Marc's Blog: greece2024 - Athens in 2 Days

π 2024-05-01 01:01 in Greece2024, Ntrips

Athens had been on my TODO list for a long time of course, and while Rick Steves recommends 3 full days to do a good visit, it became clear after the first day that most everything else would fit on the 2nd day, so that freed up the 3rd day for a day trip to [Delphi and Arachova, the latter city was actually super fun and pretty (blog clickme)|].

So, I'll start by mentioning cabs. They have a monopoly and too many are crooks that refuse to use their meters. If you step in one, they'll decide how much they want to charge you (usually double or triple the meter rate). Also, they hang out outside monuments and wait for "customers" to fall into their trap:

The only way around is to uber which calls a cab, about half will refuse to take you unless you turn off uber and give them the same flat fee, but eventually one will be honest. Still, pain in the ass...

Athens Day1: Parthenon, Agora and Roman Agora, Pssyri, and Kerameikos

Day #1 hit all the spots on the Parthenon combo ticket:

Aacropolis

theater of dionysus

ancient agora

roman forum

temple olympian zeus

library of Hadrian,

keramikos cemetery

Some of the sights are on their own page, starting with the obvious:

Parthenon (blog clickme)

View from the top to scope the next destinations:

After the Parthenon, a somewhat steep climb down through small streets, brings you to other sights included in the ticket:

saw multiple tortoises in the city

Lots of touristy streets:

The Rick Steves Book recommended a Pssyri and Central Market walk, so I did followed that:

they added nice murals to a run down area

food stops :)

On that tour, found this gem:

Little Rook House Cafe (blog clickme)

The spices and market area was very cool to visit:

lots of cats to pet :)

Ther other big site for that day was the:

Ancient Roman Agora (blog clickme)

A church or two on the way:

more museums, kerameikos cemetary and museum:

This is where I'll admit that it was only 16:00 and therefore there were 4 more hours of museums that could been done, but due to travels, lingering cold and short nights, the day ended here. That said, still time for dinner:

Athens Day2: All the Museums, and More

Started the day early (at 08:00) with

Panatheanic Stadium (blog clickme)

and got to learn more about the olympic games. You do get a reasonable distant view

A short walk away was the Temple of Olympian Zeus. Honestly there is very little left of it and it's skippable (nice history, but there isn't much left of it, and the unfinished restoration didn't bring it back to its original grandeur). The Roman Hadrian Gate outside is more interesting in my opinion.

Hadrian's Gate still looks good today

From there, lots of museums to see:

The Acropolis Museum (blog clickme) is definitely impressive and well built, read the blog entry for details

Next was Archeological Museum (blog clickme). It's somewhat out of town, and sadly due to orthodox easter week, some amount of staff did not show up for work, so 1/3rd of the museum was closed, pretty vexing. That said, was was open was definitely a very good collection (read blog for details)

From there, museum street was next, and five different museums to visit:

Byzantine and Christian Museum was another half closed museum. The collection was interesting and unique, but also showed that the artist skills from those times, were not good ;)

it's an interesting fork of christianity, with its own written language

ouch

also ouch :)

The National Gallery was a cool building, various kinds of art, not essential but it was a short walk away;

National Museum of War showed some wars as seen from the Greek involvement in them. Always interesting to see history from another perspective:

The Museum of Cycladic Art was next down that long museum street, nice collection and ancient history:

Last was the Benaki Museum of Greek History and Culture, an impressive private collection:

Athens Day3 Evening: Walk Around the Parthenon

Most of Day 3 was on a day tour, but there were a few hours left over in the late afternoon to walk around. Because of orthodox Easter, it was all fun and games until we hit a procession of thousands of people, ran away the other way, and the poor taxi that tried to drive us around had to go 3 times longer around town as most of the streets back to our hotel had been blocked and it took forever to find a path back.

A walk down Anafiotika

more cats :)

checked out a few tourist stores:

AFter finishing the loop of the Parthenon, ran into an easter parade, so I knew it was time to get the hell out before everything got blocked. By then many streets were already blocked and the uber had a hell of a time to get us back (took more than twice as long):

And that was it for Athens, time for bed and an eearly 07:00 ferry to Mykonos the next morning

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