Greece - Acropolis, Athens.

 Breakfast in the apartment and then we set off, glad that we now could take the metro down to the Acropolis. We have 3 days here, Acropolis/Agora today, National Archaeological Museum tomorrow and we have not sorted out the last day yet.

Tiny kiosk selling bread and cookies on the street. There are so many gorgeous looking bakeries around the square we had thought we might have "second breakfast" but actually didn't feel like it and descended right into the metro.

Lots of archaeological finds from excavating the metro,

some are facsimiles displayed in the stations.

We found a Tourist Info near the entrance. Not a lot of help but we did get a map of the city so we don't have to rely on Mrs Google Maps if she starts acting up again.

Entrance is usually 20 Euro (no discount for seniors) but from November until the end of March it is half price. A huge school group enter just before us but we knew they would be maintaining a different pace.

We didn't go through the main entrance, but a side entrance that took us past the Sanctuary and Theatre of Dionysus (God of wine, fruit, insanity, religious ecstasy and theatre)

Past the Stoa (covered walkway)

Walking higher

the city started to spread out below us

with the Acropolis still high above.

The first tortoise.

The Greek tortoise (Testudo graeca), also known as the spur-thighed tortoise, can be found all over the Mediterranean countryside, and even in the middle of cities such as Athens. From my-favorite-planet.de

Another theatre on the slope below the Acropolis. This one with the seating area entirely restored.

From here it was a steady climb

to the magnificent entrance.

We had talked to a man, while climbing up, who said he had arrived at 8am and there were few people but now, at about 10:30, there were thousands. As the large school groups moved off, it thinned out a bit

but it is a huge area and

can easily manage

the kinds of numbers that we had today.

From the entrance we turned right to go around the hill top counter clockwise.

It was a beautiful, blue sky, 19 degree day

but photos that I tried to take of the massive surrounding city

didn't come out well because of the obvious brown smog. The weather network listed the air quality as poor and liable to cause throat irritation (with Rick and I both experienced later in the day)

I've turned Rick into a birder. Standing in front of one of the greatest buildings of antiquity and he was trying to get a photo of a Magpie!

There was a massive restoration and reconstruction project underway on the Parthenon itself

and large information boards described the attempts to undo the harm done by earlier projects, time and pollution, to stabilize the structure and to rebuild with some of the material now identified as belonging to the structure.

There were huge piles of stone destined for the temple, cranes, scaffolding, even a short railway to move the heavy material. Rick commented that the Greeks had had none of that when they built it.

It wasn't easy to get a photo

without some of that construction equipment in it.

I took nearly 170 pictures today and although I have gone through them and culled quite a few, I still want to post a lot more. So this is enough for one blog post. More will follow.

We were there.