DAY 9: Romping in the ruins....

...and by romping, I mean in the American sense of the word, clearly. Today was explore Athens day and see how much I remember of my Greek history classes day.

We set our alarm for 9, in hopes of a slight lie in—after waking up at 4:49 in the morning (yes I checked my phone) the day before—but needless to say, we woke up about an hour early. However, we both drowsed (it was warm under the blankets and just cold enough with the tile floors not to want to get out of bed) until nearly 9. Breakfast (included with this hotel deal) was until 9:30, so we booked it downstairs and stared at the feast awaiting us.

As a sidenote, I must mention that I got a 3 for 2 night deal on this place, which is actually a really lovely hotel (Apollo Hotel), though it is certainly not in the tourist part of central Athens and the surrounding streets look a wee bit sketchy. BUT THAT'S OK. We don't mind walking. Or cheaper prices.

So, our feast. Options included: museli, hard boiled eggs, wheat or white bread with sliced cheese and ham, oranges, cereal (corn flake type), tea, coffee, orange juice, peach slices, sponge cake/sweet bread, real cream, and some yellow juice all laid out buffet style. One look and we knew what this meant: free lunch source.

We managed to steal bread, an assortment of jams (to use with our ever present pita bread stash), and oranges for lunch along with pita and digestives from Ireland. And then we set off with our handy map to find our ancient sites. We walked through the square that our bitch of a taxi driver (epithet necessary) said to avoid because of pocket thieves (he at least wasn't lying about that) and then (after carefully deliberation) found the right street and made our way from Mataxourgio where the hotel is, down to Psiri and finally the Monastiraki neighbourhood at the bottom of the Acropolis.

There, we entered the Athenian Agora, the ancient centre for the trade, temples, and basic hang out activities for the Classical citizens. It is cushioned at the base of the Acropolis and the Areopagos, which was the hill where the citizen council used to meet. We took tons of photos of the Temple of Hephaistos, the gymnasio, and basically all of the crumbling former center. That was when my camera died, sadly. Katie's was also low on batteries so we saved the pictures for the cool stuff.

We then made our way up to the top of the Acropolis, which needs no introduction. Our experience itself does, however: March 25 is a national Greek holiday. I knew this when booking our time in Athens, but just assumed it would mean people in the streets. Instead, it meant that the majority of tourists were out watching the 10 a.m. parade while we romped about the ruins. There were still people, but the agora was practically empty (this might possibly be because it is boring, but that is not truee!) and the Acropolis had many tourists but not enough to describe it as crawling with them. Another benefit of this holiday was that all sites were FREE!! That's right, we saved at least 20 Euro for the agora, Acropolis, and then the temple to Zeus Olympian which is down the backside of the Acropolis and across the main street. The Acropolis was pretty awesome, just seeing how big the Parthanon was, though (and this is equal to our Castle snobbery) I think the Egyptian temples were almost cooler because you could walk through the columns/pylons and such. And there was a huge crane that was in the middle of it, ruining the mysticism of it all.

But still very cool! As was the Odeion of Herodes Atticus (thank you guide book)for explaining its proper name), which was basically a giant theater, still mostly there, which was extremely impressive. From there we walked down the wide walkway to Hadrian's arch (between K knowing the Greek letters and me knowing what they're referring to, we definitely have figured a lot of the sign plaques out) and the remaining Corinthian columns of the temple to Zeus Olympian. We ate our lunch here, finding entertainment in the fact that this thing called the sun feels wonderful when you wear these things called shorts and it actually TURNS YOUR SKIN DARKER/RED. Weird, right? Clearly not in England any more.

By this time it was about 2, so we headed around aiming roughly for the flea market that we passed at the base of the agora. We walked through the Platka which the book I have described as such: “If Athens maintains anything of its old charm, the Platka is it.” It's cutesy, touristy, typical European cafes and bazaar shops, etc. which we looked through as we passed.

After panicking for a bit because we could not find any grocery type stores, we bought what we thought was going to be lunch for tomorrow, but instead has become dinner tonight owing to the fact that we found a grocery store immediately after purchasing the food.

We made a quick getaway from the sketchy parts back down the street to our hotel, where we have since been due to the fact that we spent 6 hours today walking around. And the sunburns that we may have, though we are extremely lucky and couldn't have asked for nicer weather for running around Athens.

K, imitating obnoxious poses from a tourist immediately preceding us