Saturday, August 6, 2016

Remembering Athens, Greece

This was my first view of the Acropolis.


I take that back. It was my second view. The first was at night, when I finally arrived in Athens after a day in Geneva, when I stepped out of the subway station and turned my head.


Neither is a good pic, but I won't forget how I felt when I saw what I had wanted to see when I was a kid. Clearly I wasn't ready for the sight when I took them.

Here is the post from the Acropolis visit.
Here is the post from the Agora.

And here are some more pics of Athens that I never posted. There are a lot of them.

On my first morning in Athens, I got up early, as I had gone to bed early because the time change was throwing me off, but it wasn't a good sleep. It was a Sunday, and nothing was open. I needed coffee. I'm tired of just thinking about it. I wandered around for quite awhile looking for some, but the Acropolis wasn't open yet, anyway. Here are some pics from my wandering. I can say that I wasn't impressed with what I saw.






The city was very familiar, though. Very familiar...

Then I saw the Acropolis again, and it was new. And so, so old.

I headed up that way.



church and mosque

inside the church


Graffiti was everywhere. Pretty sad. There I stood, on the birthplace of Western civilization, where democracy first flourished and philosophy trained the human mind, and vandalism was everywhere.


old Ottoman mosque


When I saw the dogs, I remembered the strays of Bulgaria and what happened to me there. I was afraid.


The closer I got, the faster I walked. I felt like running. But I wouldn't be running up that hill.



old library





Temple of Hephaestus
I made my way to the top of the Acropolis. It was quite a climb.





From here, I entered the Acropolis. Read more.



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