So much walking, so much to see

Holy guacamole...or should I say holy tzatziki! We walked so much yesterday, but really it didn't seem so. 

Today the plan is to visit the Monstraki area, which allegedly is the Soho of Athens. There also are some more ruins (surprise!) that we will visit.

As I said in my first post, we are located behind the acropolis, actually we are behind a hill, behind the acropolis. This hill is called Filopappou hill and surprise, surprise, there are ruins up there. It seemed like the perfect place to begin.

View from the top

It's a nice forested walk to the top of the hill. It meanders nicely so that you're not just walking up a hill. At the top the view is spectacular - oh, yeah and there's the funerary monument of Gaius Juluis Antiochus Philopappus some Greek dude who was big in Rome in the first century BC. The view was the real winner here with Athens sprawling on all sides, the Mediterranean sparkling just beyond the city and of course the crowning jewel of Athens just there in front of us: the Acropolis and its wondrous architectural masterpieces.


As we started to make our way down I saw something quite bizarre. A turtle. He was just wandering along minding his own...in the middle of a massive city. WTF? Was this someone's pet that they had released? What the hell was a turtle doing here? He didn't seem overly concerned though and went on his merry way. As did we. 

We made out way back down the hill towards the Monastraki area of Athens which is found on the other side of the Acropolis.


There was a light intermittent drizzle so we decided to stop for a coffee at a local cafe. Now, I don't usually drink coffee, but thought what the hell, lets have a Greek coffee. In fact, make it a double. Geez those things are so thick I almost had to chew it!


We wandered around Monstraki for a little while, it's full of little shops, and market stalls from army surplus to ''antiques''.
Within the Monastraki area is the Roman Agora (not to be confused with the Ancient Agora that we visited on our 2nd day).


When we arrived at the Roman Agora, there was a street dog wandering just inside the gate. He was rather large and quite furry - Malamute furry although not quite that big. I held out my hand so that he could smell me and made some encouraging noises so that he would want to come over to say hello (which he did). So here I am giving back of ear scratches to this lovely fellow when I hear from behind, ''Eww I can you believe she dares touch that THING'' It was a young man (he was speaking French), it pissed me off that he referred to this beautiful creature as a thing so I responded, ''Yes I dare. He's a very nice boy, who just wants a bit of attention.'' The young man then just said that he was afraid of dogs. hmph. My new furry friend was glad to get some lovin', and I was happy to comply.


The Roman Agora is much, much smaller than it's Greek counterpart, and was built between 11 and 19 BC. The biggest building there is Hadrian's library,built in 132 AD by, you guessed it, the Roman emperor Hadrian - of the famed Hadrian's wall in England/Scotland. This fella got around.

As I was taking photos in this place I saw another small wonder: another turtle. What the? Ok I had to find out. I went to see the lady who was making sure no one sat on the priceless ruins and I told her that there was a turtle wandering there. She laughed and said, ''Oh, yes! We have just one turtle here. At the Ancient Agora they have many.'' HUH? Apparently turtles are a fairly common thing here. Who knew! I thought they needed water to swim in and such but apparently they get their water content from the plants they eat. Turtles: today's favourite find.

There were also some great bits of mosaics. They are so intricate and colourful, it's hard to believe that they are almost 2000 years old.

After that we headed up town to another hill called Lycabettus hill. Allegedly there was a cable car that could bring you to the top. Who can say no to a cable car?
We stopped at the National Library to have a look (ok we stopped to use the bathroom), and it was so beautiful. We were only allowed just inside the door of the reading room and no photos were permitted, but wow. It has a glass roof and four stories of floor to ceiling books only along it's walls. In the middle it's the reading room and just on the ground floor. I wish I could have gone in there to have a look at all the books, but we had a hill to climb.


It was hot and sunny and humid by this point in the day. We made our way slowly up and up through a very fancy neighbourhood, towards this hill and it's wonderful cable car that would bear us effortlessly to the top. 
Turns out there is no cable car. It's all a big lie.
But we persisted and walked to the top anyway. Once there, we found a bunch of very tired, very hot people all trying to cram into any small space of shade they could find. The views would have been spectacular but because it was so humid there was a haze in the air.

By the time we made our way back down to earth we were ravenous. We caught our bus back to our neighbourhood so that we could make it back home fast for dinner. We were absolutely knackered.