Acropolis, Athens -The Archaic Remains

How we ended up in Athens-We had a six hour stopover in Athens on our way to Santorini, so we decided to make full use of the time. What went on for five hours seemed like we spent an entire day there 😛

Our Journey : We left for Athens from Amsterdam on Friday morning . It was a 2 hour flight which quite was not as easy as it seemed. We all learned a lesson the hard way at the airport.  At the security check our deodorants, moisturizers, sunscreens were seized as the quantity was more than 100 ml. Not that we did not know this but we were going on Ryainair flight(Athens to Santorini) which only allowed cabin baggage  of 10 Kg, no check in  baggage and we had to lose all our  liquid stuff at the security. We arrived at Athens and it was relief feeling the 20 Deg warmth and being away from the cold chilly Amsterdam Weather. We painstackingly figured out how to go to Acropolis.  It was funny seeing the greek alphabets which looked like math equations. No wonder they say “it feels like greek and latin”

Funny incidents: We got a group pass to travel and entered the train and realized we had to checked in the ticket. The fine for not checking in was 20 times the ticket price. The train was about to leave; we were in a dilemma and in the last moment decided to leave the train to checkin. A friend had to run upstairs to get it stamped. We managed to get into the train and the first thing we see is the ticket check police! We saved ourselves 600 Euros

We had to change metros.  We got down from one and got into another and the door closes before answesha could enter. We left her and travelled to our destination! She did not have the ticket and we were hoping she would catch the next metro and arrive without getting checked by the police and luckily she did!

Acropolis

We arrived at Syntegma to go to Acropolis from airport after an hour. Contrary to what I had thought Acropolis was a complex which contained many ancient buildings and not jus a broken building with pillars. And it closes at 2:45 PM!!

We thought who closes a historical monument so early! We had to hurry up. The building was on top of a mountain. The entrance to the Acropolis was a monumental gateway called the Propylaea.

South of this was the Temple of Athena Nike.

The remains had some serious reconstruction going on with cranes around it. Overlooking the buildings we could see the beautiful Athens city with cream colored houses and maroon roofs.. We saw a lot of Mediterranean cats 😛  who loved getting stroked ! We sat there admiring the landscape.

Unfortunate moment for me while coming down, I slipped and fell on the ground. We planned on going through the Plaka street! And it was just around the corner. It was an artistic street with souvenir shops and scenic restaurants. Looked like those in Bollywood songs.We shopped for souvenirs there.

                                              

We managed to do all this in our 5 hour layover. We reached the airport to catch the flight to Santorini on time.

To read about the Santorini trip click here-  Santorini- A Break from reality