Athens Thursday Day 3

Mask of Agamemnon
Zeus (or Poseidon )
Boy on Horse
Bronze recovered from shipwreck

Athens-Thursday, Day 3

Today was a relatively light day: two museums and a couple of walks. Even I think I may have done too much yesterday; I was really tired and actually slept until 8:30 this morning. 

I visited the National Archaeological Museum in the morning which, as I expected, was outstanding. Unfortunately, the vase collection (about ten galleries) was closed; I was disappointed as I had prepared by visiting the Met's collection a couple of times. The sculpture collection (about twenty galleries) was fantastic. It includes more than a few bronzes (rare in NY) and marble statues from the Archaic through Roman periods. (I skipped the Cycladic period as I don't really know anything about it.) There were many original 6th-4th Century (BC of course) classical period originals but, as in NY, there were many Roman copies of Greek originals. The bronze Poseidon (or Zeus, as scholars are still arguing) is fantastic as is  the boy jockey on horse. 

At the entrance of the museum one finds Schliemann's Mycenaean Treasure including the so-called Mask of Agamemnon. If Schliemann had never heard of Troy, he would be renowned  for this discovery. 

I also visited the Benaki Museum which, like the Frick and the Isabella Gardener, is a private collection made available to the public. It has a small but beautiful Classical collection and a much larger Byzantine one that rivals  or exceeds the Byzantine Musuem collection that I saw earlier in the week.   

In the course of my museum visits, I did one of my favorite things: I mastered the Athens metro. It is quiet and clean and, unlike almost everything else in the city, is free of graffiti. 

Dinner tonight in a taverna recommended by the hotel. Back to NY tomorrow. There is much more to see in Greece and I hope to do it some day. This week, every day was hotter than the day before but still mostly tolerable. October, I think, would be the kindest month. 

Athens Day 2

Not necessarily in order.
Temple of Zeus
Temple of Hephaestus
My guide, Kelly Bourni
Ron and Parthenon
View of Acropolis from my terrace at sunset

Athens-Wednesday 2nd day

I am going to describe today beginning at the end. I a  sitting on my very large terrace looking out at the rock of the Acropolis. The view, while not as dramatic, reminds me of the view from my room in  Giza looking out at the pyramid. I have just returned from dinner at a modern Greek restaurant recommend by the hotel. I think it was the best $30 dollar meal I have ever had. Greece is perfect for vegetarians (or pretend vegetarians). I had a Greek salad; vegetarian ravioli; vegetarian mushroom risotto and a half carafe of ouzo  all for 25 Euro including tip. Another reason to recommend this wonderful hotel. 

This morning I set out on foot to the Byzantine Museum but made a detour to the Temple of Zeus that was begun in the 6th Century BC but not really completed until the 1st Century AD. It is on the plain below the Acropolis and was finished by Hadrian, clearly to compete with and complement the Parthenon. Not much of it is left but the standing columns show that it was built on a grander scale than its famous model. The columns are much higher and there is a triple colonnade on the north and south sides instead of the usual double. A few hundred meters before the Temple is an arch dedicated by the people of Athens to Hadrian for building the Temple. 

I then walked to the Byzantine and Christian Musuem about a mile or so away, passing through the National Garden and walking by the Presidential Palace and Parliament, (No demonstrations today.) The Museum was empty except for a single school group of ten year olds. I guess I did not get my fill of Byzantine art in Istanbul. The collection here is mostly late icons and artifacts from the 14th century on. Nevertheless, there were many beautiful items here and it was, for me, a very worthwhile visit. 

I then walked through Syntagma Square (the main square of Athens) and through several winding ancient streets to meet my guide, Kelly (short for Angelica) Bourni, a friend of our neighbor Peter Embericos. Kelly accompanied me through the Agora and the various sites below the Acropolis, most importantly the beautiful Temple of Hephaestus, before taking the uphill climb to the top of the Acropolis. We went in the afternoon when there is practically no crowd; it was hot but not scalding. I won't describe the Parthenon or other structures on top of the Acropolis but I will say that it remains a very inspiring place. On the way down, we stopped at the Theater of Dionysius and then I headed back to the hotel. 

The Parthenon confirmed my opinion that the New Acropolis Museum is one of the finest in the world. It is built slightly off angle so as to be completely parallel to the Parthenon. I have been converted to those who believe the British should return the Elgin  Marbles. As I said yesterday, maybe a Labor Government in the next 100 years will do so.  

I did more walking today than I can remember doing in some long while.I am tired but happy.

Athens-Tuesday

I arrived in Athens at 9:30 after a 2 hr+ flight from TLV. Ava Hotel is very similar to the Senato in Rome and is terrific. I have a beautiful suite with a very large terrace that has a view of the Acropolis (not the Parthenon side but still...). The room has a kitchen and has an excellent wireless connection. I know the Grande Bretagne is the place to be in Athens but this can't be beat. 

I was quite tired so after a short walk to get oriented in the neighborhood and a a quick lunch (Greek salad and Greek crepe), I did the most touristy thing possible: the open air double-decker bus ride. That gave me a chance to sit down and see the city for an hour and a half. The only demonstration that I saw was near some government building and it was rather small. The Times travel section this past Sunday said things are improving so that must be so. 

I then went to the new Acropolis Musuem. This has to be one of the greatest "new" museums in the world. The building is beautiful and the presentations are first rate. A prime purpose of the Museum is to pressure the British to return the Elgin Marbles. The pediments, friezes, and metopes are presented as they would appear on the Parthenon but most of the metopes and pediment sculptures are plaster casts of the British Museum's originals. The Greeks have invested tens of millions of Euros to provide a home for the Elgin Marbles; maybe in another century. Some of the metopes have actually been returned from German museums --more pressure on the UK. 

The sculptures are in galleries that have floor to ceiling glass windows that look out on the Acropolis (including the Parthenon!). Just fantastic. I only spent 21/2 hours there so I will probably return.

One extremely interesting thing is the restoration of the sculptures from the "original" Parthenon that was destroyed by the Persians around 480BCE. That too was a beautiful structure. Because the Athenians saw the destroyed statuary as holy, they buried all the broken pieces in pits on the site. The pits were discovered in the late 19th century (2,500 years later) and put together. I sort of remember seeing them in the old Acropolis museum but the presentation here rivals the "new" Parthenon. 

My plan tomorrow is to go to the Acropolis itself, the ancient Agora, the theaters on the slopes of the Acropolis all with a guide. 

Jerusalem

No blog necessary... but Inbal (Laromme) continues to treat us very well.  

I arrived to the hotel at around 2 am on Friday and by 10 Adele and I were at the Israel Musuem to see the Herod Exhibit, which was great. Ehud Netzer finally found the actual tomb after twenty years of looking in the wrong place. Sadly, on the day he was organizing the museum exhibit, he fell at the Herodium site and died. 

Herod was a megalomaniac and he destroyed all the palaces and the theater on the bottom of the Herodium hill so that he could have a smooth mountain on which to place the tomb. The tomb was visible from miles around, had a conical crown (like the so-called Tomb of Absalom in Jerusalem), and had a round colonnade on a square pedestal. So it was square, topped by circle, topped by cone, with the whole thing being about 150 feet high. The tomb itself (the round part) was excavated and brought to the museum. The sarcophagus itself is quite plain and doesn't come close to the magnificent "Alexander the Great" Sarcophagus  in Istanbul. No photos allowed!

Yonatan's wedding was non-stop celebration: dinner for 100 Friday night; Kiddush lunch at the Khan Theater and the wedding in the nature preserve that presents all the  biblical plants. The wedding was romantic with bride and groom reading "love letters" to each other under the Chupah and Yonatan singing to Chana. 

Mom and I had Shabbat lunch after the kiddush at Julie and Yaakov Schorr's home and Julie invited Fred and Paula who live across the street. (They are not related at all.) 

Paula was just recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a very big deal. 

Fred has become Chairman of the Board of Haifa University. 

On Sunday, Ben Zion Hochstein gave us a tour of Shaare Zedek Hospital, of which he is chairman. I finally saw more of it than the eye clinic (Miriam!) 

I took the tram (light rail) for its entire length from Har Herzl to some distant Jewish neighborhood on the other side of some Arab villages. It took about 45 minutes and I saw parts of the City I had never seen before. I recommend it as a tourist attraction. 

I left Israel this morning (Tuesday) on a 7 am flight, so I left the Inbal at 4 am. What fun!

Istanbul– fourth day

The Alexander sarcophagus
The mosaic from the Byzantine palace
2 Views from the terrace where I had lunch today.

Out of sequence

The Abydos posting popped up from my Egypt trip and is obviously out of sequence. Please ignore. 

Istanbul- Fourth Day

Last day in Istanbul and leaving to Israel this afternoon. 

I spent the morning in the great Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Unfortunately, the floor containing the Israel-Syria-Palestine material was closed for renovation so I didn't see the Siloam inscription from the Gihon Spring tunnel, the Gezer calendar or the inscription from the Temple. .

I did see the Alexander sarcophagus which is magnificent but was not used by Alexander the Great. It was built for and used by the Governor of Sidon appointed by Alexander and has reliefs of Alexander's adventures. I also saw the Treaty of Kadesh between Egypt and the Hittite Empire. There is a very large Troy collection but it consists of leftovers from Schlieman's Berlin collection. 

Afterwards I went to the Mosaic Museum which has the gigantic mosaic floor (mostly in fragments, except for one enormous section) from the Byzantine Palace. Breathtaking in size and beauty. The Byzantine Palace is gone without a trace except for this floor. One can only imagine...

Off to Israel

Istanbul Third Day

Today was my second and last day with Vedat, my Turkish guide. Vedat has been charming company. My day began with a visit to Haigha Sofia which was the highlight of  my Istanbul visit. I won't bore you, dear reader, with details which you can look up. Suffice it to say that the building is 1,000 years older than St Peter's in Rome but nearly matches it in size and grandeur. Even after seeing it, I still can't understand how the dome stays up in that enormous space. The Pantheon in Rome is still my favorite building but this is almost a tie. The quality of mosaics that remain varies from exceptional from the 9th century to pedestrian in the 12th. 

The early part of the afternoon was devoted to Topkapi Palace which interests me less than the Byzantine remains. Beautiful rooms, beautiful tiles, beautiful gardens, beautiful everything. But give me a good Byzantine ruin any day. I spent a short while (seemed longer) in the Grand Bazaar and then returned to the Hippodrome to look at the obelisk again; it made me homesick for Karnak from whence it came.

Tomorrow to the archaeological museum and more walking around before my evening flight to Tel Aviv. 

Proof of Life

As in Egypt, I had one photo of myself taken to prove that I have actually been to Istanbul and not just read books. ( From balcony of Haigha Sofia.)

Istanbul Day 2

Bosporus from Galata Bridge
Underground Funicular
Pedestrian Street

Istanbul, Day 2

Istanbul, Tuesday, May 21

Today was the first of two days that I am being accompanied by a guide. The guide, Vedat, was recommended to me by Karen Levy. Although I am most interested in the Byzantine and early Ottoman period in Istanbul, I spent a good part of the day on other periods. 

I started the day at Dolmabahace Palace built in the second half of the Nineteenth Century. It has the feel of a Western European palace but overdone as if the Sultan had an inferiority complex. I have been to Buckingham Palace during the summer opening hours. This Istanbul palace is built on a larger scale but it is sort of like having the White House decorated in Boro Park style. Only bigger chandeliers. I keep remembering that there is a Turkish-Hungarian connection. 

From the Palace we took a ninety minute Bosporus cruise. Circle Line, Turkish style.

Knowing that I was tired and wanted to end the day somewhat early, we skipped lunch and had a really good afternoon. We went to St. Savior in Chora ("Chora" meaning country so this is like St. Martin in the Fields.) It was even better than I remembered. Fantastic mosaics  and frescoes from the early 14th Century inside a church that is much older. The mosaics may be the high point of Byzantine art and one can see the beginnings of perspective and their direct influence on early Renaissance Italian paintings. The mosaics primarily portray the life of Mary and the miracles of Jesus. No passion scenes but a fantastic portrait of Jesus reminiscent of the dome of the Baptistry in Florence. 

I made a short visit to the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to view the Byzantine icons. The chapel is quite small and puts into perspective the loss of empire to Islam. 

I had a chance to see the Byzantine walls dating from the 4th and 5th centuries that protected the city until the conquest in 1453 when the Ottoman boats were hauled overland to attack the city from the Golden Horn side. I also saw the standing parts of the Valens aqueduct which is a stacked double arch affair.

Finally, I visited Sulemaniye Mosque, the architect Sinan's masterpiece from the 16th Century. Beautiful and beautifully proportioned inside and out.

After a short rest, I went out on my own and did my favorite activity: exploring a city on foot and public transport. I walked across the Galata Bridge which crosses the Golden Horn, took the underground funicular  to the top of the hill. (Said to be second oldest subway in the world; second to Budapest of course.)   I then walked the pedestrian street in the modern part of the city. My impression of Istanbul is quite different than from my earlier visit. I saw no poverty, people are well dressed and from the sheer numbers out on the streets in the early evening, I think they are content and in a good way. I doubt if they still envy the Greek entry into the Euro. 

No lunch or dinner today--just an ice cream and a cheese sandwich. Tomorrow- Haigha Sofia and Topkapi and a good meal, I hope.

Istanbul

Basilica Cistern
Medusa head as column base.
Obelisk
Haghia Sofia

W B Yeats

Sailing to Byzantium
That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees
– Those dying generations – at their song,
The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God’s holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing‐masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Istanbul

Welcome back, dear readers. RoninEgypt is now RoninTurkey (but the blog address remains the same).

Sunday was a new experience for me: I was literally the last person to check in on my Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul. I arrived at JFK I thought two hours before my flight and found not a soul at the TA check-in desk. I had received an email at 2PM advising me that the 6:50 scheduled departure was delayed by an hour and that was also what the TA web site showed. Apparently this was some sort of rogue email and the departure was proceeding as originally scheduled. A TA ground person had to accompany me to the head of the TSA security line so that I could get to the gate. You all know how much time I usually leave for a flight (see Lisa's hilarious email of a few months ago) so this was like an out-of body experience for me.

The flight actually boarded on time but the plane sat on the ground for two hours. The pilot made several announcements but TA seems to have borrowed the public address system used in NY subway stations; all I could understand was the word "India."  One more thing about the flight: TA's "comfort class" (premium economy) was very good. Not today's business class with flat beds but very much like business class was 10 years ago: lots of leg room, a foot rest, and a comfortable angle of recline. Business class $6,400; comfort class $2,400. I felt virtuous and exonerated. Service was actually very good.

I found my hotel through TripAdvisor which I now swear by after our Senato experience in Rome.

The Hotel (Sultania) is very much like Senato in terms of size, cleanliness and comfort. Of course, it doesn't come close to matching the beauty of the building and there is no terrace over the Pantheon square (nor is there a fresco on the ceiling). My room is spacious with a couch and Ottoman furnishings. The hotel is in Sultanhamet, the oldest part of the City (where I wanted to be). Narrow crowded streets much like our area of Rome all lead to an ancient main thoroughfare which is restricted to pedestrians and the tram (no cars). 

The hotel is a ten minute walk to Haghia Sofia (now known as Ayasofya) which is the 6th Century Byzantine Church of Holy Wisdom, later converted to a Mosque and now a museum. My main interest this trip is to see as much as I can of Byzantine Constantinople. As usual, I have prepared a bit for the trip and think I have the historical perspective necessary to actually appreciate what little is left of pre-Ottoman Constantinople. Haghia Sofia is closed on Monday so my report will have to wait,

I visited the Basilica Cistern, a 6th Century underground reservoir that was fed by the City's two aqueduct systems. The Cistern is a cavernous vault held up by more than 300 columns (mostly Corinthian, some Doric and a couple of idiosyncratic ones including two that have Medusa heads as their base). The cistern is "romantically" lit and the hundreds of columns reminded me of the Terra Cotta Warriors in Xian--forgotten for centuries and suddenly they are here standing 1500 years later (much more in the case of the warriors). 

A ten minute walk from the Cistern brings one to what is left of the Byzantine Hippodrome. All that stands are two obelisks and part of an ancient serpentine column. One obelisk from 1500 BC was brought to Constantinople by Constantine in the 6th Century. It is in perfect shape and the hieroglyphs are beautifully clear. This is in sad contrast to "my" Obelisk in Central Park or to London's. It is red sandstone and more beautiful that the ones in Rome. the serpentine column is from the 5th Century BC (1,000 years before Constantine) and is thought to have come from Delphi. An awful lot of awful things happened in the Hippodrome (besides chariot races) including two horrendous massacres, one by a Byzantine Emperor, the other by a Sultan.  But now the Hippodrome is a peaceful park just outside the Blue Mosque. 

The Mosque takes its name from the many Iznik tiles with which the interior is faced. It was built in the early 17th century to rival Haghia Sofia and, it indeed has a beautiful dome. The Mosque's dome sits on four mammoth columns and doesn't "fly" gracefully on arches as does its more ancient rival. 

Each day since about ten days ago, I re-read William Butler Yeats' "Sailing to Byzantium."  I was never one for poetry, but I think this poem encouraged me to come to Istanbul. It famously begins, "That is no country for old men." I have been trying to really understand his meaning and the structure of the poem. In the end, I know Adele will explain it all to me. Meanwhile it speaks to me. 

Stay Tuned

There may be more