Missing the Birthplace of Democracy

Athens was largely an adventure filled with historic sites and buildings of incredible size and engineering. Our first tour was with a guide named Barbara. She knew how to provide us with an abundance of information as well as keep the sites interesting. We visited sites such as the Temple of Zeus and the Panathenaic Stadium. The seating in the stadium was incredibly strange; the people, on average, were shorter than us, but their stairs are much steeper than what is common now. The chairs for royalty and the wealthy were not as comfortable as the seating for the less fortunate. The Temple of Zeus was my first experience with the incredibly large buildings from the past. I expected them to be impressive, but I could not have prepared for the staggering height of the columns. They are astoundingly heavy, but they are also absurdly powerful because they held up a once great roof as well.

Our second tour guide in Athens was a woman named Nani. She was a nice woman, but she was not the most interesting tour guide. The information she provided was fascinating, but she had a habit of speaking for extensive periods of time. Her heart was in the right place, but she had us stop on the busiest set of stairs to the Acropolis. When asked if we could not stop here, she retorted with something along the lines of, “I guess you don’t want to see the birthplace of democracy,” and we kept moving. We felt bad because we knew she was passionate about her country, but she chose a poor place to attempt to educate us.