Athens Part II by Mia



That pile of rocks is where democracy happened!

After we dumped all of our stuff in the apartment, we had to go get some food so we went out searching for a grocery store or something. We walked a few blocks and came across a bustling farmers market that took up an entire street! It was really pretty, and after Egypt we were all really needing fruit and veggies. We loaded up on that, and then went to a bakery and got some bread, and then a supermarket. We had our first home cooked meal in ages, it was really good!

The Parthenon

The poor ceremonial guard.

The next day we started our sightseeing. We met Ron at the central square thing that was in front of the parliament building and was just a few blocks from the Acropolis (the ancient city center). Ron started telling us a bunch of cool info about the city form the very start. He said that that square we were in was the place where all the protesting happens and that the nice hotel that is right there has metal cages for their window for protection from flying rocks and such. Then we went to the acropolis, which is at the top of a little hill in the middle of the city. There were two theatres, a few temples, and a great view up at the top. We wandered around for a bit looking at all the buildings. the Parthenon was covered in scaffolding because they are restoring it, and they had taken our the friezes up on the edges of the roof and put them in the museum, along with all the other statues and carvings (pretty much everything cool). I think it's pretty annoying that they do that, but I guess if they left it up it would probably get destroyed by acid rain or something. After the Acropolis we went to the Ancient Agora which had lots of crumbling stone foundations everywhere and a rebuilt stoa with a museum in it so we could see what it used to look like. There was the site of the building in which democracy happened, which was really amazing just becuase of how important it was. That got you thinking that really famous, smart people like Aristotle had walked around there which made up for the fact that it was pretty much just a pile of mossy stones. Having someone there tell us about it really helped, too. After the agora we saw Hephestaus's temple which was a mini version of the Parthenon, but still mostly intact.

Hephestaus Temple

After that we ate lunch and then walked around the Placa (a big area with lots of shops and cafes) and then went to Zeus's temple. That was really cool even though it was mostly gone. It was much bigger than the Parthenon-- you could tell just by the size of the columns.
Then we walked though a park, on the other side of which was the president's house. There were some ceremonial guards out front that were whereing some really funny looking clothes. They had tights with tassles, weird short tutu thingys, and (best of all) their shoes had giant pom poms on the toes! They had to stand there all day, and every once and a while they switched places. That took a really long time because they had to walke really slowly and take huge steps. It was hilarious! I actually felt really bad for them though, you'd think that wearing a tutu is humiliation enough! After that we went past the first olympic stadium on the way to Ron's apartment.

Zeus's Temple

Ron's apartment is way nicer than ours, and everything was really shiny! We had some tea and baklava there and rested for a little bit before taking the metro back to our own apartment, which seemed about 10 times nastier now that we had seen his!

The next day we went to a museum and then hiked up a hill. The hill had a cable car up to the top (Ron took that instead of waking) and a cafe. We just sat at the top for a really long time because it was perfect weather and the view was amazing!! After that we went home and took a nap because we were really tired after all the stairs.