Athens, Greece

Friday 15th June

We took a really good walking tour of Ancient Greece with Maria from ‘Athens Walking Tours”. She put about 3 ~6,000 years of Greek history, religion, culture, myths and legends into a clear, succinct and intelligible perspective for us and the other family who joined us. We spent most of the time at the Acropolis but she also touched on the Temple of Zeus, Byzantine & Greek Orthodox churches and The Ancient Forum, or Agora. It was hot though…36C so as soon as this finished we headed back to the pool in our hotel where we cooled off for the next few hours.

By 4pm we thought it would be safe to venture out again… big mistake…still very hot but we persevered. We took the metro out to Kerameikos, an ancient cemetery at the outer walls of the ancient city. Again, the sheer history of the place was overwhelming: we were standing beside and looking at walls and tombs that dated back to almost 500 BC! From there we walked over to the Ancient Agora/Forum, or marketplace, to have a better look. It was from here that Socrates and St Paul preached their ideas and that democracy was ‘nutted out’. We then headed to the Psiri for dinner before wandering home.

Saturday 16th June

Mark, Tom and I went to the Archeological Museum which was fascinating. Most of the finds from the Mycenaean Kingdom, which we had visited a few days before, including the 14 kg of gold masks etc are stored here.

Mark then took the kids to the produce markets…not something you really want to do on a hot day…up around 40C today.

We all went to the pool before planning to go back to the Psiri area for dinner.