It's All Greek to Me

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  Athens, Attica, Greece
Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Upon arriving in Greece, we were able to collect our bags and walk out into the warm Greek air. It was around 20 C and felt glorious.  We bought our Metro tickets and were pleased that a train was there for us to board; unfortunately, it only runs every half hour and we missed the last one by six minutes...so we settled in for a wait and planned what would remain of our afternoon.

The ride in was fine, but as we neared the city centre the train got packed.  This made our having to change trains a little more complicated, but we made it to our stop. We knew the address of our hostel, but the metro station was half a block off of our map so we weren't sure which way to go...well that and all of the street signs were in Greek. We found ourselves having to guess which way to walk. So we randomly headed right and asked someone for directions - they hadn't heard of the street we were looking for, but they were able to point us to a street on the map we had

View upon emerging from the Metro

.  We headed that way and then asked for directions again; this time the person directed us to our hostel, which ended up being just around the corner to the left of the metro station.

We got checked in and immediately left again to see the Acropolis.  We debated walking, but as it was already late afternoon we jumped back on the Metro, now conveniently located near the hostel, and rode the few stops to a station near the Acropolis.  We exited the metro and our eyes were immediately drawn upward: there it was, the Acropolis.  We headed towards it, zig-zagging through narrow Greek streets until we found ourselves on top of Aeropagus Hill, which offers stunning views of the Acropolis and Athens. As the sun was starting to set, we continued walking around until we caught our first glimpses of the Parthenon.  It is a magnificent structure.  We had a look at the Heracles theatre as we continued our walk around the Acropolis (we weren't able to enter as it had just closed for the night), taking in the views of the Parthenon at Sunset.

We then found the newly-completed Acropolis Museum, which was open late, so we went in and had a look around.  There were a lot of amazing pieces and we had a great time looking around.  The museum has a glass floor in places as it is built over an excavation site

Acropolis at sunset

.  When we left the museum we again had great views of the Parthenon this time with spotlights shining on it.  At the behest of our stomachs, we jumped on the Metro and headed back towards to our hostel.  We spotted a sign for a souvlaki restaurant - naturally we made a beeline for it and both had souvlaki while sampling some Greek alcohol: one of us had Greek wine while the other had Mythos Greek beer - guess who had what!  After our lovely dinner we returned to the hostel, confirmed some details for our trip to Cairo and had a well deserved rest.

The next morning we were up early to go explore the Acropolis...thought not as early as planned due to a minor iPod alarm issue!  Now experts at the Metro, we made it there in no time.  To our surprise and delight there was almost no one else up there with us.  We wandered up the steps of the ancient Propylaea, emerging to find the Parthenon staring us in the face.  The sheer size of the building was astonishing and the restoration work along one side didn't detract greatly from its beauty.  It was easy to see why this was selected as a site of worship and defense  - you could easily survey the city below.  We toured around the whole site, also taking in the Erechtheum and with its porch of graceful Caryatid columns.  I shudder to think how many pictures we took.  There were stunning buildings, stunning views, and virtually no other tourists.  It was awesome.  We spent an hour there before we had to return to our hostel, grab our bags, and head for the airport.  Next stop: Cairo.

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Parthenon reflecting the sunset	Odeon	Excavation work at the museum	Parthenon all lit up
Parthenon detail	Corner shot	Athens from above	Athens alleyway
Requisite shot	Caryatid columns	First view!	Another angle
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