A little shop of horrors

The Museum was wonderful-quiet and great for a good think-but eventually we had to leave to get some lunch. My parents said that Monastiraki had some pretty good restaurants, so we walked over there, crossing the Acropolis once more to get there. (From the Herodian hotel, you just walk half a loop round the top side of it, past the Philopappus Monument, and reach the area the Segway guide called ‘posh Athens’.) As we walked past the many souvenir shops I just couldn’t help but buy one of the many alabaster statues of Athena, which now sits pretty comfortably on my bedroom window along with the golden eagle. The souvenir shop, as well as selling many items of clothing and other normal tourist things, also sold a Peabody gun and some things I would rather not name…all I’ll say is they’re not intended for me…

Savas

The restaurant we finally agreed on going to for lunch (or rather, dinner, since the sun was already setting-it was the 20^th of December after all) was a massive three-storey place called Savas, which had a beautiful view of the Acropolis and the surrounding area, had lovely decorations and water sprouts everywhere as well as being completely full up. After about fifteen minutes waiting we got a seat on the ground floor next to some rocky decorations, however this area was a smoking-allowed room, annoyingly enough. Unfortunately the next table would be available only goodness-knew-when, so we had to face a sauna-like atmosphere with a horrible smell for the hour and a half we were there.

I get a gyro and we all share the souvlaki assortment as always, as well as a Greek salad on the side. As much as the food was delicious in literally every aspect (as well as sight), being quite reasonable in terms of its prices and we were given quite generous helpings, I couldn’t help but notice how strained the service was as we waited for our meal. The food didn’t take a year to arrive, but it wasn’t exactly fast service. The waiters and waitresses themselves were rushing about like headless chickens trying to clean all the tables and take the orders and serve the food and serve the drinks and get orders cleared up and hand over the bills and countless other ridiculous things that showed to me that this place really needed some more staff members-they obviously were rich enough, since the restaurant was at least three floors with a rooftop bar and dining area, lift, open kitchen and not to say a beautiful view of the Acropolis and all the surrounding tourist attractions.

The souvlaki assortment. Sorry for out of focus lens.

We had some sides as well, including a regular salad, some weird curly-potato dish (bottom left) and the bacon-covered chips. They were actually pretty nice.

The Acropolis at night

After we had eaten our fill and finally got out of the smoke room we sauntered round Monastiraki, going into a couple of shops and walking through the flea market. By now it was practically pitch black and only the dim lights illuminated the streets-and the many neon signs on the sideways-as we tried to see the Acropolis from where we were in the dark, as well as plenty other ruins which probably looked much more interesting in the daylight, and many cats. Obviously.

Eventually we got back to the Herodian hotel and quickly settled down to bed-as tomorrow, we were getting up early to go on a one day cruise to three different islands situated right next to the coast of Athens!

One of the oldest Archaic Sphinxes, found in Spata in Africa.

Cleverly enough, I did not take a picture of the information below, but perhaps it’s a depiction of the minotaur?

A female body which once was part of the acroterion for a temple.

This is a statue of a siren; a winged woman with legs and a tail of a bird that would have been placed by the side of a tomb to lament the dead person inside. She did have her hands holding her head; however, they have been knocked off.

News and Announcements

Once again, sorry that this new instalment came out so late. I’m just going to give up making up false excuses.

Now, I hope you’ve seen our new logo on the website. This simple design also comes with a far more detailed version which will also go on the t-shirt for Minecon 2015 which I’m going to with my brother Lews. Big shoutout to Sophia Ground for designing them for me! She’s my graphics designer, thank you so much for your time and effort!

Want to see something new that we haven’t done before? Comment below on what it is you want and I’ll see if someone on our team can do it!

-MW

References

1.      Artemision Bronze-Wikipedia

2.      Jockey of Artemision-Wikipedia

Aphrodite, the goddess of love