Friday, February 4, 2011

Athens: Day 12

This day in Athens was Abby's Birthday, and she decided that she wanted to go to the Sunday Flea Market. The flea market was packed with all kinds of people, most of whom looked more Middle Eastern than Greek. The flea market was a huge sprawling area, where you could buy anything from old faucets, to porn, to flip flops, to porn, to bootleg dvds, to porn, to a dentist's chair, to porn, to video games, and electronics. Did I mention that they had porn? There were some vendors that had dozens of milk crates full of porn on VHS and DVD, right alongside Dora the Explorer coloring books. I'm not sure who would feel comfortable buying porn in public, but I suppose it is different there, as they had porn at newsstands too.  Another strange item for sale was piles of partly used prescription drugs.  Needless to say, you could get almost anything here!

There was also artistic murals painted on the buildings nearby.  We had read about how the graffiti in Athens was supposed to be beautiful rather than just vandalism, but this was the first time we saw graffiti that wasn't actually vandalism.

They even had a robot mural!

One we fought our way out of the crowds of the flea market, we visited Kerameikos. This large archeological site contains a cemetery, part of the ancient city wall, and two important gates. Within the ancient wall was a potter's village with the remains of a few kilns. At the small, but very well displayed Kermikos Museum, we learned all about the area. The wall was quickly built after the Persians sacked the city in 480 BCE. In order to speed up the construction many funeral monuments, which were readily at hand, were used in the construction of the wall. Many of the pieces in the museum were recovered from the base of the wall.

Steve at Kerameikos.

I have no idea how they cut these stones so accurately, they interlocked very tightly with no mortar.  This wall was alongside an ancient road that passed through one of the gates at Kerameikos.

Yet another adorable little church, maybe even the same one as we saw from above earlier.

A stone arch on the grounds.

Steve admiring one of the ancient walls.

Inside the Kerameikos museum they had a huge stone bull on display in the courtyard of the museum.  The courtyard was glass enclosed and just fantastic! It would be a great addition in a house.

Steve peeking around one of the ancient walls at Kerameikos.

*Catch up on our entire Athens adventure by checking Our Travel Page, or our Greece tag.*

Catch up on the rest of our adventure:

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