How can you top the Acropolis? Once you’ve seen the best, the rest are second best, right? So, was today a let down day? Heck no! We had a list of things to see, the question was, which to do. The Ancient Agora site was high on our list, as was the Olympic Stadium. Everything else, Hadrian’s Library, Psyrii (a district in Athens), the National Archeology Museum, the National Gardens and others held about equal sway in our choice of things to see and do. We didn’t lay out our day like usual, we just decided to see the Ancient Agora site and then see where the day took us.
We moved the hands on our body clocks forward another hour and awoke at 7:00am. We were out the door a little after 8:55am. We walked down Ermou Rd to Monesterika Square, slipped out its backside and soon were at the Ancient Agora site by 9:30am.
The Agora site is directly below the pass between Mars Hill and the Acropolis. The path the people of Athens took up to the Acropolis from this, their town site leads right up the hill and is called the Pantheanic Way. Yesterday we explored the top of this road that leads to their Gods, today we explore the bottom half of the road where their city was, Athens.
We plugged one end of our earbuds into our ears and the other into our iPhones, brought up the Rick Steves Agora Tour, hit the play button and found a comfortable 2500 year old cut stone to sit on and listen to the introduction.
We visited the entire site, guided by Mr. Steves narration and really enjoyed the experience. At one point, while viewing the Thalos, we sat on some flat stones to listen to the narration. After a minute we heard someone yelling at us. Oops. Don’t sit on the ancient stones, whether roped off or not. We moved to a bench.
After two hours we both felt we really had a good understanding of life in Athens between 550BC and 200AD. With my eye, I could follow the Pantheanic
Way up to the Parthenon and imagine the procession up this road, thru this amazing marble town once a year to bring a wool blanket to their God and patron saint of the town, Athena. Super interesting. With the climate, olive trees, fresh air, stunning views and open country I can see why people liked living here.
Did I mention that we were literally the only ones here? There were docents and such spotted around the open fields of the Angora and the Stoa of Atalos, but no other visitors. Just Rick, Sally, me and the docents. As we were finishing up we did see a family near the Stoa, but that was it. We are spoiled beyond measure. It will be hard to suffer a crowd in future trips.
Agora. Check. Now what? Tomorrow we catch a ship to Santorini. We have our tickets, but not our required health form. I am able to download it to our phones, but can’t fill it out nor print it. With the subway to the port, Pireus, right here next to the Agora, we decided to do a dry run of our early morning journey tomorrow, go to the port pick up the health paper and check out the dock.
The metro only took 15 minutes and the Blue Ferries office was right across the street from the subway station. We waited almost the length of the subway ride in the office to get our form, then returned to Monestrika via the Metro. One hour elapsed time and a little peace of mind for our early morning run tomorrow.Sally had read Rick’s description of the Psyrii district, adjacent to the Monesterika Square. His book has a written tour, so with digital copy of the book in hand, we waded into the Psyrii district. Well worth it!! He has picked out the amazing things to see in this seedy yet gentrifying area. We had amazing bread rings at the bakery that supplies this area of Athens with baked goods and had the most amazing pastries/meat pies on the open square. We toured the open fruit and vegetable market and the open meat and fish market (amazing!) then began to head back to Monesterika Square when we realized we were fairly close to the National Archeology Museum, a must see according to Rick. Also, I noticed my phone was no longer getting data. It appears I had used my 3Gb allotment in 2 days. Wow, that went fast. This was deja vu all over again. I now remember having this same trouble on other trips. I hate running blind without data (maps, info, etc). Sally still had data.
We used her phone to navigate toward the museum, about a mile away. About halfway there we walked past an independent phone shop. We stopped in to see if the owner could interpret the texts I had gotten from the provider as the nearest Compote store was a mile in the wrong direction. He read through it all and said I must go to the store where I bought the data to refill my data. He pointed through his wall and said it was right behind his store. We walked around the block and found a branch of the chain store I had purchased the SIMM card from. We bought another 5 Gb each for 20 euro each and were back on our way. It was nice to have data again, especially as we are leaving Athens tomorrow morning and finding a shop to up our data might be difficult.
I went through the system settings on both our phones and turned off all data sucking apps, then put both on airplane mode, vowing not to take it off except for super brief intervals to access necessary data.
We arrived at the back of the museum and circled it to find the entrance. We checked my pack outside the entrance, entered, paid, used the restroom and then began our tour, again guided by Rick’s excellent audio tour. We had arrived at he museum about 3:30pm. It took us about 2 hours to do the tour and inspect the artifacts in the museum. It was wonderful and amazing! And . . .
You guessed it, Sally, me, Rick and the docents (plus about 5 other people). The place to check your bag is huge with hundreds of cubby’s and racks to hold everything. There were three bags, including mine.
We left the museum about 5:45pm. Originally, we had talked about taking an Uber back to our apartment, but we found we were only a mile away and almost on our road, so we decided to walk.
A quick rest at the apartment and Sally started dreaming about seeing the purple trees in the National Garden that we had seen from the observation area at the Acropolis.
We were back out the door about 7:15pm, in search of the purple trees. We walked to the National Garden and entered from the east side. It is surprising how thick the vegetation is in the garden, obscuring our view and making it difficult to spot a grove of purple trees. Sally started asking people along the paths if they knew where the purple trees were. From their information we got a general idea of which way to navigate through this 60 acre forest. After 20 minutes of searching we found the tree lined lane sporting these beautiful trees with purple blooms. A photography session ensued, but the lighting was not right to capture their beauty.
We walked home through the gardens, stopping for a Gyro sandwich and fries at a street side cafe in our neighborhood before continuing on to our apartment, arriving about 8:30pm. We both packed for a quick departure in the morning, then Sally researched more about the elements of our trip ahead and cleaned the apartment while I blogged. We were in bed about 11:00pm.
Our unplanned and incoherent day turned out fantastic. We learned about Agora and its connection to the Acropolis, got our sailing day tomorrow all prepared, visited the Psyrii district and ate amazing food, toured the Archeological Museum and explored the National Gardens and its amazing purple trees (Jacaranda Trees). We are so lucky, so spoiled, so fortunate. Life is good
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