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Published: June 26th 2017
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Geo: 37.9833, 23.7333
This morning we awoke & took a peek out of the balcony where we were greeted by beautiful blue sky. Therefore we quickly hopped out of bed, had some breakfast before running out the door to enjoy the heat. We took a walk and stumbled across the Lysicrates monument. We followed this on until we came to an area called Pandrossou - which had lots of tempting shops, although Simon was close to losing Nicky to the temptation they persevered.
The first port of call this morning was Hadrian's Library - this was an interesting site in which you could see the partial remains of the library which had a church built within it. We then hot-footed it across to the Roman Agora which would of been the Roman's civic centre. This site although hard to imagine would of been the hive of activity in those days. At that point we deserved a pit-stop to admire the warmth of the sun so we had a coffee and watched the world go by.
After this refreshment break, little did we know that temptation was once again lurking around the corner when we had to walk down Adrianou Street which was a tourist haven with lots of shops and cafes. Once we have made it through this testing time, we made it to the Ancient Agora. The agora was the heart of Ancient Athens and contained everything in their daily lives. The first thing we saw was the Stoa of Attalos - which was an ancient shopping arcade within a covered walkway. This was especially attractive as the American Rockfeller had funded this to be restored to its original state therefore you could literally see this in its full magnitude & beauty.
We then admired the pretty Church of the Holy Apostles which was built in the 10th century to commemorate the teaching of St Paul in the Agora. We then scaled a small hill to behold the temple of Hephaestus - this is the best preserved temple in the whole of Greece. Although you can not enter the temple you can walk round and admire the outstanding structure which still looks today how it would have in Ancient Athens.
We then wandered onto The Keramikos - which we could only admire briefly as it was closing within 30 minutes. This is where the pottery used to be made in Athens, however due to constant flooding this was transformed into the cemetery. This was a large site, and had so much to see but the whistle went too soon to indicate we had ran out of time.
As the time was getting on we headed towards Mount Lycabettus - which we had been promised spectacular views of the Acropolis from. This involved navigating our way up some very steep banks before getting on a Funicular to the top of the mountain. Once at the top we could see the whole of Athens and the sight was fantastic. We made the decision to stay at the top to watch the sunset over Athens, and this was well worth the wait and was a beautiful view.
By this point the temperature had taken a bit of a dive so we headed towards the town to grab some dinner, and even a cheeky ice cream on the way back to Hotel.
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This is a great blog love reading about your trip x