Greece:Athens

 

Greece: Athens

After a hearty breakfast downstairs, Trish, Annie, Eric and Squizz headed out for a final look at Athens.

We walked to the Panathenaic stadium through the National Gardens passed Zappio( first modern Olympics Athletes Village). While we girls bought our souvenirs, Eric departed the group for his own walking tour of old Athens. We three jumped aboard the red bus and continued our tour until we got off at the ancient markets for our own walking tour at the base of the Acropolis. On the way we passed the changing of the guards. We sampled, well two of the group bravely did, traditional Greek coffee with a spoonful of Greek cherries to sweeten the taste before we walked the old road to the Acropolis looking up at the Observatory, the Archeological Museum and various other ruins scattered throughout the tour. Along the way we stopped and chatted to many of the stall holders who were not only selling their hand made wares but also preparing them on site. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sandy & Libby met a tad later as they planned and then set off to locate and board the Happy Tran for a tour of the main attractions in. Athens. They enjoyed traversing the narrow streets of Athens and seeing some of the main tourist areas.

They were slightly challenged in finding their way to the Funicular railway....which they had heard took them to the top of Lycabettus Hill for an awesome look out over  Athens. Libby finally convinced a taxi man to take us for 7 Euros to see the Teleferik. After waiting 15mins for the next an to take us to the summit we finally made it and the view was well worth our efforts.

 

 

We then needed to get a taxi back to the hotel to meet the others.....the ever helpful man at the Teleferik station advised us to head down the stairs till we found a taxi on the road....so we did! We met the other travel buddies back at the hotel and all spent the time catching up on our blog as we waited for our van booked to take us to the airport.

Dimitri arrived and was gracious in managing all our luggage and getting us safely and timely to Athens airport for our flight to Rhodes. Most of us checked in ok but a slight hassle with Libby and Eric's which was soon sorted.