Athens - Day 3

OMG, it is still snowing and now the snow is covering the rooves and mountains around Athens.

My decision to wear my jeans that I hadn't hemmed so that my ankles would be protected, at the least, from the bitter winds, proved to be a mistake. Our first activity today was to visit the meat, fish and fruit markets. Of course, my jeans hem dragged in the melt water from the fish market and I spent the best part of the day smelling destinctly fishy.

The markets were facinating. There were all sorts of meat and fish products on display including sheep heads with their eyes intact, rabbits with their fluffy tails on display and Ron's favourite Bull Balls. Each butcher in the meat market had his own large chopping block and enormous clever sitting at the front of the stall. Walking through the market you are called to the stall by the butcher who is keen to show you his meat! We walked through once and were not keen to walk through again as it was overwhelming. In some places there were pet shops next door to open food stalls. Live or dead it was all for sale.

The snow stopped falling at about 11ish, with the sun popping out to warm us and melt the ice.

We walked up many steps to take the rail car to Lycabettus Hill. Here we were afforded a 360 degree view of Athens. Most of the buildings are white and the city reminded me of a rock pool on the ocean edge with thousands of small sun bleached barnacles clinging to the face of the rocks.

A small 18th Century St George Church sits atop Lycabettus Hill. As we climbed another set of stairs to check out the panorama, an elderly greek women was sweeping the snow and water from the marble pavement around the church. Her animated gestures directed at us as we walked past eventually became clear when I nearly slipped over on the near invisible ice. Ron felt that she was quite annoyed at having to clean snow off the pavement when she could have been sitting quietly in the small but warm church. Ron is often attentive to the needs of elderly greek women! He also suggested that I had annoyed her because I ignored her warning gestures.

We visited the very impressive Acropolis Museum which is about two years old. The museum has been built over the remains of archeaological Athens and the museum has glass floors so that you can see down to the archeaological diggings and old city footings.

Walking the streets of Athens we meet a lovely English couple who were 'doing Greece'. They provided an explaination for the numbers of riot police that we saw both yesterday and today. Apparently two policemen shot a teenager dead on Saturday night and there had been rioting in the streets of Athens on Sunday night. We must have been too exhausted to witness such things as we certainly didn't notice.

Tonight is our final evening in Athens before we are off to Turkey tomorrow. Ron's final statement this afternoon after spending some time on his soap box ranting about the poor museum gift shops, was that he was 'over Athens'. I know that at that stage I was 'over' walking on marble pavement. I think that I have a bit of Athens chaif! Ron has further advice for those thinking of ordering food in Athens, "all meals are large serves and accompanied by copious amounts of bread. Only order one meal and share".