Athens is Awesome!

The rest of our days exploring Athens were wonderful.  It is a HUGE city, and much different than anywhere else we've visited in Europe.  It is a lot dirtier and run-down in some places, with many homeless people and big crowds, yet the subways and trams were very efficient to use.  The tourist parts of Athens are crammed with shops and restaurants, so there was always somewhere interesting to try Greek food!  But the reason we went to Athens was to soak in ancient history, and there's plenty of that!!

There was a small church across from our hotel, and we noticed the doors were open in the morning, so we wandered in.  Everything was very ornate in the Church of St Demetrius in the old quarter.

This gentleman gave us a private tour and explained a lot of history about the church, and especially about how renovations are being made after damage by humidity, an earthquake, and rainwater leaks.  

The sun was so hot on our first day, that Beth and I decided to get Greek hats too.  It's amazing how much cooler we stayed under the shade of our hat brims!  

We bought a package ticket that admitted us to six different ruins, so we made the rounds checking out all the ancient sites.  

Beth suggested taking this photo to show the scale of the columns compared with her height.  Some of the pictures have us standing far away, so it's hard to tell how HUGE the ancient buildings were!  (Hadrian's Library)

Our very own red-haired Grecian statue!!  :-) 

This was the typical style of many ancient Greek churches - this one was situated in one of the historic areas of ruins and was built in the 11th-12th centuries.  (Ayia Ekaterini)

This temple is one of the best-preserved ones in Athens, and it's in a beautiful spot overlooking the city in the Ancient Agora.  

We were so in awe of walking around where the great Greek philosophers once were in the Ancient Agora area temples.

Athens is no different from many other large European cities with lots of graffiti all over.  We will never understand this destruction of beautiful buildings that is so common. 

The Museum of the Ancient Agora was reconstructed in the 1950's with financial support from the Rockefellers to house historic treasures.  Very impressive!

We thoroughly enjoyed sampling Greek food, and these are two of our very favorites - tzatziki, and souvlaki - YUM!!  We never ate indoors, because the restaurants weren't air conditioned, so everyone ate outside where there were breezes to keep us cool.  

Day 3 in Athens started out with metro rides to the bottom of a high hill, which was recommended as a place to have a magnificent view of the city.  

There was a funicular train available, but we decided to hike all the way up instead!!  

It was a long and very hot hike under the Athens sun!!  We were glad we took our water bottles along.  There were other tourists up top, but we didn't see anyone else hiking!!  

The advice we had been given was accurate --- the views were indeed fantastic from atop the hill.  We could even see the Adriatic Sea in the distance.  

The view of the Olympic Stadium made us want to go visit it later in the day.  This is where the modern Olympics got started!  

It was inspiring to see this plaque imbedded in the rock atop the hill.

Another view from the hill - the Acropolis with the Parthenon in the middle - all of Athens surrounding it - and the sea in the distance.  So majestic!!  Definitely worth the climb, and of course the trip back down was much easier.   ;-)

As we headed back down from the base of the hill, we decided to shop for lunch items at the street market ahead and have a picnic in the National Gardens later.  

The displays of fruits and veggies were beautiful to behold.  We ended up getting a kilo of delicious dark cherries.  

The National Gardens had a small children's zoo also, so we saw peacocks and other birds, turtles, and a few other animals.  

We found a shady spot in the park for our lunch of bread, cheese, cherries, and water.  

Hadrian's Gate with the Acropolis seen under the arch.  

There were often informational displays near the ancient sites, so we could read in English (or Greek) about the particular structure.  

Like the sign says, this is what's left of the Temple of Olympian Zeus.  It was interesting that sometimes we could walk around right within the ruins and even touch the columns, but in other places, ropes kept us from walking inside.  

The column in the foreground fell over in an earthquake and was just left in place, but it really shows how big the columns are - HUGE!!  

And that's the hill in the distance, that we climbed earlier in the day for the view!!  Whew!!  

These massive Corinthian columns of the Temple of Olympian Zeus were so beautiful!  

Water bottles, sunglasses, and Greek straw hats all really helped us beat the summer heat in Athens!  Yes, that's the Acropolis again in the background.   :-) 

The changing of the guard occurs at the Parliament building at the top of every hour, so we went to watch this solemn ceremony.  

The costumes and march steps were really interesting to see.  

There was a big crowd there to see the guard change, even though it was blistering hot on the pavement in front of Parliament.  I don't know how these guys didn't pass out with their hot tights, but maybe the skirts helped cool them off??  

Afterwards, photos were allowed with the new guards.  

Our last stop on this hot afternoon was at the Olympic Stadium, where the first modern Olympic games were held.  Here are two Olson athletes warming up outside the stadium! 

We were sitting in the shade looking at our maps and guidebooks deciding what else we still wanted to see in Athens, when we were a approached by a friendly taxi-driver giving us suggestions.  We had already seen everything he mentioned, so then he offered to take us on an excursion to a "must-see" place - Sounion - on a rocky peninsula on the southeast tip of Attica.  We took his card and said we would be in touch.  After a little research, we decided we should take him up on his offer the next morning, and we're so glad we did!!  

On Day 4 in Athens, our Greek taxi driver, Kostas, picked us up promptly at 9:30 and we headed south along the coastline.  

I took MANY pictures from the window of the taxicab, and all of them show this same beautiful scenery along the coastline.  Wow!!  After three days of tramping around ruins out under the baking sun, it was really relaxing to sit back in an air conditioned taxi, hear stories from our driver, and "ooh & ahh" over gorgeous views all along the way!!  

We stopped along the way at this mysterious spring-fed lake which is famous for its therapeutic effects on swimmers.  

It's a popular and expensive place to swim, and the lake's waters looked really refreshing!

After about an hour, we stopped for this view of Sounion, with Poseidon's Temple on the summit of the rocky peninsula.  

Kostas dropped us off so we could hike up to the ruins of the temple - such a beautiful place!!  

We climbed around on top of the hill for a while and got another picture of our very own Greek statue!   :-)

There were beautiful blue waters in every direction from Sounion.  

It's such a peaceful and beautiful place!!  Wow!!  

It was really windy up on top of the hill, so it didn't feel as hot as in Athens.  

Poseidon's Temple - where we visited!  

Love the father-daughter hats!!  :-)   We hiked up another hill, which gives a different view of the temple, just behind Tim's shoulder.  

It's hard to believe that water can be so BLUE!!!  

Several of our Slovak friends have vacationed on Greek islands, and these views made us think that would be a wonderful idea!!  

We had a cool soft drink on the terrace at Sounion before heading back to Athens.  

Ready for the return journey with Kostas.  He also gave us his family recipe for tzatziki, which we'll definitely put to good use!!  

We planned our last day in Athens specifically so that we'd be inside air conditioning during the hottest hours of the afternoon, at the Athens National Archaeological Museum.

There were many, many exhibits of ancient statues.  

We took this photo especially for my Dad -- this is an ancient javelin thrower -- and Ed Sr. is an All-American javelin thrower in Masters Track and Field!!  :-)  

It really was fascinating to see so many marvelous sculptures and other ancient artifacts.  

There were also many artifacts from ancient burial areas which included gold decorations, jewelry, and other items from graves.  

There are so many tourists, and more restaurants than we could believe.  This one, near our hotel, had the nicest wait staff and delicious food, so we at there for a second time on our last night in Athens.

After dinner our last night in Athens, we sat on the roof-top terrace of our hotel and just enjoyed the Athens skyline with the Acropolis all lit up.  WOW!!  

One last view of the Parthenon at night before heading to bed!!  

 Our last morning in Athens was a Sunday, so I had found an English worship service for us to attend, which was actually only a few blocks from our hotel.  It was an international congregation, very friendly, but the service lasted for 2 hours, so we declined to stay for the fellowship time afterwards because we had to get checked out of our hotel.  

One last metro ride Sunday after check-out took us to our bus connection to head for Patras, the port where our ferry to Italy would depart on Monday.  We were grateful that most signage in Athens is now in both Greek AND English, because the different alphabet really makes it difficult to read Greek!!  

NOTE:  We were without internet service for most of the last week during our travels, so the blog posts have been quite tardy - sorry!!  I'll try to get caught up soon, even if it's from back in Iowa later this week.   We're so excited about heading home for a month!!     :-)