The Temple of Ames Day 43 29/8/08

Day 43 (slide show)
I was so tired last night that I went to bed to early. I woke at about 5am so I thought I would go walk the city and get some early morning photos. I was out before the sun rose. This its a great time to see the area before the people are around. I was surprised at the amount of graffiti everywhere. It looked like LA did 15 years ago. Also there were many people sleeping off the night before on the benches and steeps. They might sleep there every night but they looked like they had some source of income so I'm not sure. The temperature is great here though and it would be real easy to drink to much and just fall asleep. I wasn't going to spend a lot of time walking the streets but I did want to see this Botanical Garden they had by the Parliament Building. There wasn't anything great here but it was very quite and a good way to start the day out. I worked on several different ways to use the camera too. All this time and I still find new things that it will do. I got word on the Couch surfing Site yesterday that I will be meeting a nice lady today named Elpida. (Elpi-th-a) It took me way to long to remember her name. I posted a note on the site that I was looking for information on the Mt. Olympus climb. She answered and we are to meet later. Right now I'm heading out to see some of the sites close by and get a feel of the place. My hostel is right in the tourist area and very close to a big ruin site. I don't want to go to the Acropolis until I can do it without rushing. This area will be fine for a few hours. Well that turned out to be wrong. The area I went to under the Acropolis is huge. (Here is a google map of it) I couldn't see it all in one day. I will have to come back later. I meet with Elpida in the afternoon and she had lots of good information on Mt Olympus. She grew up in the area and was very knowledgeable of the situation there for climbing. We spent several hours looking over the map and talking about the different sites in the northern part of Greece. My goal is to find someone how has heard of the original path the Athenians used to get to the mountain. She wasn't aware of this but we talked about different ways it might be possible. I also found where Delphi is and now I am starting to develop a plan. Just need to decide when to start out.