One Day in Athens

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A hot and sweaty arrival into Athens after standing with our packs on a crowded bus for the 1 1/2 ride into the city from the airport. However, we had a nice surprise at our hostel, Hotel Lozanni, with spacious rooms and extra friendly staff. We found a local giro place for dinner and enjoyed our free shots of Ouzo (a licorice-flavored Greek liquor) at the hostel bar. We had a little old woman who smelled like bananas and barely spoke a word of English in our room. She hoarded all kinds of things in her little bags, and later we learned that she was German--maybe the reason for keeping everything, including spoiled milk! Oh, the interesting people we have shared a room with 😊

Anyhow, up early to sight-see the next morning. We grabbed breakfast on the walk to the Acropolis. It is just amazing, all white and towering above the city. We hiked up past the Theatre of Dionysus, the oldest theatre in the world, then past hte Theatre of Herodes Atticus (the performance venue whenever there are performances "at the Acropolis" which has been redone, and up to the Parthenon. Some of it is under renovation and the scaffolding takes away from it a bit, but still, pretty amazing.

We ended up hiking up two other hills in the city to get some better views of the Acropolis, one of them has an old small Orthodox church at the top.

Later we tried to get back into the Acropolis around sunset and the lady told us no, only one entry per ticket...we were so gutted. Finally, seeing how disappointed we were, she let us in. Lucky she did because not only did we get some great photos with less tourists milling around, but we ended up seeing a ballet company warming up on the stage of the theatre and found out that the Swedish Ballet was performing a show that evening. I talked the ticket salesman into giving us student tickets, so we ended up going to the ballet, sitting in an ancient theatre under the stars. It was magical.

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Photos

Heidi hanging
We had just climbed Lykavittos Hill and we were both exhausted.

Standing at the top of the Acropolis
Just after sunset, this is the "entry" into the top of the Acropolis.

Theatre of Herodes Atticus
aka "Acopolis theatre" We walked by as they were rehearsing for a ballet. The Theatre is 2500 years old.

"Live at the Acropolis"
The ballet performance in the open air theatre