Lycabetus Hill

Set the alarm for 6am this morning in the hope that the skies would be clear of cloud.

I was hoping for a pre sunrise shot of the skies, nothing more beautiful than the pink, red, orange and yellow hues against a clear blue sky.  The hotel  faces directly east so is ideally located for sunrises,  images wouldn’t capture a true sunrise as the city of Athens is surrounded on three side by mountains, the western side is lapped or battered depending on the weather by the Aegean Sea.

 

Not to waste my early morning, I leant the tripod over the balcony balustrade and quickly took a few shots  of   Syngrou  Avenue,   which runs past  the Hotel and up the hill and past the Parliament building.

In the image, the large hill to the left is Lycabetus  Hill, on top of which stand St Georges Chapel, apparently the view from the top is jaw dropping, hopefully weather permitting  I’ll get up there later in the week, luckily there’s a funicular railway that runs in a tunnel up the right hand shoulder of the hill, taking visitor and site seers  from street level to around 10 metres from the top, or you could walk up using the zig zag footpaths that weave their way around the side of the hill up to the top.  

The parliament building is the brown building which sits below Lycabetus Hill in the image, don’t be fooled, the top of the hill is a long way from the parliament building, the hill is 300 meters  (908)feet high and can be seen from every area of Athens.

To the front right of the image is the Temple of  Zeus, which dates from around the year 460BC, and the large modern building above the temple is the Athens Hilton.

I only managed a few shots this morning before the few spits and spots of rain became a heavy shower. Only one thing to do, back to bed for a few hours............zzzzzzz

 

j.