Athens

After a semi-spontaneous and very welcome visit from my parents (carrying the most delicious of rations-cargo: homemade fudge!!), the three of us made our way down to Athens, Greece for a weekend. It was a fun-filled journey of sight-seeing and copious Greek food consumption that left us all wishing we could stay in the masterpiece archeological metropolis for longer.

Our journey took us first through Freiberg, a charming city closer to the Munich airport than the main Bavarian capital. We ate some wurst and enjoyed the beginnings of Oktoberfest (including an odd but entertaining parade, complete with marching band, through the airport).



Finally, we arrived in Athens after nightfall to enjoy a generous portion of Ouzo at the hotel bar, to scope out our room and to collapse immediately into a much-needed slumber. The next day, we hit the Acropolis.

Theater of Dionysus

Frieze behind marble stage

Herod Atticus Odeon - Theater from 1st Century AD on slopes of the Acropolis, still in use

Past wall of Odeon looking at Filopappou Hill, "the Hill of the Muses," which we could see from our hotel balcony:

At the Parthenon

Sprawling Athens, seen past the crumbling wall around the Acropolis

Erechtheion: dedicated to Athena and Poseidon after mythical contest in which Athena's olive tree surmounted Poseidon's freshwater spring and secured her rule over the city.



Frieze at Hephaistos (460-415 BC)

Acropolis from the Hephaistos at the ancient Agora

Inside the Church of the Holy Apostles (AD 1000) in the Agora

Statues of "the Odyssey" and "the Iliad" (2nd C AD) at the rebuilt Stoa of Attalos

Gold mosaic on Byzantine church precariously holding its ground in the middle of a modern Athens street.