Athens - meeting the Greek gods

I have wanted to visit this ancient city for a long time, so this was the trip I was looking forward to!
The journey turned out to be exhausting - to cross the border between Bulgaria and Greece we had to leave the train, take a bus and then board the train again on the Greek side. Luckily we got a wonderful sunset view at the empty Strimon station while waiting for the train.

After a sleepless night in the night train with noisy neighbours and the most uncomfortable seats I've seen we were finally in the city of the Greek gods! It was sunny, hilly, green and beautiful. The first thing to do on the list was of course Acropolis.

Then followed a walk through the olive tree park just by Acropolis, wondering around the pedestrian streets of the cozy Plaka and the oldest street of Athens Adrianou. One of the highlights was the changing of guards ceremony by the Sintagma square. I've seen many similar ceremonies before but this one was quite special, the guards were resembling dancing ants while performing the ceremony, and their peculiar shoes (that by the way weight 5 kilo each) were making the look even more interesting

The second day we started with the central market mainly consisting of meat and fish sellers. Probably this market is capable of turning anyone vegetarian, with enormous amounts of meat, all parts or entire animals, and just as many types of fish and recently caught sea food, a picture totally different to the ready choped and packed food back home. They also had a small section with nuts, dried fruits and spices, the most interesting of which was the fresh pistachio fruits!
Passing by the Sintagma square we ended up at the impressive Panathenaic stadium - the site of the first modern Olympic games in 1896. And then simply taking a tram arrived to a nice beach, perfect for an afternoon swim.
And this day just had to be finished at a sky bar with a view over Acropolis. Athens have it all!