An Adventure in Athens

It was nice to sleep in a bit this morning and have breakfast in our own apartment before heading out to make our way to some of the ancient Greek sites. The metro was on strike yesterday and today, so the underground lines were to be closed all day and the train was only to be running before 11 a.m. and after 4 p.m. After calculating things out, we determined that it may be cheaper, and easier to simply take a taxi to the Akropolis area since there were four of us that to purchase metro tickets. So we walked out of our apartment and set out to get a taxi. Unfortunately it seemed every taxi either was occupied or going the wrong way, we were about to give up and just take the metro when I finally flagged one down on the opposite side of the street and we were on our way. I was a bit concerned about the location of our apartment, but the taxi to the Akropolis area only cost us 5 Euros with tip.

When we arrived in the area to the North of the Akropolis we set out to Hadrian's Library. Hadrian's Library was built in the 1st century A.D. and mainly consisted of a large courtyard, which housed a church, a library to the East, several smaller rooms, and auditoriums for lectures/text readings. From Hadrian's Library we walked over to the Roman Agora. The Roman Agora was built between 19-11 B.C. It housed commercial activities after the Ancient Athenian Agora was overtaken by large buildings and there was no space remaining for commercial activities. The exact date of destruction of the Roman Agora is unknown, but the area was in use for various purposes into the 19th century. After the Roman Agora we headed to the more prominent Ancient or Greek Agora. The Ancient Agora was the center of civic and social life in ancient Athens. The main monuments are the well-preserved Temple of Hephaistos and the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos.

After touring some of the ancient sites around Athens, we stopped for a late lunch before heading to the Akropolis Museum. We had walked by the Akropolis Museum the previous day with Steve but had gone by it after touring the Akropolis itself. In order to get to the Akropolis we had to climb heaps of stairs along the North-Western side of the Acropolis, and we were hoping to avoid those today as it was again a 95 plus degree day and Granddad really shouldn't be climbing stairs at all let alone in this heat. So we weaved our way around and got ourselves thoroughly lost before my mad skills with a map saved us and I found our way to museum. The Akropolis museum is unique in that when construction began on it, they discovered the ruins of an ancient remains of a neighborhood containing streets, houses, baths, and workshops ranging in age from the 5th century B.C. to the 9th century A.D. So the architects re-did the design for the museum to include glass floors on the main level where patrons can view the ongoing excavations below. My favorite piece in the museum, although silly, was a plaque of a hoplite-race, an athlete who wears armor, which bore the inscription "Megakles kalos" or "Megakles is good looking", however, his name had been scratched out and replaced with the name "Glauketes". It appears Athenians have had a thing for graffiti since at least the 5th century B.C.

After the museum we spent about a hour trying to hail a stinking taxi, probably worse than usually due to it being rush-hour and with the metro-strikes going on, but we finally made it back to apartment and enjoyed another relaxing evening having dinner in our apartment and watching the soccer. Tomorrow will be our last day in Athens, and it looks to be another hot one!