"While my ancestors were building this (vague gesture), your ancestors were going "Ugh...fire!" While my ancestors were calculating the circumference of the Earth within 500 miles, your ancestors were going "Ugh...fire!"
(pause)
...of course, um, we haven't really...progressed...much since then."
~Smirky
(this quote would have been only slightly more perfect if, at that moment, a chunk of the Parthenon had broken off and fallen...)
The Acropolis is impressive. And heavily touristed. And seriously under construction. The latter two factors, regrettably, slightly overshadow the first, making the whole hill a smidge less impressive than it probably should be. It is, after all, incredibly old (almost 2,500 years). And, ok, if we hadn't had to push past a thousand touring Italian teenagers and duck under a lot of scaffolding, it probably would have had a much more dramatic effect. It's huge, after all. And it is remarkable to think that this thing actually withstood its first 17 centuries in really good condition...and that it took a bomb-drop to effect major damage.
Still, I felt like a bit of a heel. I stood there in the presence of Ancient History itself...and a lot of cool VeryOldThings(tm) and...stared out over the hill thinking "Wow...Athens is the most densely packed city I've ever seen."
...I think I might suck at monument-appreciation.
1 comment:
Oh, Basso and his big-martini-addled blog commenting. The thing I remember most about the acropolis was the weird combination of very hot and very windy, and the dangerous combination of very windy and incredibly slippery, not to mention uneven. That marble is crazy, dude.
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