The Many Adventures of the Bay Area: Part III

Day 3: Muir Woods

Muir Woods is one of the many red woods preserves in California – and it’s just over the Golden Gate Bridge! You just need to have the stomach to drive the hairpin turns on the edges of mountains! It was pretty scary. We also happened to go on a “free day,” so there were a ton of people there. Katy and I parked a mile and a half from the park entrance and decided to take one of the off-shoot trails to avoid the many peoples. All-in-all, we walked about 6 miles. We were whooped when we got home!

There was a long line of traffic to get into the park.

Well worth the long walk.

These trees are massive!

Really big.

We had to walk over this scary bridge over the little river! So cool. Katy was terrified.

There were all kinds of cool natures.

After climbing up the next mountain, we got to see the bridge we crossed.

There's also a trail in the Muir Woods that is named after Matt. hehe.

Just too beautiful.

Banana slug!

Fuzzy trees!

New fern growth.

Red wood bark is very durable and able to survive forest fires a lot. But sometimes the fires cause a rotting inside the tree. This one fell over from the rot.

We saw turkeys! They moved too fast for me to get a good shot. Also, I was standing on a busy road trying to get the picture, soo...

You can see the road we had to drive on to get to the forest.

Anyway, it was a lovely day.

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!

Adventures to foreign countries don’t always go as planned, but sometimes it makes for some good stories.

 Our first flight had mechanical failures and delayed us so much that we were going to miss our connecting flight. After quite a good fight put up by Courtney in the airport, we managed to get flights that would get us to Athens as quickly as possible, plus a hotel stay in Newark, plus $30 in food vouchers! Our first half of the new flight itinerary put us on Virgin Atlantic. I have to say, the BEST flights I have ever had have been with different British airway companies. Cordial and quirky in a way that can only be described as entirely “British”.

Luckily for us, it’s RAINING in Athens! But we managed to have some fun at the Acropolis Museum today. Not only did we get to nerd out at the amazing finds, sculptures, cultures, and history of the Acropolis and view the actual archaeological ruins of the acropolis village (we walked over them! On glass!), we also nerded out IN THE SUBWAY. Check out this awesome mock stratigraphy set up in the subway:

Look at the BONES!

Stratigraphic layers

Man, I love stratigraphy...

There was a mock tomb WITH BONES! Probably not real bones, but AWESOME!

We also nerded out thinking about the conservation and restoration done to everything in the museum and how the archaeological ruins were covered with the glass floor of the museum. Yea, we’re trying to start getting out minds wrapped around conservation and restoration, two things neither of us know much about, but now we’re looking for it everywhere! Good place to look for it. Here’s a shot I managed to snap before a guard at the museum yelled at me for taking photos, but we were told we could take photos! :(

Athena: She still has paint in her hair and on her sleeve!

Also, orange trees grow everywhere here. Gorgeous:

Here’s a preview of our trip for tomorrow (also in the rain, yay!):

Temple of Athena, Acropolis