Athens in a Day

The bed I found so great compared to a coach seat on Delta wasn't as great as I remembered. The highlight of the night was Kelly coming out of the bathroom with the lights off thinking her reflection in the full length mirror was an intruder and screamed. In the dead of the night that had my heart racing for a while.

Luckily we have internal clocks that wake us up early (we don't use alarm clocks at home) and we relied on those to get us out of the hotel room by 11am. Yikes, felt like the whole day was wasted.

We started by going back through Syntagma Square. On the other side of the Metro entrance is the Greek Parliament where the Tomb of the Unknown (Greek) Soldier is protected around the clock. Once an hour during the day is a change of the guard which we witnessed from across the street (no pictures).

Continuing on our first stop was the Temple of Olympian Zeus where we bought an Acropolis ticket for €12 each that gives us entrance to the Acropolis and all the places we went this day. The temple was destroyed in the 3rd century AD and despite the scavenging parts remain intact, enough to get an idea of what it might have looked like. Just outside towards the Acropolis was the Arch of Hadrian which we had seen yesterday.

The weather was perfect but a bit warm for long pants so we changed before continuing on. I had some pain in my ankle where I figured out how to limp such that it didn't bother me. Was a little worried that day 2 of my 19 day trip I'm falling apart. Fortunately a few hours later it was gone never to really bother me again. Back to Syntagma we caught a tourist train and rode around until we arrived just above Monastiraki Square so we used a ticket to enter the Library of Hadrian ruins. There's not really a lot of information here except pictures on how the building looked before they were ruins. An interesting thing here is the tortoises living among the ruins here. Close by is the Roman Forum with the Tower of the Winds that knocked off one more of our tickets.

We walked through the "flea market" next to Monastiraki Square to the Ancient Athens Agora. Want to mention the street vendors here that walk around selling junk...they all sell the same things that aren't even touristy. At night it was LED flashlights to pirated copies of DVD's. Some guys sit on the ground with a 1' x 1' board where they throw this ball the same size and shape of a tomato on the board to make it splat and it retains it's original shape when they pick it up. As soon as you walk by one - it's so crowded you pass within foot or two of many of them - they throw it on the board and look up at you as if to say "I splat....you buy". It was 'cute' the first time you see them do it, the 100th you barely even notice them.

We entered the Agora from the North - the Main Entrance - off of Adrianou street and walked up the Panathenaic Way that leads to the Acropolis. In ancient times the Agora was the place to be...shops, places to meet, etc. The Stoa of Attalos was rebuilt back in the 1950s by the American School of Classical Studies. With the exception of the Temple of Hephaistos most of the building were simply ruins but nice to wander around with a view of the Acropolis.

We walked up the path to Mars Hill (Areopagus) along with it's great views of the Agora to the north and Acropolis to the west. Mars hill is mentioned in the book of Acts where Paul preached.

Just beyond Mars Hill we walked to the Acropolis. Just off to the south is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, built in 161 AD to seat 5000 for musical performances. It's been restored (not the wooden roof though) well enough for performances today. To get to the Acropolis we passed through the Propylaea which is under scaffolding for repair work. We continued the Panathenaic Way to walk around the Parthenon and Erechtheion with great views around Athens. The port city of Piraeus was easily visible on this clear day.

It was close to closing by the time we left and we were both getting hungry so we walked around the Agora to the west to Thissio. All the cafe's by now were setting up their extended outdoor dinner seating but nothing seemed crowded on this Friday night. We grabbed a table with the best view of the Acropolis we could find to get a bite to eat.

Saturday was simple, light shopping and an easy metro ride to Piraeus. We met some other travelers also looking for our boat trying to catch the bus to get us there. My mistake was getting off the bus prematurely when an older man thought we had finally arrived at the right spot when we had not. I figure we walked close to a 1/2 to 1 mile to get to the boat where we eventually boarded and left for the Varna, Bulgaria.

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Link to Kodak Gallery Photos.

Video Athens from Mars Hill (YouTube). Click the HD button once video loads for 720 HD. Most of the sound is the wind blowing.

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Part of trip: Mediterranean and Black Sea

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