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Published: September 17th 2007
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By morning, Athens looked a little less modern. The Acropolis still stood in the distance from our room, and we were keen to get there after a quick breakie. The hotel manager suggested we WALK to the Acropolis, only 20 minutes away, but I think he must have been joking, The hill is HUGE, and it would have taken longer than 20 minutes just to reach the base…I didn’t even have to talk Iz into taking the Metro, and coughing our lungs up, we both made the two stops to the Acropolis.
The Theatre of Dionyssos sits at the bottom of the hill, and is mostly in tact, in terms of the seating, The size of the theatre, however, would have been much larger than it is today, and the Athenians would come here to watch dramatic performances, thousands of years ago - amazing!
From here, you stroll uphill, past more ruins, to the Acropolis. This is a series of temples that were built to worship the Gods. The Parthenon is the main temple, which is also the largest. The Greeks are currently reconstructing the temples to their former glory, using new and old materials - I don’t know
if I liked the look of the new marble sitting on top of the old?
Some of the other temples include The Temple of Athena Nike and the Erechtheion - which I didn’t even bother pronouncing! All the temples sit on top of the hill, 150 metres high, looking over the whole of Athens in every direction, including out to the Mediterranean Sea. The city is a lot bigger than I had expected it to be - I think about 8 million people live here (but that could be wrong).
In terms of Ruins, we both found Rome to be more impressive, but that could be because the Romans nicked a lot of the Athenians stuff (both in design, and LITERALLY). We did find the signage here far better than Rome though, thank goodness, because Greek REALLY is a whole other language (they don’t use many familiar letters).
We climbed the Hill of Aries after the Acropolis, which was slightly scary considering how slippery the rocks have become (due to wear). I almost went arse up on several occasions. On this hill, the men of Athens decided the fate of the city’s criminals, along with general chit-chat
I’m sure. From Aries, we walked down through a deserted parklands, into the Roman Agora, a city-like dwelling at the base of the Acropolis.
Agora was a busy precinct, where shopping and trading were carried out. There are tonnes of ruins everywhere, including homes, temples and drainage systems. Most of the area was falling to pieces, with marble and stone scattered everywhere. I am not sure if they plan to rebuild this area as they are the Acropolis.
We managed to somehow walk back into the area where our hotel was, and found the Athens Flea Market on the way. We didn’t stop for too long though, as we were quite grubby after walking around in the dirt (as I found out after trying on a pair of shoes - and seeing great big lines of dirt on my feet!) It was back to the hotel, before another stint of shopping.
Athens has, by far, the best shops I’ve seen on this trip, and I’m not joking. This is SHOE HEAVEN!! I have never seen so many shoe stores in my life - imagine five in a row, all side-by-side selling tonnes of shoes, from 5 -
50 Euro. I somehow managed to buy NONE, but did pick up two dresses for 10 Euro. It was time for a drink at the rooftop bar (two Pina Coladas thanks) then a quick snooze.
We made our way downstairs to do some more blogging (still behind) then went in search of a cheap feed - two lamb kebabs for 4 Euro - and they were delicious. I don’t even like kebabs, but obviously putting chips in makes a difference! It will be time to get fit again when we head home - both of us have definitely put on a bit of weight since we’ve been away (which is OK for Iz, but not for me!)
There is an earlier flight to Santorinin tomorrow, at 12:30pm which we are going to try and get on (fingers crossed) as ours doesn’t leave until 9:25pm. Athens has been fun, but it’s definitely time to head to the beach, and really relax.
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