Athens

For some unknown reason, Esther and I ended up on a different excursion bus assignment from the others, so we spent the day by ourselves.  The bus wound through the port city of Piraeus on the way to the Athens and the Acropolis.  When we arrived at the Acropolis, an audio tour on an our phone app was included in the tour but we couldn’t seem to access it; so we resorted to reading the posted placards to get a condensed version.  We snaked our way through the thousands of visitors to this iconic historical site.  The prominent Parthenon with its gigantic pillars was amazing, though the restoration cranes detracted some of the effect.  We stumbled our way across the slippery rocks of Areopagus (Mars Hill).  Leaving the historic grounds, we found a street side cafe to fuel us for the rest of the day.  I downloaded a self-guided walking tour of the central city area and we put oil several miles catching the changing of the guard at the parliament building, Hadrian’s wall, the Plaka neighborhood, the ancient agar marketplace and the really interesting housing community of Anafiotika, where tiny homes an only be passed on through the generations.