Saturday Athens to Istanbul

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Today was our last day in Athens. We had breakfast, and headed out into the beautiful...make that rainy, day. It was raining quite hard, so we went hopping from covered place to covered place, trying in vain to stay dry. We happened to hop past a meat and fish market, which we went into, because it was covered. First, we wandered through the meat market, full of skinned animals and their heads. I took this for a short while, then went into the fish market, which I actually found interesting, because it helps show you what is under the waves. The answer is, lots of assorted fish and octopi, squid, and crab.

Honestly, we just messed around, looking at random shops and places until lunch. For lunch, we ate at an outdoor restaurant (covered, by the way), where Dad ate some kind of meat based meal, and I ate a combination of salad, french fries, and flat bread. While we were there, we met an elderly man named Peter, who had sailed his small, 35 foot sailboat from Antigua in the Caribbean, to Greece. Alone. Wow, what a feat! We had a lovely conversation with Peter, and then left for a temple called the Temple of Hephaestus. It was centered in a beautiful park filled with olive trees. The Temple is pretty worn down, with nothing left inside, but it was still quite a sight to see. We wandered out of the park, and headed back to the hotel, where we checked out and stashed our stuff in a back room.

While we had but a few hours before we would got to the airport, we decided to squeeze in a couple more sites. We spent a few minutes getting a taxi, and headed over to the other side of the Acropolis, to see some more historical monuments. We hiked into the park, and the first thing was saw was the prison where Socrates was supposedly held. Then, we hiked up a big hill, and found the Monument of Filopappous. While not large, it was well ornamented, and a pretty sight perched high on the hill. From there, we hiked along some picturesque cliffs through some scrub vegetation, down the hill, and through a small forest before getting spit out on the other side of the park. We were on a kind of small, kind of obscure road. We spent a while trying to get a taxi (time was tight), then ventured into a neighborhood, where we got directions back to a mainstream area, and got a taxi to the hotel. After picking up our stuff, we got a ride to the metro station, where we rode to the airport. We boarded the plane and flew to Istanbul, a short flight. We checked into the hotel, and crashed, eager to meet up with the Great Danes the next morning, and to see Istanbul.

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