirty end to the night before, but we left on time at eight.

The bus ride was rather interesting, seeing more of the city and a fair deal of Greece’s landscape.

Once we got to Delphi, we headed straight for the ruins and got in for free, masters included, because we were a school tour or maybe from age I think. But before we reached the gate, some other student-looking Italians asked for a photo with a few of the seventh-formers, promptly followed by asking where we were from and finally whether we had any marijuana. So Joe Brealey was then designated the groups drug dealer after being hospital passed the role from Guy Hart.

We soon got to see everything, the Athenian treasury, the Stone of the Sibyl, the Omphalos (the navel of the world), the Temple of Apollo and both the theatre and stadium used for the Pythian games.

Getting to see the ruins of a site, which stood for nearly a thousand years and have now been ruined for another fifteen hundred was astonishing. My favourite would have been the stadium. Apparently it is around 175(.5) metres long, one Roman stadium (a measure of length) and can seat from 6500 to 7000. Unfortunately you can no longer go out onto the field to run a race or throw a Frisbee as it is now roped off for protection.

After having lunch, which we bought at the local supermarket, we headed into the museum where they have put every last little piece of art, which had been dug up during the excavations. There is a statue of a charioteer, which is exquisite. It is made of bronze and has very fine details. It still has its original eye lenses, which makes it very different from most of the other statues there. It is thought that the statue was buried during an earthquake, protecting it from the later pillaging of the site.

Finally we went on to the Castella spring and the Temple of Athena. The spring seemed rather small, but things have probably changed. The Temple of Athena had a Tholos, a circular structure, which was apparently considered an architectural masterpiece at the time because its construction required the use of the Golden ratio to make it work. Most, if not all, of us, I think, had a drink from the trickling fountain on the way back, which tasted surprisingly good.

We then headed home.

Tonight I think that we are doing another night tour, though I’m not sure where to.

The hotel we’re staying in is nice, if a bit small and there are several other school tours staying there, though none of them speak English, I think. Athens seems to be really crowded, compared to Auckland. The streets are quite narrow, probably not helped by the buildings all being five or more stories tall, all the people around who are on motorbikes or scooters and park sometimes park on the footpaths and there seem to be a lot of people, although being a Friday night probably didn’t help that either. There is also a lot of graffiti in the lower parts of the city. The bad part is that most of it isn’t even well done and art-like, it’s just black scrawl over most of the walls. There are also a lot of stray dogs, of which we have been warned to stay away from by Waz and the pigeons aren’t afraid of the people.