4/5/24 Athens

 

   After a an interesting flight that left 40 mins late , we arrived on time in Athens at 7:10am . What a night , felt like we just got to sleep , then the stewardess woke us to give us a blueberry muffin and a bottle of water . Back to sleep , that will do for breakfast later , get woken again to be given a blanket !! Awake and getting closer to Athens , we get served breakfast ( the muffin was eaten about 2hours ago ) - Chicken & penne pasta , and a vegetarian linguine , with a chocolate cookie for desert , all for breakfast - think someones clock was out of whack 😂 . 

  To the bag pick up area , and watching closely for our bags , we found one of them , most people had wandered off to customs . I thought I'd seen the other bag earlier but decided it was a different colour and wasn't ours , turns out it was ours and the coloured cloth handle was covered by another bag beside it the whole time as it did laps of the baggage belt 😂😂🤣 . Off to customs , for an unhappy greek chappy to stamp our passport and usher us off -no smiles today - he should have been on the plane for the last 13 hours 😆 .

  Off to the train station and figure out our ticket required to get into the city , sorted . It was nice to go down to the platform to get some fresh air after all that time in aircon , pity our 1.5 hour ticket starts as soon as you enter the platform area - 20 min wait for the train , then 40 mins in , then onto a bus if everything runs on time . Fortunately it did and we found our Air B&B after about 40 mins of walking the streets . ( I might add our wonderful daughter gave us full instructions on the phone , which was great until we didn't have wifi to navigate with !!)

   We got to the key safe , got the keys and went in . It's an apartment and 5 floors up , after lugging a 17kg suitcase up to the top floor , I figured there had to be a better way - there was - a single door on each level was a 2 person lift , hooray !! Both of us in we took in the not so salubrious views out the verandah windows . Definitely a large contrast to Singapore , and a real eye opener .

   We are in Exarcheia , about 1.5klms from the city centre . The streets are generally one way and very narrow , parking is at a premium and most cars are small hatchbacks or there's motor scooters & bikes . 

   We've found plenty of graffiti , some good , but generally lots of rubbish .

 

   Electric trolley buses run most main roads - this photo was taken on Easter Saturday , so it was a bit quieter than normal???

  This impressive structure is the National Archaeology Museum

   The scale and amounts of marble have amazed us .

 

   There are some other pieces / artefacts outside the building - waiting for restoration or something ?

   We walk past these most mornings .

   The graffiti spoils the facades of many many buildings and is a shame . Roller shutters are covered in it also , and there's plenty of them - we haven't seen what's behind them due to the Easter holiday .

   Here's a church we walk past .

   We found some little shops to purchase a limited amount of food for tea & breakfast - hopefully we'll find something else tomorrow . There was a fruit shop , fish monger , small supermarket and a bakery all surrounding one 4 way intersection 5mins walk from the apartment .

   Been a long week today , time to get some sleep . Here's a map link :- https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1yi7Wb2h5rD5CXqxSItV3SRZs7Y4Il9c&usp=sharing