Skip to main content

//Day 45 /25-04-22 /Athens

Today I spend most of the day visiting the classic attractions of Athens. The Acropolis, the Roman Agora, the Ancient Agora, Hadrian’s library,….In addition I visited the the more then fantastic Acropolis museum. 

I started this morning at 8.00 visiting the Acropolis and ended my visiting tour some 8 hours later, a great lunch of mussels included. I had never visited the Acropolis before and can only recommend to do so. I also found the Ancient Agora very interesting. Most tourists are to be found on the Acropolis, the other classic sites clearly attract much less people. The Acropolis museum queue was also quite busy, but nothing an online ticket can not manage.  The modern museum has a huge collection on artifacts , statues , objects related to history of the Acropolis which is cleverly presented. Definitely a must visit when in Athens.

I’m not the only tourist in the city. Even on a Monday in April Athens is full with tourists. Plaka (the old/touristic part of Athens) was packed with tourists, long queues to enter the Acropolis and Acropolis museum (I bought my tickets online), during lunch time most terraces full with people.  A lot of groups also , walking in packs through the small touristic streets and attractions, guided by a flag and a person with a microphone and signpost.

The Main Street shops though, were still closed today. I wanted to shop for swimming trunks (I hope to have somewhere the next  weeks a swim in the sea), and a drinking bottle (one of the items I lost recently) but that will have to wait for tomorrow. This evening I will go for a small bite and an ice cream. Tomorrow I have on my visiting list the Olympieion, Metapolis (museum around photography) and the Benali museum,…

Not much else to report today besides tired legs of all the walking. Definitely an interesting and educational day with great food. 























































Lessons learned :
  • The Parthenon has been a temple, a mosque and a church.
  • Sipping an espresso freddo in the shade after a long walk is quite enjoyable.
  • When not receiving a bill after multiple times asking the bill, it will magically appear when informing the restaurant staff that you will leave without paying.


Comments

  1. How nice you had great weather to explore Athens. Love that you enjoyed a nice ice cream, mussels and some caffè fredo! I enjoyed your story and photos! Looking forward to tomorrow!

    ReplyDelete
  2. great and original pictures od the Parthenon. Bart

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

//Day 77 /27-05-22 /Salzburg

Yesterday evening a tired-looking young man arrived by bike and setup his tent next to mine. The theory of personal space was not something he mastered well, although plenty of space he placed his tent no more then 2 meters from mine. During the night strange sounds erupted out of the young man’s  tent ; a mix of farting, rambling through plastic bags, heavy sighing,….In the morning I friendly said hello but the only response was a short grunt… Today I planned to visit Salzburg and had a slow start with a lengthy breakfast of coffee and sandwiches with “schinken”…Around 10.15 I walked to the bus stop which conveniently connected the camping with Salzburg city center in 15 minutes, in addition the camping-lady explained me that today public transport was free…. I got of the bus at Salzburg Old Marktplatz and headed to the Salzburg’s Museum der Moderne , the modern Art Museum, to visit 2 exhibitions. The first a solo exhibition of Richard Kriesche and the second a photo exhibition of...

//Day 10 /21-03-22 /Kecskemét-Szeged

I doubt that Hungary, the Hungarians  and I will ever become friends. The landlady of the pension where I stayed  last night was the exception of the rule on how I experienced the Hungarians the last week, she was  ; warm, interested, communicative, a visible ‘joie de vivre’ and a look to the broader world. I’m aware that it is not possible to build a correct view on people and a country based upon a brief cycle trough of a couple of days. I decided to run  a little test today to investigate the Hungarian social skills: I waved and said hello to every person I met - Roughly 75 % ignored me, 20 % actually looked me in the eye but did not give any further reaction and 5% waved back, or said hello - the test population was more then 100 people, with a mix of women and men. Rest my case. But it is  not only the people, it is also the landscape ; monotonous, flat, little or no trees, grey-brownish, crossed by electricity lines, straight lined roads, empty streets, …E...

//Day 50 /30-04-22 /Menidi-Igoumenitsa

I woke earlier then my alarm clock. But would only be really awake when a MF dog surprised me when I was 30 minutes cycling on a small road. The lady-hotel owner was really motherly when I said I did not take a breakfast (at 8 euro not really market conform) and  gave me a fruit juice and, some cake and 2 boiled eggs. I saddled Black Horse and started cycling passing the 3 lazy hotel watchdogs . I cycled to the beach and had a cake and 2 boiled egg breakfast.  Not a lot happened today except that the cycling today was great. I did 130K , of which a big part on small unpaved roads and no people to be seen. The first 50K was somewhat flat afterwards I had to cross the mountains to reach the coast. Luckily I passed a small town before so I had a sandwich and bought some cookies as lunch. The unpaved roads, often with steep climbs, where challenging but really great. The views well… Plotting a route on a map involves always some unknown factors : roads that only exist on paper, a ...