Polis Grand Hotel Athens

... airport and the metro (subway) is closed between the airport and Athens due to construction so we took an express bus (3.20 euro each) into Athens. It dropped us at the metro station at Syntagma square. We took the metro one stop to the Acropolis station. The metro system in Athens is excellent. The trains run every five minutes during the busy times, which seems to be most of the day. When we got off the metro we wandered around for a while ...

Classical Athens (before 355 BC) was the cradle of Western civilization, where democracy was first adopted. It became a secondary center of Greek Orthodox Christianity during the long Byzantine rule when Constantinople was the seat of the emperors and the Church. Athens continued to be secondary to Constantinople under Ottoman Turkish rule, until becoming the ...

... was too hot. On that day we decided to go to a beach. We left yet after 2pm, sitting at Antonio`s home and waiting for the worst hours of heat to pass. We took a kind of city bus, that`s last stop is 1 hour away from Athens. My type of look is pretty exotic here. In the bus there was staring at me a 7-year-old boy, not mentioning a man in the age of my father, who as so brown, that his nails became white. We arrived to the place before 4pm, but the heat was still hard to handle. The ...

... try and counteract the stereotype. I'm not talking bad about them, but there was some obvious tension in the otherwise enjoyable conversation. I began to miss the generally agreeable Australians we encountered in Ireland. Day 35 - With only two of the six sights left to see on our Acropolis ticket we set off again on a quest after going grocery shopping. On our way to the first site, we passed the Olympic stadium used in the 1896 Olympic games. It was closed to tourists but ...

... it was some nasty nasty stuff!!! The worst i'd ever had. The salad had a piece of salmon on it and part of it was brown. Yum. Went the baggage claim and waited and waited. No bag. At least 20 people go to the lost luggage and then suddenly more comes out, woo hoo! Ahhh but no wooo hooo for me, because my bag is not there. Yes they have lost my baggage. So, therefore i have no clean clothes, underwear, toothpaste ...

... the parliament and the President's house, Hadrian's Arch and finally back to Monastiraki. Some of the buildings were amazingly beautiful and we got to see the changing of the guard outside the (relatively modest) Presidential Palace. It was a somewhat funny process, what with the guard clopping his way into position at millimetric speed . But the ride was fun, and we skipped going back to Monastiraki, getting off near Plaka. M and I got a bit ...

... there are chairs and umbrellas. Alekos promises to come for me with Hronis in a few hours so we can 'do something'. I keep assuring I am fine on my own as I know he needs rest. The water is perfect- it is hot and sunny. I try to write down as much as I can as quickly as I can as my battery is low- I realize all this is choppy in style as written, and more so as I edit out so many many details. I will not have time, I am sure, to write again until much later. I do not try ...

... only a few pillars marking the site. We decided that we would make a more thorough inspection only after we had seen the rest of Athens’ sites.

We continued through the streets just east of the Roman Agora. I was amazed at how quiet the streets were at that hour. It was hard to imagine that we were in a large city. The only sounds we heard were the strains of Greek folk music. We followed the sound and ended up at a restaurant. An ...