It's only 2pm but we're already pooped. We did quite a lot today! Although we assigned a day for the Acropolis, we ended up moving through it rather quickly as we knew what we wanted to see. Also, a lot of things we wanted to see were closed to the public - the Temple of Athene Nike and the Herodeion. The Acropolis itself was an awesome sight - but the site is spoiled by the allowance of too many tour groups and school parties in at a time. 'Cattle market' springs to mind. I wouldn't mind that much, but we weren't allowed to be 'touristy' and pose for photographs on the sight. While I knew that we weren't supposed to, I still thought it was a little... strict...
From the Acropolis we saw the Greek Agora, so we decided to head down and take a look at it, particularly as we spotted a temple down there and it pretty much fell under our 'Greek Religion' project title.
Needless to say, we got completely and utterly lost somehow and ended up climbing the Hill of Nymphs. We saw an altar of Zeus up there as well as some random stoa and a Sanctuary of Pan. (http://www.greg-hand.com/pics/sanctuary_of_pan.jpg <- the floor mosaic we saw outside, the sanctuary itself was a cave but the relief inside of Pan with a nymph had either been removed or it was too dark to see it.)
Eventually, we found the Agora and immediately we headed for the Hephaiston (seen here with the Greek Agora in the foreground http://k43.pbase.com/v3/45/310145/2/49075005.Agora.jpg). It was a pretty awesome temple and while we were there we realised a few things - either the Greeks made the same scenes for metopes in Athens over and over inspired by the parthanon, or some handy restoration has happened. A lot of the scenes from the Parthanon's sculptures seemed repeated on the Hephaiston. We're going to research into this as it'll be important to our project.
We went to the Stoa of Attalos as well (in the Agora) while we were there. There wasn't much there that concerned us apart from an original vase by the painter Exekias. That only concerned us because we like him so much!
After the Agora we decided it was time to head back to the hostel, having done more than enough for the day and our aching feet hurting. Naturally we got lost and had to find our way back to the hostel with a map that doesn't name the streets - so we relied on a Greek couple who showed us the way XD
Walked past the Roman Agora and a lot of ruins that we don't know what they were. Then had gyros from a local vendor with tsatzuki in it <- they were lovely and cheap at only 2 euros. Today I spent a grand total of about 5 euros. That leaves a lot of my budget left for dinner! At least I can try something new...
Anything coated in tsatzuki would be nice actually...
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