Athens and Acropolis

It is true that often I take all these travels for granted - after all, it is part of my job to wake up each morning in a different place so after a while one doesn't even think abut it. But the good part is that I am truly familiar with most of the tourist destinations everywhere so from time I like to serve as a tour guide to my colleagues. Occasionally I like nothing better than to walk out by myself and write my postcards and diary, but when I realise that my colleagues have no idea about the ports, I take them under my wing. 

For example, Piraeus is a lovely place but you would not know it, judging from a dirty port - it takes a careful walk along the sea side and two churches down, until you discover pretty shopping district with fine restaurants and nice harbour that I showed to my colleagues recently and they all loved it. Piraeus is ancient port that used to led to Athens - nowadays these two cities are in fact merged so its easy to reach centre of Athens with a underground metro, again it is a matter of how familiar one is with the city. Since we had two days off, I took my colleagues to show them Athens and Acropolis and it turned out into a beautiful experience. First we walked across picturesque area Plaka right in the centre of Athens, with hundreds of souvenir shops and restaurants, here is where you browse with ancient Acropolis looming from the hill right above. Than its a short walk up the hill and voilà, you are out of Plaka and walking towards one the most exciting and historically important places on a planet. I admired even the classy buildings along the way, there was one balcony with a Greek amphora as decoration, you could see the wall with books inside, it looked like my dream apartment, books, amphorae and Acropolis. 

No matter how many times I have visited Parthenon I am always excited, awed and thrilled to be there. I have been soaking in the Greek mythology as a child, after all, back than I knew all the names, heroes and legends, it was a fascinating world that fed my dreams and fantasy. How strange that locals eventually turned to different religion and hid all those wonderful stories under the rug, I thought as I walked towards the hill. As it happens, this time my visit (or my homage) turned out to be special because the sunset was falling on the whole town and the light on Acropolis was truly magical. There were less tourists and it was not unbearably hot as usual, in fact there was a gentle wind breezing around the hill and the view on the huge metropolis bellow was as usual, like a dream. One really needs to stand on the top of the hill to grasp the sheer size of Athens, it has more than 4 millions of inhabitants, which is more than my whole Croatia in total. I left my friends to roam and walked around by myself, happy as usual - the place has a special energy and I am always floating around, giddy with excitement that I am standing here and walking around Acropolis (well, I did move quite far from where I started in life), admired the ancient ruins that glowed in the sunset and must admit it did feel absolutely holy and wonderful to be there, I couldn't imagine better way to spend a day in Athens.