Cultural Athens
Trip Start
Jun 27, 2009
1
4
75
Trip End
Jun 26, 2010
Athens, Attica, Greece
Sunday, July 5, 2009
After spending the day travelling from Paros to Athens by Ferry, I arrived at Anna's place. Anna is the mother of my good friend Aliki - mentioned earlier. At this point I was pretty tired but not too bad. Anna had invited the sister, Aggy, of a friend of Aliki's that I had travelled with previously on safari to Tanzania. What started out as a few quiet drinks and some dinner, ended up finishing at 2am!
The next day was Monday and since none of the museums or the Acropolis are open on Monday's I decided to instead head to lycabettus which is a decent sized hill in the middle of Athens with good views of the Acropolis. After arriving at the base of the "hill" I couldn't find the vernicular terminal - thinking it would be out in the open - and thus proceeded to climb the hill in the high 30 degree temperature. When I reached the top I was not only ridiculously hot & completely saturated, but mildly annoyed to find that the vernicular went underground and that I'd missed the bottom terminal by one street! Well I guess I got a bit fitter and at least on the way down I met a lovely couple from Canada who recommended I check out Montreal for at least a night or two since I was going to be in Toronto later. Afterwards I wandered around Syntagma which is the centre of the Greek government in Athens and then wandered down through the markets.
That evening myself, Anna and Aggy went and saw Swan Lake performed by a Russian ballet troupe in the Odeon of Herod Atticus Coliseum which is a relic of the Acropolis. It was a truly magical experience framed by the moon rising above the stage and the Pantheon lit up in the background. The photos on this blog really don't do it justice, but I hope you get the idea.
The journey home that evening was to say the least very interesting as the subway trains all stop at 12.30 and the show did not finish until after 1am, so we walked a fair way until we managed to hail a cab, then the cab driver tried to drop us off at the wrong station where Anna had left her car, however Anna quickly realised something was wrong and set him straight. Next we get dropped off at the correct station but the underground entrance which we required to go through in order to get to the other side of the freeway which the station was under, was closed at that time of night. After a few minutes of fruitless searching we decide to cut across the freeway which is highly illegal but what else could we do???
The following day I got up reasonably early (considering my second early night - i.e. in bed at 2am) and went straight to the new Pantheon museum which was built specifically to house the Elgin marbles currently residing in the British museum. I'll be very interested to hear whether the Brits finally capitulate as this particular war has been wageing for years. Next I climbed up to the Acropolis and walked around the breathtaking ruins with the thousands of other tourists in the ridiculous heat. That afternoon I managed to catch up with two old friends who set up the dot com that I worked for when I first arrived in London. It was great to see old friends and swap news.
That evening was spent at Anna's place where we had a quiet meal and an early night before my departure the next day.
