Today we started early and hiked to Acropolis located on a hill. Acropolis in Greek means highest point. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, constructed around 400 BC. The city is named after goddess Athena and her idols are seen in lot of constructions of Acropolis.We felt like stepping into a mini empire.It is a great place to study Greek history.

On the foot of Acropolis, we found this theater called “Odeon of Herodes Atticus”. It was built by a Greek King Herodes in the memory of his wife Rhegilia. It reminded me of Tajmahal story.

It was built around 160AD , used as venue for music concerts, with a capacity of 6000 people. It remained intact and looked spectacular.

Views of the city from Acropolis hill are marvelous. We can get the complete 360 degrees view of Athens.

There were idols of many gods and goddesses who were their ancient warriors like Athena, Zeus, Artemis, Hermis etc…I was reminded of Roman empire, while walking through all these ancient ruins. I felt very happy the efforts by the country, to preserve their ancient culture and history.

We walked downhill to reach Acropolis museum, where many artifacts from the ancient empire are displayed. It is built on ruins of Acropolis and floor is made of glass so that we get to see the ruins, as we walk along the museum. I felt so surprised to see that ancient Greek wedding traditions are similar to Indian ones.

Had pizza in a street side restaurant for lunch near Acropolis museum. The restaurants are very lively in typical European style with outdoor seating. I loved the vibe of the streets there.

We then walked upto Olympieion, which is a temple for Zeus, king of all Olympian gods.

We observed something interesting. There are regular hop-in hop-out buses in the city, where we can buy a day ticket and use it to get into any of these buses. Though we didn’t need it as we stayed close by all the main tourist places, felt its a great way to explore complete Athens.

We walked past the large national garden to reach Hellenic parliament building, parliament of Greece.

It was very sunny in the noon and we decided to go back home and take rest for the day.

It was a day well spent learning about Greek history and their culture, before embarking on our journey to Greek Islands.