Athens - Day 1

We arrived in Athens a full hour early thanks to a very generous jet stream tailwind of 160mph most of the way.  The flight info panel reported speeds of 678mph!


However, that meant that our room in Athens (and a welcome shower) were an hour later than our arrival, so we dropped our bags off and started wandering through the streets near the Acropolis.  In Athens, as in Rome, there are ruins scattered around the town and you never know when you'll come across a set of ancient columns or some other protected excavation site. After checking out the ruins and taking a peek at a few Byzantine churches, we headed back to the hotel, stopping for some lunch along the way (Greek salad and cheese pie).

Once settled in our room and adequately refreshed, we headed in the afternoon to see what we could take in before the day ran out.  Many museums in Athens are closed on Mondays and some on Tuesdays, so we tried to arrange things strategically, but found that the Tuesday-closed sites closed pretty early on Monday and we weren't able to make it to them (we'll have to wait for Wed/Thu).  So we headed out to the Central Market which was whittling down and the only people left were the meat vendors who were either chopping violently away at big chunks of meat or enticing us to their wares.  On the outside of the market, there were several nut and fig sellers that we'd read about in the guidebooks.  We picked up some roasted almonds and dried white figs and snacked on them throughout the rest of the day.

From the markets, we went to the National Archaeological Museum which was open until 8pm, giving us 3-4 hours to see everything.  The National Archaeological Museum contains a huge array of historical artifacts from bronze statues, the golden mask of Agamemnon, various Egyptian pieces, and frescoes recovered from Santorini (pre-volcano).

After the museum, we headed back to the hotel, but stopped for dinner at the guidebook recommended,God's Restaurant, which was decent, but nothing spectacular.  We had zucchini bites, tzaziki, and moussakka.