Athens Days Five to Seven

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Sunday was spent at the camp site so as to avoid the Macedonia protest taking place in Syntagma Square. Predictions beforehand were that a million or more protesters would converge on the capital, but the police estimates suggest that the number who actually turned up was more like 150,000. There wasn’t any violence reported, unlike at the previous demonstration, but we’re still glad we gave it a miss. Instead we went for a coffee locally, and spent the rest of the day chilling out.

We can see the acropolis from outside the campsite

We’d planned to spend yesterday at the National Archaeological Museum, but when we arrived we found that we’d turned up too early as it didn’t open until 1pm, so we decided to finish off our Athens sightseeing instead, and return to the museum today. After a(nother) gyros lunch we went to visit Hadrian’s Library, Roman Agora and the Panathinaiko Stadium, where the 1896 Olympics were held.

More gyros!
Carol
Sodding about
Roman Agora
The acropolis from the Panathinaiko Stadium
The stadium is still used today and can hold 68,000 people
We win gold!
Inside the stadium
This brought back happy memories of 2012 – and I still see Lisa Simpson when I see that logo!
Torch from the London 1948 games
Only in Greece could you have a railway line running next to some ancient ruins!

Afterwards we went back into the centre and mooched around, before going for dinner in a nice restaurant with live Greek music, which was good fun. The lamb chops were lush!

These were delicious!

Today we returned to the National Archaeological Museum and spent around three hours viewing the exhibits. Here are some of my favourites:

I was pleased to get my mosaic fix for the day! This one was similar to, but much larger and more intricate than the one we saw in Ancient Corinth
An inventory of shepherds and their herds from the 13th century BC
A boars tusk helmet found in a grave
From a fresco of the Mycenaean Lady
This stone mould is between 4,000 and 6,000 years old, and was used to make lead axes.
The oldest exhibits we found.

Today was our last day in Athens. We’d originally planned to stay for three or four nights, but extended that to seven after we cancelled plans to go to Delphi and Meteora because snow was forecast up in the mountains. We’ve had a great time here and had some lovely meals out, but we feel that we’ve ‘done’ the city now and so probably won’t be coming back for a long time.

Tomorrow we have a long drive of some 550 km/330 miles to Thessaloniki. We’ll be taking the toll roads, so hopefully I’ll be able to put the van in cruise control and coast along while listening to podcasts and munching some Percy Pigs.

Mike

4 thoughts on “Athens Days Five to Seven”

  2. Thanks for these posts on Athens. We skipped the capital on our visit to Greece last spring concentrating on northern Greece (which we loved and hope you are off to the Pelion Peninsular and Meteora) and walking but it sounds like we missed a treat … maybe next time.

    • Hi Carol. We’re having to skip northern Greece because of the snow across the mountains. We’ll just have to come back another time!

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