It was day #110 of 115, and I was ready to make up for the last 3 weeks of limited adventuring with a full day of sightseeing. We gave the usual cursory invitation to Wes and Piper, and then Kyla, Dwayne, and I set off early to explore the Acropolis before it got too hot, with four Rick Steve’s audioguides downloaded to each of our phones*.
I have heaps of ignorance so I had to research was the Acropolis was. (Kyla, of course, knew already.) The “high city” is crowned by the Parthenon**, or as Rick Steves classifies it, the “greatest Greek temple” and possibly “the most influential building in the world”. Like all mostly intact ancient temples, it spent time as a church over the centuries after the fall of Rome. In fact, it was in darn good shape until gunpowder stored in there during a Venetian-Ottoman conflict in 1686 was hit with a lucky shot. Oops.
The Parthenon is still under much construction. It’s so long you can barely make out the cranes and scaffolding on the other end. 
The Parthenon was built in about 440 BC to honor the goddess Athena, who helped the Greek fend off the Persians. 
I was also impressed with the Erechtheion and its Porch of the Caryatids, which is the area of woman statues holding the patio roof. These are the replicas as more recent pollution was doing more damage than the 2000 years before that. It even survived neighbor-across-the-street’s 1687’s gunpowder explosion. 
Here are two of the original Caryatid statues in the Acroplian musuem. I love that the back of their hair, which very few would ever see, is still individual and beautiful. Very impressed with the fish-tail braid!
After that, we meandered to the Ancient Agora, a thing I knew of only as a useful crossword trivia. Again, St. Rick led us through the heart of ancient Athens, the place of business, debates, politics, and entertainment, and one of two possible spots for the “true birth of democracy”.
The Agora lies in the shadow of the Acropolis, with the ruined colonnade in the foreground. 
Sure, why not a Corinthian cap hanging around? 
The original shopping market has been restored to be a lovely, cool museum and lounging area. 
A baby potty! The museum (narrated by St. Rick had several interesting relics of normal life well over 2000 years ago. 
Including BBQs. 
I rarely tire of excellent statues hanging around. 
I forget what temple this is in the Agora, but it’s one of the few? the only? ancient temple still with its roof! 
Ah, Hadrian. Your beautiful torso. 
I am a HUGE fan of orthodox church buildings after so many ostentatious cathedrals. This was clearly post-Greek, post-Roman.
We had lunch at the Acropolis Museum before enjoying many of the original hilltop treasures now protected inside. (I mistakenly thought this was Archeological Museum, which confused me and the museum guards until someone pointed out I was in the wrong museum. Oh, well, I am always happy to see more naked statues.)
Kyla trouped with us, and we caught a tour bus to make it to the (ahem, real) National Archeological Museum, which again, St. Rick curated for us.
We had 9 miles in by then, so I was grateful to take a taxi back to the hotel before we gathered the kids for dinner.
A day like that requires a more restful day afterward. I had booked a Segway tour for everyone but Piper, but our tour guide was very inexperienced and we saw very little that we hadn’t seen the day before. We clambered over Mars Hill a bit, but the associations with Apostle Paul and a failed Seattle church didn’t spark joy.
After seeing the papal Swiss Guards, I thought I might be immune to costumed guards, but nope. I was still fascinated, especially by their slow high-step duck march (not my video).
I could spend more time in Athens, but I calculated that we did about a week’s worth of activity (minus shopping, which we were out of suitcase room for anyway) in our 2.5 days.
*We have had all sorts of guides on this trip–long-term guides, day guides, half-day guides, driver guides, walking guides, Segway guides, professional guides, local guides, expensive guides, and work-for-tips guides. Each one spoke English as a 2nd or 3rd language to varying degrees of fluency. Concentrating on translating an accent, picking out words that you know and just have to adjust slightly while figuring out which words are unknown names of people and places takes effort, especially while moving. [And I’m incredibly grateful that our English-only selves were able to navigate 12 non-English speaking countries because so many others bothered to learn another language or two!] But lost in translation is the ability to say things once, as often information is repeated several times to bridge the communication gap, some storytelling and a lot of humor. One Rome guide and a Corfu aquarium guide were both native English speakers and it really made the tour flow more educationally and enjoyably. I say all this because being able to cue up a Rick Steves walking tour, play and pause on command, and learning through curated facts and funny anecdotes was probably the best sort of tour for me. In Athens, Rick had the Acropolis tour, the Ancient Agora tour, the National Archeological tour, and the one we didn’t get to because we did a lame Segway tour instead, the city walking tour.
**I now know the difference between the Pantheon and Parthenon. They start by being in different countries.
Needopedia 