day 17 - bye bye islands, hello Athens

we got up and said goodbye to Milos, pretty little island, after a wonderful day of boating.  my legs were burned pretty bad, I am dumb.  We got a taxi out to the tiny airport and took the 30 minute flight to Athens.  From there a short 45 minute taxi ride had us back at our favorite hotel, the Attalos.  Our rooms weren't ready so we dropped off our bags and walked down to the new rooftop bar at the A is for Athens hotel.  It was pretty sweet view, even though the coffees were way more than we were used to paying. 

After a coffee we headed back to the Attalos and checked into our spacious top floor room.  The familiar view was refreshing, but we were also reminded just how different Athens, the big metropolis is from what we'd been experiencing the last 2 weeks on the islands. Shortly after, we took a walk into the Psiri and had a wonderful lunch, went and found the soap store, which was closed, and then decided to walk up to the three hills west of the acropolis that we'd never visited before.  First up the Mars Hill, which is directly opposite the acropolis. 

This is the most famous hill of the three and the one that everyone walks up to.  the view was pretty spectacular.  Afterwards we walked south the highest of the three hills, Philopappou Hill, which was a huge monument on top of it. 

We took a very indirect route up, and on the way down ran into a family that we'd seen on Sifnos and Milos, small world.  From Philopappou we went northwest to the Pnyx Hill, which is in fact a large outdoor gathering area for the residence of Athens back in the long long ago days. 

We at this point were quite tired and headed back to our hotel, cleaning up shortly before going back into Psiri and having a lovely dinner at Oinopoleion, where eventually a  live group started playing, though it was well after 8, which was when the host told us the music would start.  After that we headed back to our room and hit the hay.