Welcome to the weekend!
You worked hard and now you deserve some much needed rest an relaxation. Luckily we have some great things for you today to celebrate the end of the work week. Today’s installment of Dollars & Sense take place in Athens, Greece. Check it out below
Visit The Acropolis and the Parthenon
You can’t come to Athens and not visit the sacred rock. The world’s most famous acropolis (which means “edge of the city”) stands 230 feet high, with a 484,000-square-foot flat plateau; atop it is the Parthenon, designed by Pericles in the fifth century B.C. A lot has happened to the Parthenon in the past 2,500 years: the occupying Turks used it to store gunpowder and it exploded, Lord Elgin hacked off 500 feet of its frieze and shipped it to England, and acid rain and air pollution took their toll. But the temple has nevertheless survived, an impressive architectural specimen juxtaposed against the vast megalopolis at its feet. Don’t miss the flag post behind the Parthenon, the site of an excellent view but also a tragic history; when the Evzone guarding the flag was told to remove it to make way for the swastika during the German occupation, he did so, then wrapped himself in it and leapt from the rock to his death.
Come early in the morning, before it gets too hot, don’t bring a large bag (you’ll have to check it), and keep your ticket, which also allows you entry to the Temple of the Winds, the Temple of Zeus, and the Ancient Agora.
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Visit The New Acropolis Museum
Athens’s New Acropolis Museum opened in 2009 with at least two missions: to display Acropolis artifacts in a modern setting and to regain the missing Parthenon Marbles, removed from the ancient building in the early 1800s by Lord Elgin and sold to the British Museum in England shortly after. The British Museum long argued that Athens didn’t have a venue fit for them. That’s no longer the case, with this state-of-the-art, three-story glass structure at the foot of the Acropolis floating on stilts above the ruins of a sixth-century Athenian neighborhood. The museum holds more than 4,000 artifacts, including five of the six original caryatids returned by Britain, but its crown glory is the Parthenon Gallery, overlooking the temple itself and housing the Parthenon frieze, with temporary replicas filling in the still-missing metopes. The British Museum has yet to agree to return the metopes and the sixth caryatid—an ongoing controversy.
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Financial Tip Of The Day
Consolidate And Pay Off Debt ASAP
If you carry any debt, focus on consolidating it to a lower interest and paying it off as soon as possible. Money paid in interest is money thrown away! Why spend your hard-earned cash to make the financial institutions rich?
