March 6 - Last free day

Today was another free admission day at all public attractions and museums. The last one while we will be here, so it was a big day. We have now visited everything that we wanted to see and all on days that it was free admission. 


We started the day by going to our local farmers market to buy oranges, cucumbers and tomatoes. After dropping the groceries at the apartment, we headed to the Acropolis museum where we had planned on spending an hour or so. In order to preserve the archeological site the museum was built on a series of columns. 

Excavations under the museum

Sample of old pottery - 500BC and beyond

Part of the sculptures from the Parthenon

Tools of the trade

Model of equipment used for heavy lifting

Lego version of the Acropolis

Before we noticed we had been there over 2 hours, so we moved on to see the theater of Dionysus which we had missed on Sunday. It wasn't very big and not much to see so that didn't take too long.

Dionysus

Theater of Dionysus

VIP seating

Rollande waiting for the show to start

We then moved on towards the center of the city to see Hadrian's library.  It was a bit bigger than what we could see from the street. But still didn't take too much time to visit. 

Hadrian's library

Greek turtle

From there it was just a short climb to the Roman Agora and the tower of the winds. 

Roman Agora entrance

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Rollande in front of the Tower of the winds

Jacques taking a break

We finished with the ancient Agora a ways ahead of us. We entered the grounds at what I think was the national archaeological museum and it turns out it was the way to go to see the ancient Agora. When we first entered, we wondered if the path we were on would take us all the way to the Temple of Hephaestus. It looked much further than it was.

 

Stoa of Attalos

Temple of Hephaestus

View of the Acropolis from the Ancient Agora

There are so many ancient sites that they are all starting to get muddled in my head. Everyone of them has old columns and benches and headless statues. It's at the point that I don't remember where I saw what. At least the pictures have times on them, so we know what order we went to visit.

It is mind boggling when you look at all the work they did and that was 25 centuries ago. 500 years B.C. with all the machines and technology that we now have at our disposal we still do not make or produce things that intricate. The carvings must have taken lifetimes to do.

On the way back before heading to the metro we walked along some little side streets full of little stores selling all sorts of stuff. I will want to go back just to browse when we have more time.

We were glad to arrive back at the apartment at the end of the afternoon for a break.

Later, we walked up to Philopappos Hill to watch the sunset before calling it a day.

Sunset over Athens

Wendy and André are arriving tomorrow afternoon for a couple of days so there might not be any news from us before Monday.