Acropolis Part 1

My aunt took me to see The Acropolis. It's one of those things that is a must see when visiting Greece. Part of the fun was actually getting to it. My aunt lives a good 30 minutes away from Athens (by car), and going to see Acropolis meant driving part way and then leaving the car somewhere and getting there the rest of the way by train.


We took the train from Kifissia, here's a shot of the station outside, with random people walking around.

This is my first train ride here, so I had to document it, even though we were running for the train and my photo ended up being blurry as a result.

This station had this fun wall adorned with soccer players, or football as they call it here.

Upon closer inspection, I noticed that the art was made with confetti-like pieces of paper. Cool!

I love the fact that the walls of Acropolis station are decorated this way, depicting scenes of the ancient times. I wasn't the only one taking pictures of the walls.

Even better was the fact that right before you leave the station, there are a number of ancient artifacts right there, behind glass to admire.

There are even artifacts where you can cop a feel. Ha! My aunt wanted me to go lower... but I behaved. What? My mom might see these pictures!

We made it! Well, sort of, we made it off the train and are ready to do some walking around, much like tourists who want to see everything. Yep, I took way too many photos this day, but I just had to!

Before actually going to see the ruins of Acropolis, we decided to walk around for a bit to find somewhere to have lunch and to see the area. What's right around there is the Athens Flea Market.

This whole place was pretty darn busy, with copious amounts of people walking around and checking things out. It's good for the economy to have so much public out there, buying stuff and supporting the locals. I approve.

Much like in any market, there were multitudes of shops filled with merchandise. Here's a shop full of beads. We didn't get a chance to in, we're supposed to go back at some point.

I saw a lot of these eyes in different shops. My aunt says that people hang them up outside of their homes or wear them, to ward off the evil eye. 

See sponges anyone? I have a friend in Toronto who for the life of him couldn't find one of these to buy. When I saw this many, it made me think of him. If he sees this picture, he'll go crazy

Oh and how fun is this fur vest?! It's so... multi-coloured! I've never seen anything like it before. It was crazy expensive. Of course my aunt needs it to live.

There are a lot of vendors around there selling something good. I like this little old lady with her cart full of pistachios.

Oh and I love these guys. They randomly set up shop for a few minutes at a time with their sacks full of 'faux' purses. My aunt calls it 'maimu', meaning monkey (business). 

We decided to actually find a place to have lunch at and we sat down outside in (what felt like) the craziest alley, filled with patio like set ups for different restaurants and way too many people walking around. We jumped at the chance to have a table, but once we sat down, I almost wished that we sat inside instead of outside. There were way too many people coming up to us, trying to sell us something, including children. 


I took this small video to show how crazy it was here, click the link below to see. Imagine having lunch there?!

Here's my first meal in Greece, that isn't home cooked. It was pretty yummy, including all the tzatzik sauce, mmmmmmm.

After lunch, we were off to see more of what the Acropolis area offered. When you walk around the grounds, there's other artisans selling something, like this lady with her umbrella filled with jewelery.

There are those who play insturments and make the place more fun, filling the streets with the sounds of local music.

For those who are too lazy to walk the grounds, there's this train that will take you around...

... or there's always the old man with the horse. He thought that my aunt and I were tourists and that we'd pay him $40 Euro to go around. When we said no, he lowered the price to $20. We didn't take the bait.

Here's a shot from the streets below Acropolis, where we were. If you look on the right, far away, you can see the ruins. In part 2, I will show all the photos of them.

Till next time!