Dark and Archaic Athens

Whoops, nevermind. I got mixed up again. It turns out the birthday stuff was on the 15th, and our day off was on the 16th. But I don't feel like uploading those pictures, so here's what I did on the day off. Well, actually, mostly I slept, ate lunch, read and slept some more. But eventually, around six, I got my act together and went to check out the temple of Hephaestus that I had to present the next day. I decided to take my camera along to document important things.

Important thing #1: Kiwis in Greece are gigantic. Μεγαλη. Big. The ones I got were also unripe and resembled fuzzy rocks in their mass and shape.

I dropped by the school and decided that I should attempt to take good pictures of the stadium, since my one from the first few days was kinda lame because I tried getting it, the acropolis and the CYA building all by rotating in place. Unfortunately, in order to get far enough back to fit the whole thing in frame I'd have to be standing in a very busy street. So consider this a panorama.
Left. Center, which is actually a fairly not-lame picture. Right.

From there I walked by a few big impressive Roman things and another major street to get to the heart of touristy Athens. I wasn't quite sure where the temple was in relation to the other stuff in the agora, so I hiked up the Aeropagus to get my bearings. I spotted my prey. At this point I just started walking straight towards it, because I didn't realize that the agora was completely fenced in so they could control access. So it took me another fifteen minutes from when I got to the agora to figure out how to get into the bloody thing. Fortunately, I had my CYA ID so they didn't charge me. Anyway, after another several minutes of stepping over ruins too convoluted for anyone without a graduate degree in classical archaeology to care about, I ended up at my destination.
Looking through from the west side.

This temple was built to honor both Hephaestus and Athena, and was designed by the same architect as the one at Sounion, and built around the same time. Sometime in the middle ages the Christians converted it into a church, which is almost certainly the only reason its still standing. That required a few architectural changes, such as knocking a big hole in the west side because churches of the period usually faced west, as opposed to older Hellenic temples which usually faced east. This done, the replaced what used to be the antechamber with an apse to hold the alter and pulpit and then carved in some side entrances. Sometime in the 20th century the Greek government restored the original front and plugged up some of the side doors. I don't know when, exactly, but the church's last use was in the 1930s for a mass welcoming the new King Otto.

There's also this shot, which I intended to be artsy but which is instead just badly composed. I got back just in time for the study session before the first test, and now I'm going to post this and then take a nap before the study session for the second test.