Athens Adventure: The Acropolis

The highlight of our Athens trip was, of course, the Acropolis and the Parthenon. It's such an interesting piece of history and culture. For those of you who don't know and had to look it up on Wikipedia like I did, the Acropolis of Athens in an ancient citadel located on a high rocky outcrop above the city of Athens and containing the remains of several ancient buildings, the most famous being the Parthenon. The Parthenon is a temple dedicated to the patron goddess of Athens, Athena. The companion greek myth is that Poseidon and Athena battled for control of Athens and Athena won the battle by giving the city an Olive tree. It was then named Athens and temples and other dedications can be found all over the city.

But enough history and legend - let's see the photos!!

This photo is for Kevin who complains that we're never in any of our photos (you now understand why!) We took this at at breakfast from the rooftop restaurant of our hotel. What a view for breakfast!

On the way up to the Parthenon area. This is a theater of some kind and it  looked like they were trying to restore parts with even possible plans of using it in the future.

 If you're able to zoom in a bit on this photo, the columns in the front left corner are gorgeous sculptures of goddesses. These are replicas, but they are slowly cleaning the originals with laser technology in the Acropolis museum.

Front view of the Parthenon. If you go, start at the Acropolis museum to see the model of what they believe it looked like complete and whole, then come here and you can really imagine the architecture and details of the sculpture.

Ancient greek cat - actually there were quite a few up here and all very healthy and well fed. Clearly the greek workers restoring the Parthenon has a soft spot for these kitties.

A view of some of the restoration in progress. We're a bit torn - it would be cool to have it restored and really see what it must have looked like, but then it's not the real thing, is it? Maybe they'll restore only half of it so we get the best of both worlds.