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| In front of the Tower of Wind and the Acropolis |
Once we landed in Athens and got our luggage, Mike booked us a car into Athens. We got to be some of those people who walk out of the airport to see a chauffeur holding a card with your name on it. You just hope the sign isn’t an old piece of cardboard and it’s not written in crayon. That’s not really how it was, but it leads into the next part of the story.
In order to get from the airport into downtown Athens, you must drive around a small mountain via a toll road. Our driver pulled into the autopass lane, but the barricade refused to lift. He tried a couple things then decided he’d forgotten to pay the bill and would have to go through the manual pay booth. He had to back up quite a distance to get out far enough to switch lanes, and that caused several cars behind us to honk and have to back up. Eventually we made it over to the manual lane.
Once we got into town, he dropped us at our hotel. We stayed in the Hotel Grande Bretagne right on Syntagma Square. That's the main social square of Athens. It’s a large rectangle with a beautiful park in the middle. On one side is the Monument to the Unknown Soldier and Parliament. Another side is the main subway station. The other sides are filled with hotels and high-end shopping. It also happens to be where people meet up for protests (foreshadowing).
It was late afternoon by the time we got checked in and went back out to the city. It was too late to go up to the Acropolis, so we opted to walk around the Plaka. That's the neighborhood immediately below the Acropolis and is famous for its shopping, churches, and old-world sidewalk restaurants. It was only a short walk from the hotel, so we didn't bother with a taxi.
The streets were lined with small shops and tons of touristy knick-knacks. At first, I wasn't sure what a lot of the odd looking souvenirs were, but it turned out they were "the evil eye" which is supposed to STOP curses, not cause them. They came in all shapes, colors, and sizes but I didn’t feel ready to buy any. We wandered around the neighborhoods and shops, all the while slowly climbing up towards the Acropolis.
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| In a garden with Mount Lycabettus behind me |
We stumbled across a small park that had a beautiful view of a hill across the city. We weren't sure what it was, but it was very striking so I got a picture. After some web searches, it turned out to be Mount Lycabettus, the highest point in the city. There's a small church at the top and you can either climb up to it or ride up in a funicular up, but we did neither on this trip.
By the time the sun was setting we were right at the base of the Acropolis. We started looking for somewhere to eat dinner. We wandered back down the hill and came across a bunch of little streetside diners. It was a bit chilly, so we opted to eat indoors at the Psaras Tavern. I think I got something like a braised lamb shank, and it was fantastic. I don't remember what Mike got and I don't remember if either of us got desert.
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| Psaras Tavern |
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| After dinner |
After dinner we headed West toward Monastiraki Square. We left the Plaka and entered other historic neighborhoods filled with ruins. We saw a lot of college age kids walking the streets in groups. It seemed a bit odd to have so many out and about. I figured they'd be at dance clubs or bars, not walking through touristy areas, and why so many?
We stopped to take pictures at a cool looking octagonal tower. It turned out it was an ancient weather tower with sundials and other things on it. It was cool to see the tower with the Acropolis behind it all lit up.
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| Weather Tower with the Acropolis lit up behind it |
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| Closer view of the Acropolis, I wonder if we can ride the Elevator |
We couldn't go into any of the historical ruins, but we peeked in at a lot of them to get a feel for what we would do in the coming days.
Eventually we started back toward Syntagma Square and our hotel. Oddly, the crowds got thicker as we neared the square. Most of the crowds were the same college-age kids we'd seen on the streets all night.
There were a lot of police and a few barricades around the square. We wondered for a minute if a parade or something was going on, but there were people going in and out of the hotel, so we just pushed through the crowds and went into the hotel. This was our first night in Greece and I was planning to try to write this blog in real time, so I pulled out my laptop and tried to write. I've written 30 or more trip reports over the years, but it's gotten harder since my mother passed away. She was my main audience (besides my wife) and I was struggling to find the motivation to keep writing.
I don't think I'd written much when there was a loud pop outside the hotel. Maybe fireworks? Then a few more pops. It wasn't gunfire (like I'd really know what that sounded like), and it wasn't very consistent. Just every few minutes. Eventually we could also make out yelling and chanting. Our windows didn't open very far, but we could see people filling the street and police around the barricades.
I pulled up a local news website and found out a large protest was taking place in Athens, right outside our hotel. There had been a recent accident where a passenger train collided with a freight train killing a lot of people. These people, mostly students, were protesting the government's poor record on train safety. As an outsider, I thought the police were very restrained. They just stood there and took it as people threw rocks and firecrackers at them.
The protests got louder and louder. It wasn't until someone started throwing lit bottles full of gas that the police reacted. The police finally fired a few smoke bombs near the crowd and people quickly started to disburse. After watching all of that and calling home, all thoughts of writing the blog were gone from my mind. I had managed to stay awake all day, so I was able to get to sleep despite it being early afternoon at home. That's the best way to get over jet lag, just stay awake a long time and sleep during local nighttime.
