Athens: final city on this adventure

Phillip and I arrived in Athens, Greece, two days ago. Athens is the final city to visit on our adventure that began on April 11 with our departure from home.  Athens is preparing us for summer in Texas; the high temperature here yesterday and today: 104 degrees. Although Athens has a lot of sights to see, we returned to our air-conditioned hotel room by 1 pm because it is just too hot and the streets are too crowded to be out and about. The main item to see, but not via a tour inside, was the Acropolis, a UNESCO World Heritage site. We walked about three blocks south from our hotel and began to see the Acropolis over the buildings and trees.

north side of the Acropolis and Parthenon

Before arriving at steps that would take us closer to the Acropolis, we came to the ruins of Hadrian's Library.

Hadrian's Library, built AD 132

The Acropolis is a complex of buildings, including the Parthenon, on a high plateau. The word "acropolis" means "highest city," and different buildings have existed on the mountain since even before the Greeks erected the famous ones that we celebrate today. As we walked closer, we encountered something we've found all around the Balkans... stairs. 

We had excellent views of Athens as we climbed our way up and around the mountain, including a view of a fortress in the distance on another hill.

Phillip and I got as close as we could to the structures on the Acropolis, but that meant also going down the mountain on the east side. 

Phillip letting faster travelers go ahead of us on the stairs down

The access on the east side put us close to the Acropolis's structures. 

The entrance to visit the Acropolis was on the south side. A few thousand of our closest friends were there, waiting in lines. We did not get a ticket to wait a few hours in the sun to walk inside and wander around in the sun. We were happy to take photos from outside and below the Acropolis. 

We continued around the exterior and found Areopagus Hill, free access up a metal staircase to an area to get pictures of the Acropolis and the structures on it, such as the Parthenon. The Parthenon (constructed during the 5th century BC) is a temple dedicated to Athena, goddess of wisdom and war and namesake of Athens.

view of Acropolis from Areopagus Hill

We could also see more ruins in the distance. 

We walked the entire circumference of the Acropolis, sometime close to the mountain, sometimes a distance away. It wasn't terribly hot yet, so we continued exploring Athens. Heading for the Olympic stadium, we walked thru a park, missing the park exit that I'd planned to take. The exit we did take put us on the street at the back entrance of the presidential palace just as the ceremonial guards were moving on the sidewalk. From a shaded low wall, we watched for about fifteen minutes:

These two guards were monitored by a real guard in camo clothes across the street. 

The uniformed guards completed their choreographed steps which included a return to their guard posts.

We later saw six ceremonial soldiers making the same exaggerated leg movements at the Greek Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but since we had seen it while sitting in the shade at the palace, we didn't stand in the sun to watch them. With these guards in the shade at their guard post, we continued on to the Panathenaic Stadium, the site of the first modern Olympic games in 1896. 

During this Balkans trip, we walked down the 1984 Olympic bobsled run. On previous adventures, we went to the 1972 Munich Olympic venues, and we've been to the Lausanne, Switzerland, Olympic Museum. 

Today, we walked to other ancient Greek locations. We saw a structure in the distance from Areopagus Hill, so we found it today, the Temple of Hephaestus. 

Temple of Hephaestus

We passed the ruins of the wells that were below the Acropolis, with archeologists currently working there.

archaeologists at work

As in other cities, specifically Sofia, Bulgaria, and its Roman ruins, ancient ruins were unearthed when the subway and modern buildings were built. 

ancient Greek ruins at an office building

Since this is my last post for this trip, a few Greek food pictures and a story. 

On our first evening in Athens, we were looking for a grocery store to buy snacks and wine for our hotel room. While out, we stopped for dinner at a sidewalk restaurant on a minor street. Our waitress only spoke a few words of English, but she chattered to us in Greek as if we understood. We each ended up with this delicious plate of gyro pork on top of pita bread with the tzatziki sauce, tomatoes and onions to make our gyros. And French fries! Our second night, we went to a different restaurant, and I got a Greek salad, since we were in Greece...

Tonight, we returned to the same gyro restaurant as our first night and the waitress remembered us. She again spoke extensively to us in Greek, and we just smiled and nodded. Instead of the huge plate of food, we each ordered just the gyro sandwich, which was still too much food. I ordered wine, asking for red wine, but the waitress apparently said the white wine was better or maybe white went better with the gyro. In any event, I ended up with delightful white wine, in a chilled blue metal cup which she showed me to pour into the shot glass to drink. I've never been served or consumed wine from a tin cup and shot glass before.

Tomorrow, we fly home with a four-hour flight to London followed by a ten-hour flight to DFW. We are scheduled to arrive around 8:30 pm. Our bodies will think it is 4:30 am, so our goal is to stay awake as much as we can on the flight so we sleep at home as late as we can. I expect a few days of off-schedule sleep as we overcome the jet lag. 

Phillip and I have enjoyed this trip. At 2-1/2 months, it has been our longest. I was concerned before we left about not scheduling and booking hotels beyond Italy, but everything worked out well. We had internet at each hotel, and I always had cellular internet access as a back-up so I could book one city ahead as we traveled. A few tips about traveling in the Balkans:

-When traveling by bus, verify the bus drop-off point as well as the pick-up point (refers to our 2-mile hike to town for our first Shkodar, Albania stay)

-Paper ticket is the rule for bus travel. We always got a paper bus ticket because we bought them at the bus station, usually the day before we needed them. We saw other travelers who only had an on-line ticket then had to pay again to get a paper ticket before they could get on the bus.
-Spelling of city names changes. Shkoder is the same as Shkodar, Shkodra, and Skodra. 
-Public restrooms, especially at bus and train stations, will charge for use, from a high of 1.2 euros ($1.40) in Italy to 0.30 euro ($0.35) in Kosovo. The average charge is the equivalent of US fifty cents. They could be called toilets, toluates, or WCs (water closet, most common designation) but all use the standard male and female figures to differentiate them. 
-Beer is cheaper than water. In Italy, wine is cheaper than water.
-Espresso is the standard coffee. "Americano" coffee if offered is probably espresso and water. Brewed coffee as we know it is a rarity.

- Check suitcase wheels regularly. I did, so we had no problems during this trip, but we have gotten trash in the wheels on previous trips. I'll still need new handle-side wheels when we return as the cobblestones have done a number of the plastic wheel mounts. 
- Google maps are 2-D. The world is 3-D. I noticed this time that Google sometimes indicated, in itsy bitsy print, that my trip had an elevation change of X feet. This notation, however, only appeared when I input a walk up a mountain to a fortress. It did not tell me that we would be rolling our suitcases up a hill or carrying them up flights of stairs. 
And my final tip, one from every other trip as well:

-Nice people are everywhere. Talk to people, smile with them, and you will get so much happiness in return and will learn so much. In Trieste, Italy, I took a picture for a woman of her and her companions on the boardwalk. She was from Novi Sad, just north of Belgrade. We struck up a conversation and when she heard that we were going to visit Belgrade, she invited us to visit her in Novi Sad. Unfortunately, we didn't make it to Novi Sad, but it was a nice offer. Conversing with our hotel clerks was wonderful. Two separate times, the clerk gave us treats for our trip. Another time the clerk gave us extra cokta (more than the hotel's standard offering for its guests). We didn't chat with them for the treats, but to be friendly and learn from them. From the Sarajevan hotel clerk we learned that Sarajevans wish the city would require that the war's bullet holes be patched in the residential areas. They understand the war remnants left in the central city but would rather that the neighborhoods be allowed to move on after twenty years. The young Egyptian couple on the Kotor boat tour were very nice with a modern outlook on life. The Greek waitress (I think she and her husband owned the restaurant) was full of joy when we returned to her restaurant and it didn't matter that we couldn't speak the same language, she was just bubbly and happy. 

We look forward to our next adventures! We have five cruises booked and will begin planning our next land travel. Perhaps a return to SE Asia, perhaps Africa and a photo safari. We'll see!