Greece 2010 - July 4th - Athens

August 4th was our day to visit Athens - we played hot-dog to the acropolis' stifling tourist oven.

Propylon of the acropolis.

Erechtheion.

Parthenon.  It's impossible to get a shot of this without a thousand people in front.

It's pretty impressive to see these things just hanging out in the middle of town, especially since there are virtually no high-rise buildings in Athens.  I tried to dredge up a comparison or an analogy between the Acropolis and the cross on top of Mount Royal, but I seem to be lacking the proper mathematical operators.

Athens behind the Odeon of Herodes Atticus.

The Odeon of Herodes Atticus from a little further back.

As you can see, they were setting up for that evening's concert.  That place is like ~1850 years old (with some restoration) and is still very much in active use.

There's another theater on the same slope, but it's been decommissioned.

Theater of Dionysus Eleuthereus.

Then we wandered down the hill and saw some more ruins and old buildings.

I believe this to be the church of Agiou Apostoloi, but I'm not positive.

After much {p|r}anting and profuse sweating, we found some shade in the National Garden.  It's a beautiful, public place.  At the moment, however, its most important attribute may have been the fact that the dudes out front sold ice-cold water.

National Gardens.

National Gardens.

The day ended with us packing our bags and getting on the subway in the hopes of hitting up the port of Piraeus for some overnight ferry action.  However, as luck would have it, gremlins had eaten the end of the subway line (or at least that's what I made out from the explanation the driver gave over the PA system in Greek), and we got dumped topside at the intersection of Not The Port and Not Much Time Left.  We employed the services of a Taxi Warrior in order to rectify the situation, and rectify he did, using his trusty gas pedal, a deep knowledge of honk-sparring, and some fanciful gesturing with his left arm out the driver's window.  It all culminated with the cutting off of literally 20+ cars in a left-turn lane, a burst of acceleration down the quay, and dropoff at the boat itself with entire seconds to spare.

As the boat sailed to Santorini, we tried to sleep.  Truth be told, that was one of my worst nights - the seats reclined about five degrees (so it was difficult to sleep while sitting), the armrests didn't budge (so it was difficult to sleep across multiple seats), and the carpet doubled as an acarian farm (so sleeping on the ground caused sneezing fits).  (This was an Anek Lines boat - the Blue Star Ferries ones we took later on were much nicer.  Live and learn.)