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.)