Oct 19th - Oct 25th
On Saturday October the 19th we flew from Valetta, Malta to Athens Greece. Our flight was in the afternoon. We had to get up early and the owner of our airbnb drove us to the airport and dropped us off. We just stayed at he airport r the morning, it was pretty boring, but we got some computer stuff finished.
We got on our flight and it was a very quick and easy flight over.
When we got to Athens it was night time and we had a driver take us to the next airbnb. The apartment in Athens was small. It had a living room with a TV, a small kitchen and a few bedrooms. It had a nice backyard patio space. The only really good thing was that they had netflix, and we all watched a lot of TV! We haven't had much TV in a long time - it was kinda fun!
The next morning we got up and decided to start exploring Athens. We bought a metro pass that allowed us to travel anywhere on the Athens subway or tram or buses. It was super handy and we used it a lot. We also bought a Athens famous sites ticket so we could access all of the important historical sites.
Our first stop was, of course the Acropolis. We saw the famous Parthenon, the Erechtheum, with its beautiful Porch of the Karyatids, the Temple of Athena, the Theatre of Dionysus, and many other smaller sites. Most of the temples on the Acropolis were built around 450 BC, so they are close to 2500 years old.
I really liked it because I felt like I was travelling back in time. It was really hard at times because it was so crowed. It was a Sunday and a lot of Greek people, as well as tourists also come up to visit. This is the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, it is a stone theatre that was built originally in 161 AD and was totally renovated in 1950. It is still used for theatre productions today.
After we left he Acropolis, we headed into town and went for great Greek lunch. I discovered Tzatziki sauce and I loved it!! What an amazing lunch. YUMMY!
Over the next few days we decided to see one or two of the important historical monuments each day. So here are a few of the ones we saw.
This one is of the Temple of Hephaestus. Hephaestus was the God of fire, lava and blacksmiths. It was built in 415 BC and was an example of a Doric temple.
Here you can see the Temple of Hephastus taken from the top of the Acropolis. The temple is in the Ancient Agora, now you can only see the trees surrounding the area.
We also saw the incredible Olympion of Zeus and Hadrians Arch. There were originally 104 huge pillars holding up the large stones that we across the top. The temple took over 650 years to finish in around 150 AD by emperor Hadrian. His famous Arch stands near by. Unfortunately in 267 AD it was destroyed and pillaged by the barbarian invasion and never returned to its beauty. The bottom picture shows a fallen column. Until 1852, 16 of the original 104 columns stood, but a huge wind storm toppled it and it has remained there ever since. Archaeologists have reinforced the other remaining columns.
We decided to have a day off of old broken stone stuff (my mom loves this stuff - she could stay at this stuff all day, everyday if you left her) and we went to the beach.
We were able to take the tram right to the beach and had a wonderful day swimming and playing in the sand. The water was really nice temperature and there were a lot of fish. I think I got bitten by a little fish in the water, or maybe a crab. Anyway something made my foot hurt a lot. But after more swimming it was fine!
We went to the Ancient Agora of Athens. This was the original marketplace, meeting place and where most of the buildings were. They had rebuilt one of the buildings according to the written plans and foundations at the site. It was really neat to see how the building would have looked. I felt like I was better able to picture what the other building would have looked like. Inside the building they had made it into a museum. We saw lots of coins, pots, lamps and funeral urns.
A really neat spot we stopped was the Panathenaic Stadium. It's name means "beautiful marble" and is the only stadium built entirely out of marble. It was originally built in 144 AD and could hold 50,000 people. It fell into disrepair and in 1869 it was excavated, repaired and in 1896 it hosted the first Modern Olympic games. In 2004, when Greece hosted the Olympics, it was the finishing point for the Marathon race.
Athens was an amazing city to visit and we were able to see so many incredible things. What a lot of history in one small place.
Tia and Mari
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