Athens: Day One

 

These were the accommodations booked by my daughter and as we soon found out, were very well situated near all the sights. We were only a couple blocks from the subway and about six blocks from the base of the Acropolis upon which sits the world famous Parthenon building. Despite being jet lagged, we woke up in good time in the morning and set our sights on a Greek breakfast which we ate every morning at the motel that owned our building two blocks away.

Besides this table, there were two more tables full of food that we could eat from every morning, including some over easy fried eggs and ham along with one table full of various cakes. It sure beat the pants off any "free continental breakfast" I've ever eaten at an American motel chain and it was a good way to start our days in Athens.

According to my daughter's plan, our first day was to be spent walking around the area getting a lay of the land and decompressing from our travels. We soon found ourselves at the base of the Acropolis which lies in the center of Athens at the ruins of an amphitheater.

Looking through the fenced up openings, we could see the actual seating area built into the side of the hill. Although the seating was excellent and there wasn't a bad view anywhere, I can't imagine sitting on stone seats for the length of a performance. I'm sure the ancient Greeks didn't have any of those fold out stadium chairs for such things.

The Acropolis itself is gated off and one must buy tickets to visit it so we mostly walked around the flattened off hill itself which is how we found the prison where Socrates was held until he was forced to kill himself. 

We just kept walking up the hill that we were on and soon found ourselves at the top overlooking the Acropolis in the background and the amphitheater we had been at on the lower left. 

Looking back the other direction, we could see Athens sprawling all the way to the Saronic Sea. Actually, in any direction one looked you could see Athens sprawling as far as you could see. As I would learn, 5,000,000 people live in Athens which is half the population of all of Greece. Another factoid I learned is that they have a code limiting the height of buildings so everyone would have a view of the Acropolis and the Parthenon. Judging from the amount of photos I have of the Acropolis from various places I visited in town, it really works out that way even if it doesn't seem like it in this picture.

Excitedly, we had our first Greek lunch at a small café we found along our route. We had a very tasty salad complete with freshly fried Greek cheese and a deconstructed pork gyro with cucumber yogurt sauce. 

Still being quite jet lagged, we decided to complete our circle around the Acropolis and head back to our suite for a siesta. Above is the neighborhood closer to our suite known for their bitter grapefruit trees that only produced small orange size fruit in the arid climate. 

I almost stepped on this thing along the way back. At first I thought it was the world's longest caterpillar but upon closer inspection saw that it was actually dozens of caterpillars following each other nose to tail. Google told me they are actually called a pine processionary and are considered somewhat of a pest in Greece on the coniferous trees.

After a siesta, we decided to go out for a light dinner. Almost all the street cafes there put out sign boards or actual menus outside on the sidewalk to lure people into their establishment, many with English translations. The above translation caught my eye and I imagined a conversation that went something like:

Greek 1: This translates to chicken boobs. We can't use boobs can we?

Geek 2: How about we use chest instead?

Although hard to see, we settled on some steamed fish marinated in oil and

fried octopus. Both were very delicious along with the fresh bread that comes with any meal you eat in a cafe.

On our way back to the suite, we stopped in at a nearby bakery to buy some bottled water (not knowing if the water was safe to drink at that point. It was) and to peruse the tasty confections everywhere.

The sign assured me that it was all healthy!

Finally, my daughters showed me how my phone was keeping tabs on my steps I walked everyday. Since I don't exercise with my phone on my body, it didn't register a lot of steps. But as you can see over the 9 days of traveling and being in Athens, despite having a five day subway pass, we did a fair amount of walking every day, even surpassing 20,000 steps one day. On this day, day one, we did just about 18,500 steps so retired with a few sweets back to our suite and called it a day.