Day 14 – Athens

Before even leaving the hotel, Anna was still repairing herself from the hike and had to ask the hotel for a bandage for her blister. Not a great start to a walking tour of Athens in 2 days.

After a light breakfast at the closest patisserie, we began walking towards the centre of Athens. Along our route, we passed some iconic but less visited places of interest – mainly museums but also the oldest church in Athens.

It was a Sunday and most branded shops were closed for the day but all the local shops remained open, especially the tourist shops found in the Flea market (the famous market of the city). We walked through the area of Plaka which contains all the popular shops, and when Anna had finally admitted that she couldn’t afford to buy anything, we continued on my walking tour.

Filled with facts and interesting stories, the tour covered most of Athens, leaving only the Acropolis left to see. The temperature in Athens was ridiculously hot today, reaching highs of 38 degrees. As a result, they were going to close the Acropolis at 2pm in danger of people struggling with the heat. Instead of rushing through it in half and hour we decided to do it tomorrow morning instead.

For lunch, Anna finally got her slice of pizza she has been wanting since we arrived in Greece. We were also serenaded by 3 children on accordions. With some amendments to the map, our tour now incorporated some sights that were saved for tomorrow. This included the first ever olympic stadium and the parliamentary square.

Before reaching the stadium, we passed a large sports area with running tracks, fields and a diving pool. They looked like they hadn’t been used in years and Anna was appalled that the pool was empty in this heat.

Calling herself ‘a little ball of melt’, swaying all over the place and sluring her sentences, I thought it would be wise to seek shelter before Anna suffers from more over-exaggeration.

However, our last stop was the parliament square where the changing of the guard happens every hour on the hour. We had 10 minutes to get there through the parliament gardens and as we were getting closer we could hear shouting. Thinking we had missed it, we followed the sound and thankfully it was only a drunk man arguing with the sign across the street.

Continuing on, we managed to catch the whole thing. When I say the whole thing, I mean the whole 10 minutes it takes them to change. It takes so long for them to get into position after all their ceremonial marching, bowing and staring that I wouldn’t really feel safe for the first 10 minutes of each hour.

It was time to head home and many other people had the same idea. The streets had become less busy and the metro was packed. Of course Anna forgot to bring her metro card so we had to buy another one…

With Anna having a nap and resting from the sun, I managed to catch the last few holes of The Open golf as well as the German F1 race so it wasn’t all bad.

After Anna had suitably recovered, we left for dinner. Finding a nice restaurant in a nearby square, we were entertained by a charming and funny waiter. He even told us that one time he gave normal meatballs instead of vegetarian meatballs to two vegetarians. Not so charming anymore. This was because Anna had asked if a pasta dish had any meat and the waiter replied with “when I think of vegetarian, I think of salad only”.

It was late by the time we got back to the hotel but there was no Drake and Josh on tonight. However, Louis was delighted that The Hobbit was on and so he watched that as I drifted off to sleep. The Greeks love their ads though, with the ads on for 9mins each time (Louis counted them with frustration).