{"id":12,"date":"2012-07-20T20:07:36","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T20:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=12"},"modified":"2012-08-02T09:45:49","modified_gmt":"2012-08-02T09:45:49","slug":"greece-day-1-athens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=12","title":{"rendered":"Greece &#8211; Day 1: Athens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The reason for our trip to Greece was a conference of Leigh&#8217;s in Thessaloniki: a joint meeting of the European Society for the Cognition of Music and the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.\u00a0 (What a mouthful!)\u00a0 We made a point of arriving early so we could spend some time in Athens.\u00a0 This turned out to be a really good idea.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-06.47.32.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-13\" title=\"2012-07-20 06.47.32\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-06.47.32-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is Syntagma square, home of the Greek Parliament building and guards with pom-poms on their feet.\u00a0 After dropping off our luggage at the hotel, we went on a self-guided walk around town, with the Acropolis as our ultimate goal.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-08.40.47-e1343852076658.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-14\" title=\"2012-07-20 08.40.47\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-08.40.47-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is the remains of the temple of Zeus.\u00a0 It&#8217;s hard to believe, but this was actually larger than the Parthenon when it was still standing.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of which:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-09.53.41.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-15\" title=\"2012-07-20 09.53.41\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-09.53.41-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How would you like this to be your front door?\u00a0 Coming from a country where &#8220;old&#8221; means a hundred years at best, it&#8217;s astonishing to climb stairs that have been around for 2,500 years.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.20.37.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-16\" title=\"2012-07-20 10.20.37\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.20.37-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.20.37-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.20.37-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.20.37-500x281.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>And there it is.\u00a0 The Parthenon is one of those things like the Grand Canyon.\u00a0 You see the pictures, and figure it can&#8217;t possibly be that impressive in person.\u00a0 And yet &#8211; they both are.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.27.59.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-17\" title=\"2012-07-20 10.27.59\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.27.59-169x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"169\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.27.59-169x300.jpg 169w, https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.27.59-577x1024.jpg 577w, https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-10.27.59.jpg 1840w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 169px) 100vw, 169px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>This is another temple on the same hill.\u00a0 I&#8217;m sort of proud of this picture.\u00a0 It really captures the &#8220;Lawrence of Arabia&#8221; level of really, really, hot that the weather was that day.\u00a0 It was about 100 degrees when we were there.\u00a0 Which is apparently 15 degrees cooler than it had been the week before.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-13.39.24.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-18\" title=\"2012-07-20 13.39.24\" src=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-13.39.24-1024x577.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-13.39.24-1024x577.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-13.39.24-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fnerk.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/2012-07-20-13.39.24-500x281.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 584px) 100vw, 584px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>After a long day of walking around Athens, we decided it would be a good idea to climb yet ANOTHER hill (climbing hills turns out to be a theme of this trip) to watch the sun set.<\/p>\n<p>And it was.<\/p>\n<p>Statistics:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Modes of Transportation used: Airplane, Subway, Funicular Railway<\/li>\n<li>Cumulative Total: 3<\/li>\n<li>Geocaches Found: 4<\/li>\n<li>Highest point: 277 meters<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The reason for our trip to Greece was a conference of Leigh&#8217;s in Thessaloniki: a joint meeting of the European Society for the Cognition of Music and the International Conference on Music Perception and Cognition.\u00a0 (What a mouthful!)\u00a0 We made &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=12\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greece"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/22"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}