October 23, 2017:
But, ugh, the crowds of crowds.
The sites are crawling, people swarm, with more and more and more unloading from buses cluttering the parking lots. They're Austrians and Germans and Swiss, occasionally French, overwhelmingly Americans, particularly those rude and clueless evangelicals whose chariots bear the names of their Southern and Midwestern white people's congregations.
My previous experience of Olympia was Saturday, December 22, 1979. The museum was closed, and there was literally absolutely not one person present who wasn't either myself, my school friend Margie, or my school friend Annie. There wasn't even a guard. We had full run of the ruins, climbing into every corner we felt like exploring, eating lunch beneath shade trees on the slope of Mount Kronos which I remember as profoundly infested with mosquitoes. Today there's a fence.
It was the same everywhere. At Corinth we climbed right into the Pirene fountain to pose for pics holding our Blue Guides. At Mycenae we lay down inside the circular tombs, at Tiryns we took pics pretending to jump from walls. We were the only souls present. No guards, no tourists, no admission fee. Just us and our books and curiosity.
Since then the Greek government has turned the ancient sites into major tourist destinations. Not just for the evangelicals who swarm Corinth or the Areopagus like confused little bees. Or merely the obvious destinations such as Olympia with its latter-day associations. Even Mycenae was wall-to-wall bodies. The experience could not be more different.
For me the good news is that Phidias' workshop is wide open: no rope barriers or no-no signs. We spend a long time there, before checking out the obvious draws: the track, the Philippeion, the temple of Zeus, and the others. It's so us: the only two Americans present who give a fuck about art.
Phidias' cup is in the museum. It has his name on it. How extraordinary is that?