Actually Staying in Athens

It's a lazy morning as checkout is noon.

Again a savory course. 

My sweet course. 

We finally head out just before noon. The taxi ride isn't too long (under 30 minutes). Our place is in the heart of the city.

At least it has an elevator.
Our Airbnb contact is really friendly and very accommodating. I also think the place wasn't occupied the night before. He asks our plans and we say we want to go to Delphi. He doesn't seem very enthusiastic about doing that as a day trip. It's about 2.5 hours each way so you spend a lot of time on the bus. He said if you do that with Meteora on a two day that's worth it. He suggests we do a day boat tour that hits three local islands for the same cost.
We head out and get a lay of the land.

We stop by the open air buses and look at their maps to find a tourist bureau. A bus guide tells us it's near A2 on the map and about a 15 minute walk. It's close to the changing of the guard so we go watch that.

This is the 2 pm changing of the guard. Apparently this happenes 24 hours a day. 

They have a very interesting march. 

You can see the groves they are wearing in the tile. You see the metal taps on the bottom of their shoes.

Hold still for the tourist. 

We are getting hungry now so I try to find this locals place. Lots of the local places on stay.com haven't been exclusively local but they have been good. We find the building but there are only 8 floors and it's on the ninth floor.

The name on the eighth isn't the restaurant name either.

It has a nice entry way. 

We circle the building. Fortunately there is an arcade that cuts across so we don't have to circle the block. We ask at the bank on the corner and he says he thinks it's on the seventh or eighth floor. We go back and ask the elevator attendant and he says nine. Uh ok. We get into the elevator and there is a button for 9. We arrive at the roof top and there is a small restaurant here.

It's maybe 35ish people. There are 2 groups ahead of us. The menu is all in Greek. I install the Greek keyboard on my phone and start trying to translate things.
We get seated about 30 minutes later. The view is nice. We see things like cucumber and tomato salad, meat patties, cheese and omelettes go by which is about what I got through translating on the menu. I put meatballs, cucumbers and beer please into Google translate. The guys comes over and April says beer. He starts naming off beer brands and we pick Fix. I show him the phone.

He smiles and shakes my hand. Then asks if we want potatoes. We say yes.
Views from our table.

Looking to my right. 

Straight a head I can barely see the parliament building.
Everything comes out one by one. It appears there are two guys in the kitchen and the one guy running the front of the house. It also seems like everyone gets the same dish at the same time so a bunch of salads come from the kitchen. Then fries. Etc.

Cucumber and tomato salad 

Our potatoes

Meatball of sorts with what was left of our fries.
Near the end I decide to walk to the corner of the roof and take a few pictures.

Way more people at this changing.

Oh look what was right behind us. If you look at the pictures from the table this was around the barb wire.
We head out to find the tourist bureau. Along the way we pass on old Roman bath they discovered when digging and air shaft for the underground metro.

The Romans and what they did with water amazes me given the technology they had. 

Our walk takes us by

Arch of Hardian. 

Zeus' Temple.
We get to an intersection and aren't sure which way to go. Of course we pick the wrong direction. We start following signs to the Acropolis Musuem. That seems like a logical place and it is. However this is a public tourist bureau and can't help. They say we need to go to private agency. We catch our breath and head out. We find a walking tour place that points us to a travel agency. At the travel agency we discuss the two day trip options. He think the history will be better for us since it will give our whole trip background. We opt for Delphi.
Now that that is settled we decide to visit the first cemetery since its relatively close. We get there and it was opened in 1837. I'm not really excited as that's like yesterday in this town.

After a short walk inside we go to the Stadia.

It's an interesting place but also refurbished and very pristine.

There are a few well placed pieces of original marble. It's only 5 Euro and includes an audio guide so it's worth it.

I like the way the light was hitting parts of the stadium.

Next is Lycabettus hill for sunset. The taxi ride is 9 Euros. It's less than a mile walk but it's a lot up hill even to the funicular and that is 4 Euro each. We are exhausted so we take it. He offers to take us down but will charge for wait time. Forget that. We still need to walk up some from where the cab drops us.

Hey I was just there!

It's pretty windy up here but you get great views.

The church and bell tower at the top.

I'm surprised the military changes the flag here. 

And the main reason we came up here.
Sunset is 8:28. We decide to take the funicular down. It only goes every 30 minutes. We snap our pictures then try to catch the 8:30. As we arrive we can see it going down. Ugh. 30 minutes to kill now. We finally get on it. I read that it goes through a tunnel what I didn't realize is that the whole run is in a tunnel. You can't see anything but their light show and not only that it's really short, maybe a third of the length of the one in San Sebestian. And there is still a fair amount of down hill walking. We start back towards our place but don't pick a place to eat. I finally break out the app again. In someways I feel like this is crutch and we are only seeing the restaurants through this lens but for the most part it's been good. Google and Trip Advisor have been the tools for choosing. The restaurant is described as serving traditional Greek food. Ok that works.

Lots of place give olives to start. 

Seasonal salad - I have no idea what vegetable this is but it was good. It's a little like a cross between seabeans and rosemary in terms of texture but they said it grows in the ground. 

Tuna carpaccio with chickpeas - very interesting combination. 

Mushroom risotto. 

Chicken with yogurt. Here I was thinking I was getting souvlaki. 

I wouldn't call this traditional Greek food but it was great. After our surprising dinner we decide to do laundry. We will be gone all day tomorrow and Aparna doesn't want the laundry sitting in the machine. She can't get the machine to start. I fiddle with it a bit and I can't get it to start either. I download a manual by the same brand. No help. I fiddle with it more and realize the door isn't closing all the way. After opening and closing the door several times and pushing in different places and directions I finally get the door to latch. It's 11:30 now. I tell Aparna I will blog and help hang up the clothes. Blogging doesn't get very far as the Internet is really slow here. It gets to 1 am and I say I'm out. We are catching our bus at 8 am.