{"id":33,"date":"2012-07-22T20:53:33","date_gmt":"2012-07-22T20:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=33"},"modified":"2012-08-03T13:22:16","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T13:22:16","slug":"greece-day-3-athens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=33","title":{"rendered":"Greece – Day 3: Athens"},"content":{"rendered":"

On our first day in Athens we did a walking tour of the city, so today we decided to concentrate on three specific sites – the National Archaeological Museum, the Roman Agora, and the Acropolis Museum.<\/p>\n

The Archaeological Museum was fascinating.\u00a0 With so MUCH history accumulated in this city, it’s hard to imagine you could plant a tomato bush in your backyard without unearthing the ruins of Atlantis or the like.<\/p>\n

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Also, apparently Matt Groening was around in ancient Macedonia.<\/p>\n

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After a tasty lunch on a little street known as “souvlaki row,” we headed to the Roman Agora, where you can just wander about and poke things, which is a bit staggering to Americans used to the hands-off approach of museums and archaeological sites in this country.<\/p>\n

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At this point, the heat started getting to us again, so we headed to the Acropolis Museum<\/a>.\u00a0 They didn’t allow photography, so we don’t have any pictures from there, but it’s a stunning building.\u00a0 It was built expressly to convince the British Museum to return the enormous hunk of the Parthenon they stole in the early 1800s.\u00a0 To date, it hasn’t worked.<\/p>\n

For our last trick, we hiked up yet ANOTHER hill in the Athens area, this one just south of the Acropolis.\u00a0 The view from the top was again amazing.<\/p>\n

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Just to the right of the Parthenon, you can see the hill we hiked up at sunset on the first day.\u00a0 For dinner, we walked down a long street just north of the Agora which is lined with outdoor tavernas.\u00a0 Every restaurant in Athens has a tout whose job it is to stand outside and hassle you to stop and eat in their establishment.\u00a0 It’s quite annoying.\u00a0 We eventually settled on a restaurant that had an attractive sans-serif sign, and a less intrusive tout than most.<\/p>\n

Good choice.\u00a0 For twenty euros we got feta and spearmint dumplings in pomegranate sauce, salad with Mykonian cheese, chicken with figs, 12-hour-cooked pork with lime and basil cream, and a lovely chocolate mousse with mastiha.\u00a0 And a view of the Parthenon.<\/p>\n

Statistics:<\/p>\n