The hotel was very nice, even though the cab driver had cast some doubts about the neighborhood and the ambiance. The beds were firm and comfortable, and the bathrooms very clean and well-kept.
The first night in Athens, a big city with plenty of city noises and loud people, we were all tired from the marathon (how's that for a Greek reference) plane trip. In the middle of the night our phone rang; when I finally located the device in the strange room, it was Rosi, beside herself with anxiety. She heard somebody shouting outside, and the more it kept her up, the more meaning she lent to the shouting. She can't understand a word of Greek; what if the guy is shouting “fire?!!” Yoyi said to me, “Go get Rosi and bring her over her; she's a basket case.” She spent the rest of the night in our room. Of course, she fell right to sleep when she came over, but her snoring kept both Yoyi and me from sleeping very well. We were contemplating yelling “fire” ourselves.
Breakfast at the hotel was simple, but bountiful. Coffee with hot milk, three varieties of dry cereals (to please the Americans, no doubt), several types of bread, hard boiled eggs, canned fruit and a bowl of yogurt, and juices.
On June 5, the Acropolis and related sites do not charge admission. I tried to confirm this with our hotel desk person, who assured me that it is not the case. "Every first Sunday, it is free, but certainly not today." So we decided not to push ourselves too much, not plan to see the Acropolis, and took off on a walking tour, stopping periodically (frequently) to shop or at least to look. Anyhow, I figured, since it's raining, it would be a shame to buy a ticket to the site today, and get rained out, wasting our ticket.
We walked from the hotel past the city hall and crossed Odos Athinas (Athenas St.), pretty much the heart of commercial Athens. We crossed the large plaza and entered the National Bank of Greece, where we changed money. The bank building is a treasure itself, from the early part of the 20th century, if my dating instincts are correct, with marble floors, huge staircases, lined with statues, and high corniced ceilings.
Then we walked down Athenas, passing tons of hardware stores (each specializing in a particular area of hardware: hinges and knobs; plumbing; plumbing fixtures; electrical; tools; high-end chrome and polished fixtures; kitchen appliances; etc, etc.) clothing stores, kitchenware stores, pet stores, tavernas,.... Often three or four of the same kind of store would be in the same stretch of storefronts, directly competing with each other.
We entered the central market and ogled the meat hanging from hooks, and watched the butchers cleave the meat for customers. The sold beef, lamb, goat, pork, rabbit, and who knows what else. They displayed the tastiest looking innards, including tripe, intestines, lungs, hearts, testicles, livers, and other unrecognizable items. From there we went into the fish section, where you could buy imported (frozen) fish and a variety of local species. Prices ran from expensive to very reasonable. The most ubiquitous local seafood was squid and octopus. The local, small. tunas were beautiful and very cheap. Dried fish, roe, and other fish-related delicacies were also on sale.
On our visit to the central market in Athens, we passed a poultry vendor, and just as we passed, he dropped a chicken on the floor. He made some perfunctory moves as if he would discard it, as long as we were close by. But as soon as he thought we were out of view, he put the chicken back with the others. Oh, well, it's going to be cooked isn't it?
We crossed the street to enter a few cheese shops, where they sold not only from blocks of cheese, but also feta of varying firmness and from both cow and sheep/goat from barrels. Yogurt, thicker than Breakstone's sour cream, was scooped from large bowls.
Then there were the vendors of nuts, dried fruit, and beans, who also sold some spices like sticks of cinnamon as well as seeds.
Having eaten our fill (with our eyeballs), we went on down Athenas to Montestiraki square, where we were caught in the rain, and we rushed under an awning to wait out the downpour.
Starting on our walking tour, we came upon the tiny 11th century Church of Kapnikarea, which we entered to appreciate the Byzantine architecture. We continued up the street to visit the main city cathedral, and walked until we finally sat for lunch, mainly to avoid another rainstorm.
Passing more shops and tavernas, we eventually got to the Monument of Lysicrates, looking similar to the base of a trophy you might have on your shelf, but 20 feet tall, built in 334 BC by a choirmaster to display the prize his choir had won at a competition. This is the only such monument surviving from many that had lined the erstwhile street.
We wandered through Anafiotika, a village built on the slopes of the Acropolis by transplanted villagers from the island of Anafi in the 19th century. Tiny lanes among the haphazardly situated houses led us through a section of town that is now "gentrifying." We were getting close to 1/4 of the way up the Acropolis at this point, but since it had been raining off and on, we decided not to go; after all, if we purchase an admission, and must leave due to rain, we will have blown a bunch of money. So we went down the hill until we got to the Roman Forum.
The huge Roman Forum used to be entered by a grand arch. You could still see the rows of columns that defined what had been the stoa (colonnaded gallery). At the far end there was the Tower of the Winds. Apparently nobody knows what it was for. It had sundials and a water clock. Oh, by the way, there was a Roman latrine on the grounds. While the holes were preserved through the centuries, the graffiti on the walls fell down with the walls.
We struck up a conversation with the people in the ticket booth at the Roman Forum, asking to buy a 4-day ticket to all the historical sites. They would not sell us a ticket. Why? Because the Acropolis and all related sites were free today, the 5th of June. We were burned! I had been right! We could have seen all the Acropolis sites free today! And we had not taken advantage of it....
So we rushed up to the Acropolis. “We are going to hike all the way up there????” Troopers that we are, we started up the hill, and were barely winded when we made it to the top. Along the way, we picked up a lone tourist from Boca Raton and the four of us toured the Acropolis. He was in Athens for a conference of philosophers. He specialized in ancient Greek language.
On the way down from the Acropolis we entered the Ancient Agora, and explored the restored stoa, and walked the site, ending up at the temple of Thission. My guide book said there would be the remains of a synagogue on the agora below the temple, but we found nothing but a mention of that possibility in one of the signs explaining the ruins.
On our way back to the hotel, we passed the Library of Hadrian, with its one-piece columns (unlike the columns of the ancient temples that were made up of sections).
Back to take a short nap at the hotel before going out to dinner at a taverna, where we had tzatziki, and gyro – way too much food to finish.
Tired to the bone, we finished the day relatively early, in order to get a good night's sleep.
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