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Travels in Greece and Russia, with an Excursion to Crete
Travels in Greece and Russia with an Excursion to Crete Author:Bayard Taylor Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. ON THE ACEOPOLIS. Ocr first Athenian day was bright and fair, and what we saw during a walk to the temple of Jupiter Olympus was entirely suffi... more »cient to remove the chill impression of the previous night. There are few towns of its size in the world as lively as Athens. We saw almost the worst of it on entering from the Piroeus. All the northern portion, which is newer, is very substantially built, and has a comfortable air of growth and improvement. As half the population may be said to live out of doors, the principal streets are always thronged, and the gorgeous raiment of the dandy palikars brightens and adorns them amazingly. It is not the Orient, by a great deal; yet it is far removed from the soberness of Europe. Indeed, the people speak of Europe as a continent outside of Greece. Neither is Athens particularly Greek, with its French fashions and German architecture. It is simply gay, bizarre, fantastic—a salad in which many heterogeneous substances combine to form a palatable whole. I found one old friend—Frangois, the false Janissary, the intrepid guide, the armed confronter of robbers, and the enthusiastic spouter of Homer, whose mingled wit, activity, mtelligence, and ferocity, have been described at length by the Countess de Gaspariu, the Rev. Dr. Strauss, and your humble servant. The day after our arrival, his Albanian nose and formidable moustache entered my room, followed by himself and his voice of surprise and welcome. As a natural consequence, he was booked as the future companion of our Hellenic journeys, and we took up our quarters in his house: Through him, I at once procured from Pitta- kys, the Conservator of Antiquities, a ticket of admission to the Acropolis, and we devoted the next day to our first visit. Fortunately—as so much of on...« less