Monday In Athens-Day Four

We were up bright and early, sun burned sleepy, sore, and jet lagged. STILL, Ready to go!!
We had a breakfast of all of the choco crunch cereal we bought the night before.

Ahhhh, so good, and so many memories.
You may notice that the bowl is enormous. It was the only bowl in the house.

We also had water.

Some more cheese over a fresh loaf of bread we bought that morning.
I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of it.

You can see all of the perfect crumbs that it left of the table.

It was SO hot in the bakery. The bread was yellow with sesame seeds all over it and it was SO good.

Our air B&B was a 20 minute walk from the acropolis.

We got up to the lower Acropolis before 8:00 AM when it opened.
Even at that point in the day it was a cool 85 degrees.

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus:

It is still used for events today. They do symphonies and players there, and they even had a Greek tragedy going on that night. We looked into getting tickets but it was sold out.

Now we had a view of the museum from the hill top.

You could really see the whole city from up there.

We bought our tickets and chatted with people about the flight over. We even met some people who were going on the cruise.
Here we are, as we got to the main entrance.

I love Karl, and his fanny pack.

It was such an amazing place.

It looks like I am touching it, but I am not, becasue that is a BIG no no.

That little sign and the man in the red shirt told me so.

Turning back to see the entrance.

And there she is, THE Parthenon.
They are restoring this side of it.

Another view of the city, and the acropolis museum.

We walked around the side of the building.

Bits of stone. Years and years of history on shelves sitting in the sun.

Karl found a cannon.

Now around to the front.

Hey! There is still some stuff up there!!

I was so surprised how much, rubble there was up there. How many things even in this great city, in this famous place, were just laying around.

I suppose such is the way of ancient places.

THE MONEY SHOT!!!

I still can’t believe we were there. SUCH an incredible place.

I am looking at this picture, and I just can’t believe we were there. I still just feel grateful for it.

The view of the other places in this ancient city.
Like this, the ancient temple of Zeus.
You can even see the building we were staying in!

Another amazing shot. Us in Athens.

The view from the top!

As the morning went on, it was harder to get a clear shot of anything, so many people.

Here’s a better one.

We turned around and did some more exploring.

The Erechtheion.

The main Pantheon was dedicated to Athena, this smaller temple was dedicated to Poseidon and Athena.

This is the Porch of the Caryatids.

Final looks as we headed out of this amazing ancient place.

The ruins were every where, and even coming down from the hill top was so amazing.

We got our first gilmses of a place we would visit later that day, the ancient Agora.

I decided to take a picture here. It had only been an hour or so, but the weather up there was already getting HOT.

I like this one of me.

We took a less used back way down through the theater of Dionaisis.

These pillars were memorials to ancient important men. They once had heads on them. I am not sure if they just wanted to make sure we all know they were once dudes.

I am so immature. I just had to laugh.

It felt like we were lost, and we were trying to avoid the throngs of people. Karl looked for an alternate way down.

The Theater of Dionysous from above.

Then a scary walk down found this view from below:

Karl made his way down.

Front row seats, complete with bathroom holes.

An ancient poet, unnamed, outside the theater of Dionaisis.

The whole thing took about an hour so we had the whole day ahead of us still!
We walked through a part of the Plaka to find the main road.

We were super excited! We jumped on the hop on and off bus and we were off!

We stayed on the bus for a ride around the city before getting off.

We made our first pass of the National Parliament building and the grave of the unknown soldier. We came back to this later.

My attractive travel companion.

The National University.
With Athena and Apollo looking over.

Athens Archaeology Museum.

Athens reminded me a lot of Tirana.

Lots of bronze statues.

We had looped all around the Acropolis, and ended up on the opposite side of the Plaka.

So we got out and check out the meat market.

And the fish market.

We only made a purchase when we saw this place.

Oh yes, we were getting some CHEESE!

After we bought some cheese, we went to a near by bakery to get some bread and water for lunch.

The temperatures were SWELTERING and we were happy to find a cold drink.

Perfect lunch.

Once we had eaten, we went out to the Plaka and did some more looking around.

I should have bought this hat.

Not this one.

We walked through the Plaka, and found our way to the ancient market place of Athens.

We found a place in the shade. Cuz like I said, it was HOT.

And we ate the cherries that we had bought in the market.

This is a replica of the old pavilion that used to stand here.

It is now filled with many old statues, and Greecen urns, and so forth.

It was a pretty spectacular place.

There was a little indoor section that had the coolest and some of the most delicate things we had seen.
This set of pitchers that look like children’s faces.

This was once a part of a bronze statue that rode a horse.

An actual sheild. Like in that 300 movie.

This little one is a baby bottle.

This is a small child’s grave.

These coins were once attached to the death shroud that went over the body.

More replicas of what once was.

We made our way over to the Temple of Hephaestus

It was the most intact thing we had seen.

The old laundires.

Back to the bus, we found this odd KFC add.
Hungry like a fox?

Our next stop was the Olympic stadium.

We had to decided if we should buy tickets.

We felt like we kind of had seen all we could see.

So we took a picture.

All I can remember about this moment, was thinking, “I think this must be what the surface of the sun feels like.” All of the heat reflecting off of the white tile…SO HOT.

Across the street we found a part with lovely statues, and thick trees.

We HAPPILY went for a slow, cool walk there.

Houses for the ducks.

On our way out of the park, we found ourselves following the guards who stand in front of the grave of the unknown soldier, outside the parliament building.