Kim and I began our Saturday with a brief walk around our neighborhood. She had passed a couple of houses she wanted me to see. One, under renovation, was quite a place: a sort of castle/mansion. Rumor going around is that it will be occupied by members of the former Royal family. Like Italy, the Royals were sent packing when the country went democratic. Greece's royalty was imported from Germany.

The houses were pretty obstructed to photograph, so I took this big Bird of Paradise.

Most of the day was spent walking on and around Philopappou Hill, or the Hill of the Muses. In ancient times it had strategic value (rises even higher than the acropolis) and the old city walls extended along it. In modern times it's a great place for a quiet walk, or to have a great view. Keep in mind that this broad (mostly) pedestrian road is just minutes walk from major traffic and city life. It's lined with olive and pine trees and there are benches all around. It's really a lovely piece of greenery: something not very common in Athens. There was a news story recently about a neighborhood group that "took over" a parking lot one weekend, turning it into a park. The city has since purchased the land from the owner so the park can be permanent.

As you can see the place is not crawling with tourists like the acropolis. Still, there are plenty of interesting things to see. This cave here served as Socrates's cell. We looked around, took some pictures, then sat on a bench. There were no kiosks selling plaster busts of Socrates, no immigrants walking past trying to sell parasols (now that the weather has turned nice, those who sold umbrellas for the rain now sell paper parasols). In the approximately 10 minutes we sat, we only saw one other couple, and they were Americans. Turns out they are military from Germany on a 4-day weekend. I only know all of this because Kim struck up a conversation with them. We traded taking pictures of each other. I teased Kim about having conversations with people she would never befriend in the US just because of a common language, when just a few minutes later I did exactly the same thing. We met some Italian-speaking Swiss near the summit and exchanged taking pictures of each other. Kim's camera battery died at that point, so the guy offered to take it with his camera and e-mail me the picture next week. Of course we had to talk after that ;)

We happened upon a video production crew that appeared to be shooting a commercial. The entourage of people must have been about 15. The mini-DV camera they were using looked a little too consumer quality for a professional, but they were recording separate audio and slating it, so there was some money involved. Kim and I politely waited for a take to end before walking past. Someone said "hello" in English. I'm sure they never heard us speak but were able to tell we were English speakers.

After some hours of wandering, Kim asked what I wanted to do, and that was easy to answer: I wanted to sit somewhere and drink a large beer. We descended the hill and found a whole strip of coffee shop/bars all along a pedestrian area. We stopped at one that looked especially inviting. I was attracted by the sign that said "Heineken served extra cold" and Kim was attracted by the backgammon board on a vacant table. I managed a come-from-behind victory the first game (I had no business winning) so we played another. Kim soundly beat me, as she pointed out (when I won she only had one tile on the board, but I had several remaining the second game). I thought it best to quit with a tie rather than get beaten twice in a row, and opted to watch the people passing by.

While taking the long walk back around the acropolis hill to the tram, Kim was struck by a motorcyclist. I didn't even know it had happened. I was holding her left hand and as he past, his handlebar him Kim's right hand, knocking the water bottle out of it. He stopped a few yards in front of us and turned to see if she was OK. Kim's wrist hurt, and it caused her to jerk her shoulder, but she was more shocked than anything. She just repeated "you hit me."

We managed to make it back to the tram without further incident - which reminds me. When we started out toward the center in the morning, our tram had an accident. It seems a car was making an illegal left turn and ran into the tram. We were stopped for about 10 minutes while our driver and the car's driver sorted things out.