But leave the tour bus for the lazy tourists. We are doing our tour totally on foot. As we walk up Amalias Avenue away from Syntagma Square we turn left into the National Gardens.
It used to be the King's Garden and was not open to the public until one day the Greeks said WTF and threw out the king and opened the gardens to the people.
There are ponds with ducks and turtles and all sorts of trees and plants and flowers and a colony of escaped parrots and even a small zoo.
Well, to call it a zoo is a stretch. It is a collection of cages with whatever animals they could scrape together thrown into them. A few goats. A couple peacocks. A lot of ducks.
It is a zoo only a small child could love but if you have a small child he will probably be more interested in this than the Acropolis. It is a convenient carrot for soliciting good behavior.
The real zoo is by the airport: The Athens Zoological Park