Greece: The Ancient Agora and Hydra

In the morning we went to the Acropolis museum, which was pretty cool. It was mostly statuary and pieces of ancient buildings and columns. The outdoor entry space had glass panels that looked down below on a current excavation site. On the way back to our room, we took a look at Hadrian’s Arch and the Olympion.

Hadrian’s Arch, right next to a very busy road

Unfinished temple to Zeus in the Olympion.

Since our plan was to take a later ferry to the island of Hyrdra (Idra), we had to go back to our room, grab our stuff, and check out. After that, we headed over to the Agora, which was the open air market and civic center of Ancient Athens. It was much more vegetated than the Acropolis.

Here is a view of the Agora with the Acropolis in the background.

Temple of Hephaestus

We had noticed numerous signs that said “don’t pet the tortoises” which seemed strange until we saw tortoises all over the Acropolis and the Agora.

After seeing a lot of old marble ruins, we sat down at a delicious falafel restaurant, then took a metro to Pireaus, where the ferry would be to take us to Hydra. I thought the port would be a cool area with boats and places along the water to sit, but it was a massive, industrial area with busy roads and over-sized cruise ships that broke the skyline behind them docked in the harbor. We got there way too early and walked around looking for a place to sit by our dock area. Lots of people walked by trying to sell things and asking for money, which was kind of uncomfortable. I had pictured the ferry as one of those boats where you can sit on the deck and watch the water but it turned out to be an ugly metal boat that looked like a plane without wings.

We were hoping to see a sun set but passengers were confined to the cabin.

The sun was long gone by time our boat docked, at Hydra. Lights from the little town crept up the mountain sides.

We walked along the waterfront and up to a lookout point, checked into our little hotel room, and then found a place for dinner. It was quite, without the noise of traffic on this (almost) car-less island. After watching fish swimming in the clear blue water, we turned in for bed.