Athens Again

We took a second trip to Athens, this time meeting my mom and step dad there, and stayed for 8 days. It was just as good the second time, if not better. We did some of the same stuff like going to the Acropolis, Ancient and Roman Agoras, and the Temple of Zeus. But we did a lot of awesome new things, too. We took a half day trip to Cape Sounion where the Temple of Poseidon overlooks the sea at the southernmost tip of the Attica pennisula. The view from the top of the cliff where the temple is was amazing.

We also took a ferry ride to the island of Aegina and spent the whole day there. The 80 minute ride to and from the island was really cool. The sun was shining the whole time, and I've never seen such beautiful blue water before. The island had two sets of ruins to explore, the Temple of Apollo (a different one than we saw in Delphi on our last trip), and the Temple of Aphaea. The Temple of Apollo was a short walk from the port where we docked, so we checked that out first. The really great thing about it was that you could pretty much crawl up on anything you wanted, where as most of the ruins that we've been to have been all roped off so you can't actually touch anything. 

To get to the Aphaea temple on the other side of the island we had to take a cab. It was nice because the cab driver took us straight there and waited while we wandered around the ruins taking pictures and enjoying the tremendous view of the rest of the island. On the way back to town, he stopped at a big monastery for a few minutes. That was pretty impressive, too.

We found the greatest little gyro stand on our last day of our first trip, so we went back there almost every day this time. We've eaten at some great restaurants while we were there, but this place is absolutely the best. And it's so cheap, too. 15 bucks fed all for of us. And of course I had to get some donuts from the people all over town with their little carts of goodies.

And last but not least, I got the sweetest souvenir ever. It's a solid bronze replica of a King Leonidas helmet at about half scale. I got a small helmet last time, but wanted to get another one on this trip. We looked just about everywhere, but the selection wasn't nearly as good as it was the time before so I had pretty much given up. But then we found this great store that was down a road that we hadn't been on before that had all sorts of great stuff. It was by far the coolest helmet we'd seen on either trip, and was less than half the price of any of the others. I was even able to talk the shop owner down by 45 euros.