We walked down through to the Plaka area, seeing the shops in the Monastiraki, and the oldest church in Athens. Apparently, the government wanted to get rid of it to make room for traffic to pass through that square, and the people had then stood in protest to get it saved. Who knows why, in a country filled with ruins and antiquities, would the government think it was a good idea to destroy something ancient and important? And also, simply for traffic? No sense whatsoever.
We walked past the Roman agora and saw the Tower of the Winds.
We moved then up through to a hill leading to the Acropolis. The climb was by some steep stone steps, really not too hard after doing things like Petra. From there we could see the temple of Hephaestus (those ruins that I tagged in my Flickr pics) and the ancient agora.
We stopped a moment at an old redone Greek theatre, the theatre of Dionysus. I can´t quite decide about what I think of that. On the one hand there´s a fantastic innovation and charm about re-using an ancient theatre once more, but on the other hand they have riddled an ancient site with modern technologies and amenities. All to make some money?
Then, we kept walking through to a high end residential area and past the new museum. We walked down and through to Hadrian´s Arch.
While we were listening to Niki tell us about it there was an short old man who must not have been all there upstairs, who kept touching the girls in the group, and being generally weird.
Behind the arch was where the temple of Olympian Zeus, built by Hadrian, stood. There isn´t too much left of it these days. Maybe he should have built it a little better? :P
We walked through a park with beautiful trees and great pathways.
We arrived to a Roman bath, sunken in the middle of a viewing platform built around it. It was pretty cool to see how the Greeks had saved the old buildings by just building the city completely around them.
From there we headed back to Syntagma Square where we saw the changing of the guard. The soldiers wore funny shoes with large pompoms on the front. The place was absolutely packed with people, tourists and all. It seems out of all the changings of the guard in a day, only this one had the whole marching precession.
The group headed off after that. Most people went with Niki to see the flea markets. Em and I went back to the hotel to get some stuff to send by post. We found a post office at Syntagma. The cost of the parcel and post was 12.50 Euros, not all too bad. I was a bit worried about the few shot glasses I put in; for their safety. They each had a layer of bubble wrap, and the mail packet was lined with a layer on each side too but it just didn't seem too safe. I´m hoping they will have sense and not put that at the bottom of a lot of weight (makes sense, it being just a packet and not a box).
We got the packet sealed, wrote the address on the corner and got it to the cashier. They suddenly got quite outraged about it being in the wrong corner, and kept on saying ¨normal¨ whilst pointing to the other corner of that side of the envelope. It was quite unnecessary of her, being that she knew we weren´t from Greece, didn't speak the language and in all likelihood we didn't know what corner of the package was the normal one to write an outgoing address on. Besides, I thought it was a bit cocky of her to assume that their system might be normal everywhere else in the world.
The two of us went to the flea market for food, getting a cheesy pastry thing for lunch.
At around 4pm we set off to climb to the Acropolis. We bumped into some girls from the tour group and joined up with them to do the sight. Part of the way we had already done earlier in the day during the walking tour. The entrance to the theatre of Dionysus was almost up to the Acropolis itself, so we had done that bit twice now.
We continued further up the hill and got tickets. Half price for international student cards, yay! Whoever is going travelling and hasn´t got one yet, get you head checked! The attendants at the entrance actually checked the photos and asked you what uni you were at unlike those in Egypt, who just glanced at the mere existence of a card and didn't really care either way.
We went in via the Beule gate, with a series of marble steps. Good photo opportunities.
We went up through and past the temple of Athena and on to main event, the Parthenon. The Parthenon is really quite spectacular.
The thing is massive, so much so that it was hard to get all of it into a frame when trying to take pictures from near it. It is very well preserved too. But, there is a lot of scaffolding around it, and cranes and the such, which in a way destroys part of the awe and charm of the thing.
Up top of the Acropolis is a fantastic view of the city. You are able to get all sorts of great panorama shots from there. I bet the ancient Greeks planned for this one day to be a great tourist site, so they decided to build the thing up a hill. They could see the possible tourism revenue back then.
On our way down we stopped back at the entrance to the theatre of Dionysus. We all got red (cherry?) slushies at the kiosk there. Full of sugar, nice and icy cold. Perfect for the hot sun still beating down on us.
We headed back to the hotel, wrote a bit of blog and got washed in order to go to the welcome dinner (including folk dancing). The group headed out and through the Plaka area, walking up a steep series of steps to get to a cosy little taverna up the top. A few of us (the group who we went up to the Acropolis with) sat inside some sort of alcove thing, shielded away from the main room of the restaurant. Was quite intimate, and probably gave us a bit of a better experience than the people just seated out in the open. The food was pretty good and it was free, courtesy of Top Deck (well, we paid for the tour...).
The folk dancing involved the restaurant staff doing some Greek dances to some traditional Greek music, including the Zorba song. Slightly entertaining but not anything amazing.
After dinner we all headed back to the hotel. Em stayed in the room of those girls for a bit since they had wifi signals in there. The 5am start the next morning was looming so I went back to our room, and to bed.
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