On day 1, we traveled around Athens. The most important place is of course Acropolis. There was a kite festival near Acropolis and people could get free kites to play. Yansen and Sadnan got two and they tried to fly those kites, but were not quite successful. I myself took some photos of some strange kites and then went to Acropolis to start my discovery.
Here are the places that I visited:
The stone theater Odeon of Herodes Atticus.
Erechtheum temple
Parthenon, a temple built for the Greek goddess Athena
From Acropolis, we could see the Temple of Hephaestos and the Temple of Olympian Zeus. We first finished visiting the Temple of Hephaestos, then decided to have lunch before going to the Temple of Olympian Zeus.
There are many restaurants beside Acropolis. I first thought that it would be more expensive than the restaurant where we ate on day 0, but I was wrong. With €5.90, Yansen got a big dish of chicken while I got a chicken gyros with €6.xx (don’t remember exactly what the price was). And water was also cheaper. It was only €0.50 for a 0.5l bottle of water while the price was €1 in the fancy restaurant (day 0). I also found out that water in normal restaurant was sold with the same price as in the street. Usually it isn’t the case in my country :D If you are in a restaurant in my country then they will charge you more than the same thing that you can buy in the street.
On the way to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, we passed Syntagma square and luckily at the same time when the guards in front of the Parliament changed. I don’t know exactly how long they have to stand in one time guarding; I guess it should be at least 4 hours. And it was very strict; they can not even correct their clothes but need help from another officer. The nice thing is that: after the guards finish changing, tourists can take photos with them. Here is our photo with one of the two guards in a traditional dress.
Then we went through the National Park, the Zappion Building and arrived at the Temple of Olympian Zeus. For me, this was the most interesting place on day 1: many pillars gathered in a corner while other two very tall pillars were standing next to a fallen-down one; and different people might have different feeling for this view. An emotional person might think that the tall pillars are trying to encourage/help the fallen-down one to stand up, or just stay next to it to console the fallen-down one for not being able to stand up again anymore and make it not alone. By contrast, an aggressive person might think that the standing pillars are laughing at the fallen-down one, saying that “We the only pillars able to stay here, this is a very difficult position to survive and we did it, we are the winners, you lost…” Or you might have another opinion :P
This is the photo of the Temple of Olympian Zeus that I took from Acropolis with 6 times zoom.
After visiting the Temple of Olympian Zeus, we decided to go to Piraeus to find more information to our next destination: Delphi. Interestingly, after asking some travel agents, we decided to buy a trip to three islands for the next day to Poros, Hydra and Aegina. It was an interesting trip, but also very expensive. We had one of the fanciest days in our lives so far, and also learnt some experiences of how travel agents make money from this kind of trip. Click here to discover our second day in Greece.