day one

wow. just got into athens now after spending the last 10 or so hours on a small aluminum and titanium tube travelling across the ocean at 600+ mph. we got to the hotel at around 10am local time, 3am real time. got into bed almost right away for 4 quick hours of sleep as we only have this one day to see all that athens has to offer, which isn't all that much according to our travel agent. acropolis, agora, dinner, bed, bus tour.

so yeah, slept, met at the top of the hotel for an orientation meeting with Nolitours (the company that's arranging all our stuff) and snagged a quick shot of where we were going in a few short minutes. yeah, that's from the hotel. unfortunately, the view from my room is of the central courtyard (read: unfinished interior section of the hotel titania). doesn't matter, not actually spending much time in the room.

the walk to the acropolis actually took about 25 minutes from the hotel, as you can tell that it isn't that close from the picture. here's the central market place at the foot of the acropolis. the central marketplace is actually before that shot, and the coloured buildings infront of/behind (depending on your outlook) my dad are just selling more stuff that you don't actually need.

it actually took a little bit of walking because the path isn't that well marked, maybe you're supposed to find the acropolis from the agora, but we climbed the rock first, which has a number of signs that have been painted over by locals to confuse the tourists. it works.

as would be expected, it cost money to enter the site at the top of the rock, but it was well worth it. I took 50-70 pictures (I can't remember the actual number) of all the stuff at the top, and I even got a picture of a cat, before some local lady yelled at me for not taking a picture of the ruins. apparently the greeks are really sensitive about their broken buildings; they won't let you pose in front of them (the statues anyway) and they won't let you take funny/interesting/original shots of the ruins. they think that would degrade the achievements of the classical athenians apparently. here's the offending picture, just for the sake of posterity...that's her in the pink top, just about to yell at me in greek. I got another kitty later, and I actually thought about going back and showing this lady the picture, I figured she would appreciate my sense of humour...didn't though, folks were in a hurry (at least, that's my excuse).

after dutifully taking our pictures of the parthenon and erecthion (of which I have many) we went down to the agora, which is actually pretty interesting if you have a good enough imagination to fully reconstruct the buildings in your head, as about the only buildings left standing are the hepheistion and a building (stoa I think) that was constructed during the Roman conquest period (after 146BC). the hepheistion is that nearly complete temple you can see in the distance in the picture, all that space around it used to be buildings too, but none have been reconstructed.

Athens is actually a really dirty city, but all that haze in the pictures isn't smog, it's water vapour. it gets cold enough at night that there's tonnes of dew, but the sun is hot as hell during the day and it evaporates all that moisture, and that's what clouds up all the pictures. oh, and you wouldn't believe all the scooters in this city. well, you would once you saw the traffic and the narrow streets...but still, nearly everyone has one and none of the people wear helmets, or if they do, it's carried on the arm, not the head.