What a day!

This was the site from the bus stop at the bottom of the Acropolis.

We had not intended to visit this classic site today, after all all we wanted to do was to ride the buses. Hopon Hopoff buses that is. Our usual first job is to sign up for one of these tours and scope out the City we are visiting. But the Athens tour  has four routes - an all day job. But when we had finished the Blue Line the terminus being at the Acropolis and finding out that the the next route - the Red Line, was going to be three quarters of an hour coming in Doreen suggested that "We are going to be here for a while why don't we do the Acropolis today?" A predictable suggestion as Doreen doesn't do sights and museums well and she obviously didn't want to come back again. So off we set, up the hill to the ticket office and was pleasantly surprised that despite predictions from all the guide books make the site was not really crowded and the sun wasn't all that hot. The cash kiosk line was much shorter so we whizzed through and climbed the marble steps to the first Temple. One thing we discovered very quickly - marble is slippery and made the climb a little dodgy.

Through the first gate/Temple we saw the plateau had only one site that was not in ruins. The Parthenon was scaffolded on one end and was obviously under some sort of reconstruction. Just how much will be done is under debate, but the Turks certainly blew this place up in the 1600s. We stayed about half an hour, enough time to wonder the wonder and walk from one end of the site to the other.

Coming down the marble more carefully than when we went up the Red Line was waited for, boarded and we toured the Piraus area. Halfway around this route our stomachs caught up with us and we stopped at a place called Mikromilano. It looked liked a marina left over from the Olympics and the view from the bar/cafe, called BeerCheers was picturesque and Islandy certainly not downtown Athens.

If you ever have to use transit or taxis inn the rush hour expect to be late. It was  not a fun trip in the sun on the top of a sightseeing bus, especially if you had seen the sites a couple of hours earlier - hey all we wanted to do was get back to the Hotel.

Another sight seen today was Hadrians Gate a Roman relic