The First Day Sightseeing in Athens with Ron by Kayley

Thats us in front of the Acropolis.

The First Day Sightseeing in Athens

            The other day was packed full of seeing and learning about Greek history. Ron is daddy’s cousin Lisa’s husband. Ron is in Greece teaching college students about history. Ron told us all about how Athens became what it is today. I really liked learning about ancient Greek history and Ron was a good teacher.

Those are the carvings behind the stage. I think the big middle person is Atlas. 

            The first place we saw was the Acropolis. The Acropolis was on top of a small hill. Underneath the Acropolis was a stone wall with buttresses in some places. At the bottom of the hill there were two theaters.  One was still in use and the other one was partly buried. The top half of the theater was covered with grass and dirt, but parts of the seats were visible. The stone wall behind the stage had carvings of actors from the ancient times.  I think one of the people might have been the titan, Atlas, holding up the sky. On top of the mountain, there are two temples.  The bigger one is Athena’s temple that the ancient Greeks used to use as the treasury. The big temple is called the Parthenon. The other temple , Temple of Athena Nike, was much smaller and that’s where the ancient Greeks did the sacrifices and praying to Athena.  At the bottom of the hill, there was Hephaestus’s temple.  His temple was still mostly intact, whereas the other temples didn’t have roofs and were in the process of being rebuilt. I really liked the temples because Ron was good at telling us about them and they had a great view of the city.

Us in the new Stoa.

            After seeing the Acropolis, we saw the temple of Hephaestus and the Agora (the ruins of the old market place). The old market was mostly bottoms of columns and stones sticking out of the ground. Ron told us that some American archaeologists built an indoor market just like the one that was there before.  The new market(or stoa) was very open and there’s a small breeze that went through the corridor that really cooled you off. Ron said that the market place was really cool during the summer.  It was like the ancient Greek air conditioning.  Now the market has a museum inside with lots of pottery in show cases. The pottery was terracotta with black paint on them.  All of the pots and jars had paintings of people and they were good paintings of people doing work or fighting. Some of the pots had obviously been put back together from shards of pottery. The pottery was really fun to look at and to imagine what the pot used to hold in ancient times.

Zeus's Temple.

Also Zeus's Temple.

            After a really good lunch at a café by the ruins of the market, we went to Zeus’s temple. Zeus’s temple was built by the Romans to show off their greatness. Now, the only things still standing of Zeus’s temple is about ten fancy pillars, a fallen pillar, and lots of big pieces of stone with lots of moss on them. The fallen pillar looked like a tower of dominoes flicked over by a giant. Sadly the temple parts were roped off, but we saw lots of weird red and black beetles that looked like they were headed for a nest of some sort. Some of the beetles were carrying each other. I thought that the beetles and the columns were really cool to see at Zeus’s Temple.  Ron told us that some Roman person I don't remember who built Zeus's temple to show of to everyone and so people can decide if Zeus's temple is bigger and better than the Parthenon.  

            I really enjoyed the day sightseeing with Ron because it was fun to learn about things I’ve always been interested in. Also I enjoyed seeing the town of Athens with Ron because he's good at talking.