Before I get too far into this, I would like to send a super special thank you to my Dad and Maradie for buying the camera that most of these pictures were taken with. Without him this would be a bunch of boring words with stick figure drawings of Greece.
Artist representation of what could have been. You're all missing out
Also because our first "Day" was so short, getting in from our flight at about 10pm, I'm rolling that and the 2nd day into one post.
Arriving in Greece so late was not a problem as far as dinner was concerned. As it turns out, Greek culture is to have dinner quite late. So all restaurants tend to be open till midnight or even later. We were very relieved to hear that, especially that our hotel, the "Hera" had a rooftop garden restaurant. And boy did it have a view.
We ended up just having drinks and mixed nuts but they were some really good nuts.
The following morning was an early rise, around 6:30 for breakfast and catching the tour bus for all the sights.
Even the breakfast area was gorgeous
Our first stop was the sight of the first Olympic's the Panathenaic Stadium.
Seating capacity of sixty thousand
Lil Olympians
From there it was the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with a changing of the guard.
After it was off to the new Acropolis Museum, right next to the Acropolis.
A view from inside the museum looking at the Acropolis
Katie outside the massive pillars of the museum
In a bout of luck and irony, the museum was originally going to have an underground parking garage. However, on breaking ground they found a new archaeological dig site with all kinds of new treasures to be unearthed.
The Irony is that one of the big "problems" with Athens is that there is no parking anywhere. People were really looking forward to the parking garage. Oh well.
Area's of the museum would have glass floors so you could see the dig site underneath. Very cool
Inside the museum there were some astounding pieces from ancient Athens that, bluntly, shouldn't be around anymore. With as many fires and wars that they have gone through, the fact that anything had survived is incredible. As awesome as a lot of these things were, there are many areas of the museum that are off limits to cameras. They started allowing cameras here:
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| These statues were actually the pillars in one of the temples of the Acropolis. |
But as you can see, and as they repeatedly told us, one of them is missing. The missing statue is in a museum in England. Athenians would like it back.
The craftsmanship and thought that went into these is certainly something to behold. A fun fact, their hairstyle had to be changed to flow with their neck. Otherwise they would snap under the pressure of holding up the building.
Ancient pigments used for coloring
The top floor of the museum is mostly dominated by huge windows so that you can see the entire Athens skyline with the Acropolis.
Sometimes panorama mode doesn't like heads...or people...
After grabbing lunch inside the museum, we started our walk up to the Acropolis proper. The walk itself was filled with it's own marvels.
Finally we had made it to the top, and it may be cliched to say, but the view really was breathtaking.
I feel the pictures are more effective than words here. Simply stunning, and we were very lucky with the weather we had on this day. Very Beautiful.
That's where the lady statues from earlier go
Ignore the yellow shirt guy erupting between our heads
That took up quite the large portion of our first day in Athens.There is a shopping area around the Acropolis known as the Plaka which we explored briefly before walking the 200 meters back to our hotel.
Oh, did I forget to mention this was all a few hundred meters from our hotel? Yeah it was quite surprising that it took us less then five minutes to walk from where the museum was to our room essentially. We had a nap and ordered room service the rest of the day. Needed to save our energy for our next day of adventures.
Seems our next day has something to do with water...
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