Athens Day 2

Today we decided to tackle the big hill behind our flat. Actually, since there is a monument up there and roads, we wanted to check  it out, take some bread, cheese, meat and wine and have a picnic. It's called Filopapos hill, and the monument is to a Roman general. There are some other ruins up there but the best is the view. We are higher than Mars hill and have an outstanding view of the Acropolis. We now see the Parthenon that we missed yesterday. Holy smokes is it HUGE. And like most of the other ruins, covered in scaffolding. So the story is when the Venetians ruled the area in the 1600s, they launched a mortar attack in 1687 from this hill to the Parthenon and destroyed a good portion of it.
The Parthenon is 490 feet above sea level, completed 2500 year ago. It is the largest Doric temple in Greece, 228 ft long, 101 ft wide and 46 columns in all. There are/were many statues and carvings and reliefs in it and it served as a temple to Athena and as the treasury of Athens (safeguarding city funds). It is constructed of white marble from a quarry 16 miles away and probably has more than 100,000 tons of it, was constructed in about 10 years and would have cost over a billion dollars (by todays dollars) Even from our viewpoint it was impressive. It made the other temples on the hill look small.

Other things we saw on the walk around, streets and sidewalks covered with motorcycle or motorcycle parts and scooters parked everywhere!  Actually, this whole motorcycle/scooter thing is because in a little tiny storefront there is a cycle repair shop.  There was barely any room in the shop to work on a bike much less park them so... they're all parked in the street.   Surely, you probably know what the blue and yellow building is.

As we came down from the hill, we ended up at the base of the Acropolis again and because we didn't have our picnic, we decided to stop for gelato.  Hate to say it but the gelato is even better than Tillamook Ice Cream.