Inside the Parthenon is a magnificent art gallery. Beautiful paintings, photos from Arizona, and more. Maybe 100 items or more, and they are all very nice. Taking photos of the art pieces is STRICTLY prohibited. They tell us this, and also there are signs everywhere. But does that stop me from taking photos? Of course not! I leave the art gallery, and go into a hallway where there are no people, and take the cover off of my camera. Also, I remove the lens cap, and turn on my camera, and turn off the flash. Then, I go back into the art gallery, and stand by Marina. I look all around for surveillance camera's, which are covering every possible standing place inside. So, I grab Marina, or Laura, or sometimes both, and make them stand beside me, so that the security camera can see only them, and not me, because I am in between them. Then, I surreptitiously take the photo - the camera is hanging from the cord around my neck, and I just reach down and snap a photo. I have the flash turned off. I do this again and again, maybe 12 or 15 times. Cool!, I think.
But, when I get back home and look at the photos, they are all awful. All you can see is the reflection of the lights on the pictures, you can't see any good paintings at all. Oh well, I tried! I know how to take a good photo of paintings, but I have to use my flash, and stand exactly in a certain spot so you don't get reflections. Here, you just cannot do that. All I got were pictures of reflected spotlights. :-(
When you go inside the Parthenon, there are some photos that tell about it's history. It is a full-sized replica of the Parthenon in Greece, and it is very interesting to see all of the other buildings and exhibits that were at the Worlds Fair there in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, over 100 years ago. If you go to Nashville, you should go here.
10 or 15 years ago, they started to build an enormous statue inside the Parthenon. It has just recently been finished, and it is a gigantic thing. It's really stunning to see it inside the Parthenon. Maybe it is the largest indoor statue in the world, or maybe it is the largest indoor statue in the Americas, I am not sure. Anyway, it's the largest indoor statue somewhere :-)
Here is Marina and me near the bottom of the statue. The statue is named "Athena".
-----
Here, Marina mocks Athena, using an umbrella and her jacket.
-----
As we walk around the statue, we are amazed, it is so huge.
She holds a decorated shield in one hand.
On the center of her shield, there is a face with a funny expression,
and the face has it's tongue sticking out.
So I mock it.
The face on the shield is really funny, with the tongue sticking out.
Can you imagine anything more silly than this face on the shield?
-----
There are gigantic bronze doors in the Parthenon, perhaps the largest
doors in the entire world
-- once again, I don't remember all the details, but for sure, they
are the largest bronze doors Somewhere :-).
They have Lions on them.
-----
The doors are 40 feet high, or maybe 50 feet, who knows? They weigh TONS. But, you can move them with one hand. It's not easy, but you can do it. As we tried this, we found that it is hard to start the doors moving, but it is really hard to STOP THEM!!! Once you get them going, you REALLY HAVE TO SHOVE THEM TO MAKE THEM STOP!!!!
Anyway, this was fun, we really enjoyed the trip here. Also, I tried to move the doors by pushing them with only one finger. Yes, it worked. Yes, they moved so, so, so slow, but they did move with me pushing them with only one finger.
Later that night, it snowed - and snowed -- and snowed. As we were driving back to Laura's home, we could barely see the road. We tried to just look for the painted lines on the road, and we could barely see them, it was snowing so much. The next day, when we drove home, there was snow everywhere, it was so beautiful, we really enjoyed the drive back to Knoxville.
That's all for now - come back for more later :-)
Steve and Marina Capps