Toilets in Athens vs. Istanbul: an empirical analysis

We had one day, basically, to see Athens before we are picked up tomorrow morning by Private Greece Tours for our 5 day trek around Nafplio, Delphi and Kalambaka. That meant we had to cover the Acropolis and the Acropolis Museum and all the guidebooks indicated we needed hours for these two sites. I was a bit nervous about trying to make this work out, especially as I spent the entire night awake, listening to an Athenian windstorm.

People who write guidebooks just don’t have any idea what they’re talking about, though. The Acropolis is an impressive and awe-inspiring site that we can stroll through in 45 minutes, and even part of that was spent talking about touring Israel with a couple from Connecticut. Likewise, the Acropolis Museum, while ostensibly about the Acropolis, has an entire floor devoted to statues of various sorts and ages, which wowed Ron, but I’d rather look at oil paintings…and that’s really saying something for me, who tried to pass up the Mona Lisa…so the Acropolis Museum enabled me to sit on a stool and make future plans.

We were able to find time to tour the Jewish Museum of Greece, which covers the entire journey of Jews in Greece, but which has an unbelievable display on World War II in Greece. Please don’t hate me when I tell you that we spent more time there than at the Acropolis. 85% of all Jewish people in Greece were killed in the war, many of them in Auschwitz. The museum has a collection of things prisoners made out of their meager possessions – see below for a coat and hat made out of the blankets they were given and socks, knitted for children out of other items. In the top right corner, the white thing is a sheet issued at Auschwitz, which was just so odd to see, having been at Auschwitz last year to see the horrific housing area, with people stacked 9 deep on a surface the dimensions of a queen bed. Why issue a sheet at all?

I became aware, at the Jewish Museum, of an issue that seems to be plaguing me here in Athens and I’m hopeful that when we hit the Peloponnese Peninsula tomorrow, the situation will be resolved. But, for now, twice in one day, I have gotten myself stuck in an Athenian toilet. This is a marked contrast to my other Mediterranean country experience (Turkey) where I could enter and exit the toilets freely, but could not seem to flush them without overflowing them. In Greece, I have mastered the flushing but cannot seem to operate the locks. Here is the toilet at the Acropolis Museum that I had trouble with. It’s possible I spent longer in the toilet there than I did looking at the ancient statuary.

We had so much time leftover that we toured the Plaka, which is a mostly-pedestrianized area near the Acropolis. Ron stopped at quite a few windows and made comments about Greek art to ship back and, once again, he does not seem to be kidding. We stopped briefly for this (note Acropolis behind the Starbucks):

I’ll report again in a day or two. Nafplio is supposed to be beautiful. We’re utilizing it as a base to tour some ancient sites but I’m mostly interested in strolling around. Athens is better than I remember. Dilapidated in a way like Sicily, but more laid back. Here’s a couple of closing shots: