Athens Part II: The apartment, the Acropolis, Temple of Zeus, and wanderings

Alright, things are busy already in Akko! I know I promised to update more often, and with more pictures, and I WILL! However, at the moment, our accommodations are still being fixed up (in fact, we put some finishing touches on another room today, success!) and one of the workers broke our internet. Instead, we have to all march down to a lovely local restaurant, called Beit Maha, that offers WiFi.

Ok, now it's time to backtrack to Greece again! First, I will show you some pictures of our room in Athens, then the Acropolis, the ancient agora, some side tracks, and the olympic stadium. In my next post I will tell you all about the idyllic Santorini, so be on the lookout!

Our host was an artist with a shop near the Acropolis, so her home had a unique touch!

Our walk up to the Acropolis, and the Dionysis Theatre (complete with a single spectator!)

Walking up to the Acropolis, surrounded by gardens.

Little ducky watching the show at the Dionysis Theatre

No celebration for Dionysis is complete without wine!

Western Entrance to the Acropolis

Yea, so what? My face looks ridiculous! I was excited about the Parthenon!

Reconstruction work!

Old Temple of Athena

Cats of the Acropolis! This one looks like Fatty!

It's a Greek cat! These suckers were everywhere, and adorable!

The old and new temple.

Church of the Apostles in the ancient Agora.

The Agora was the main entrance into the ancient city of Athens and would have had shops, bathhouses, small temples, things like that.

The Stoa

“The Palace of the Giants”!

Temple of Hephaistos

This dog followed us from Hephaistos

We thought we were going to the Temple of Zeus and stumbled across this creepy place:

Turns out we found the sanctuary of the muses….

This dog followed us up there…

There was awesome graffiti up there.

Then we really found the Temple of Zeus.

Hadrian's Arch

Temple of Zeus

 The Temple of Zeus was built, rebuilt, and added to for something like 1000 years before it was completed by Hadrian, I believe. This this is massive! I'm standing way at the bottom of the photo and you can barely see me!

The Stadium! This was where the first international Olympic marathon ended. That first race was won by a Greek! This also happens to be the location of an ancient stadium. The first phase did not have stepped seats, but rather was grassy and the people sat on the ground. Then when the Romans conquered, they added the classic Roman stepped seats.

At the end of the entrance of the athletes was a small display of all the Olympic torches and official posters for every Olympiad since they were reinstated.

At the end of the day, we decided to go see the Acropolis lit up at night. It was beautiful!

Well, that is all for now, because things are crazy busy and the lack of internet in our house is making it difficult to update.

Next update will cover Santorini!