Nearly Neutral Travel

I should probably explain that I’ve spent the last few days desperately trying to convince Oli that the Acropolis is actually called the apocalypse. (“Shall we get dinner after the apocalypse?”) Sadly, it didn’t catch on.

This was our first visit to Athens, so we had a lot of ground to cover. On our first morning, we followed a Lonely Planet walking tour, which is our favourite way to get our bearings in any new city. This took us past the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, where the soldiers perform a slow motion march in their pom-pom shoes and then have their brows mopped in a strangely tender manner by another soldier. It was a very hot day but still, it was a little odd to watch.

Next, we passed the Roman Agora, with its 64-seat public latrine (going to the loo in front of that many people is surely the stuff of nightmares!) We also walked through the pretty Anafiotika neighbourhood, which sat just under the Acropolis but had the feel of a peaceful village. Here, we saw our 50th Greek cat (hidden Where’s Wally? style in one of the photos below).

We took full advantage of being in a capital city and enjoyed the international food scene – coconut curries at the buzzy Dara Thai Restaurant, south Indian cuisine at Dosa House, and a seriously, seriously good lentil moussaka at Veganaki. I would honestly revisit Athens just to eat the vegan moussaka again, and until then it will haunt my dreams.

We perfected the art of peering through fences at Roman ruins. I say art – there’s obviously not much to it really. Oli is helpfully demonstrating below, while saving on admission to the Archaeological Site of Kerameikos.

It was only a matter of time before Oli dragged me along to something energy-related, so we visited a disused Coal Gas plant that had been converted into an events space. I was envisaging something like Coal Drops Yard in Kings Cross and perhaps it would have been a bit more buzzy if not for being a grey Tuesday afternoon. Anyway, it wasn’t a wasted journey because we took a look at some of the exhibits, met another cat and had a go on an enormous adventure playground.

Finally, we spent some time touring some of the best street art in the city. Athens has become known for its graffiti (much of it expressing dissatisfaction towards the government’s handling of the financial crisis) and these street art projects have been an attempt to channel that creativity into something a little more structured.

We definitely only scratched the surface of this great city and would love to return to explore it more (and eat more vegan moussaka).

The Acropolis is totally unmissable in Athens. All roads seemingly lead to it, and it looms over the city by day and glows through the darkness at night. As well as seeing it up close, we also ascended a couple of hills on opposite sides of the city to enjoy the view from all angles, despite what the weather threw at us.

Golden hour at the Acropolis

We chose to visit the Acropolis site itself at 6.30pm, shortly before sunset (and the site closing). We’d heard that it gets very busy in the middle of the day, so this seemed to avoid both the crowds and an early start for us; win-win! We entered the site from the quieter south-eastern entrance and made a bee-line for the Parthenon, heading up past the Theatre of Dionysus, the Temple of Asclepios, and finally arriving at the plateau via the impressive Propylaea entry way. By this point, the sun was already low enough in the sky to cast a beautiful golden glow across each of the temple ruins.

We spent a good half hour exploring both the Parthenon (below) and Erechtheion (above). I also managed to snap one of our finest selfies to date. By that, I mean a rare selfie that survived Sara’s regular culls of any photos that contain her.

Biblical rain and sunset on Philopappos Hill

The next day, we’d planned to take a sunset stroll up Philopappos Hill, a mound just to the south-west of the Acropolis that we’d read had great views over the city. The one issue with this plan was the weather, as there were thunderstorms forecast throughout the afternoon. We’d made it as far as the very calm and semi-pedestrianised Iraklidon street when the heavens opened, so we took shelter in the nearest bar, and waited for it all to blow over. And it wasn’t long before the chalkboard outside the bar literally did blow over and was carried away by the torrent of water flowing down the street.

A few drinks later and the rain had started to clear, so we headed off towards the park. Halfway up the hill we came across a rather large church bell, and Sara (with the help of some dutch courage) tested it out. Surprisingly, the bell was incredibly loud, so Sara did the honourable thing and did a runner. Apologies to the people of Athens who set their watch by these bells.

Eventually, we made it to the top of Philopappos Hill and found a viewpoint overlooking the Acropolis. This time, we waited the sun to actually set and the lights to come on before moving on to dinner. The deluge earlier in the afternoon seemed to have scared off anyone with any sense, leaving us alone to enjoy the views. The remaining clouds even added some atmosphere to the evening sky. It was pretty magical.

Rain and shine at Lycabettus Hill

For our final Acropolis view we travelled to Lycabettus Hill, the highest point in Central Athens. We climbed up a handful of stairs through a quiet neighbourhood north-east of the Acropolis to reach the funicular railway’s lower station. Just after purchasing our ticket but before the train departed, an ominous rumble of thunder rolled across the city. We exchanged a glance and wondered whether this was a good idea at all, but our typical we’ve-come-this-far determination encouraged us to hop on the train shortly before it departed.

To our surprise, the funicular railway travelled underground all the way to the hill’s summit, some 277m above sea level. We emerged from the upper station into a torrential downpour, and while the other passengers made a run for the cafe, we joined a sweet little cat sheltering under a tree. Although heavy, the downpour didn’t last long, and the sun was shining again across the city before we knew it.

Unlike most other people who took the funicular, we were far too cheap to buy a return ticket so planned to walk down. And actually, this was even more enjoyable than the view from the church at the top – we passed huge cacti and every turn in the path focused the view on a different part of the city in a new light, keeping us entertained as we descended.

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In addition to the many Acropolis viewings, we did our best to make the most of our time in a big city once again – more on this in Part II.

If you also followed the first series of Race Across the World, where teams travelled overland from London to Singapore, you’ll know that the first checkpoint was at Delphi, Greece (the centre of the world, according to the ancient Greeks). We took our time getting here from London (17 days versus the six days that the winning team took) and any budgetary woes we had paled into insignificance compared to the £1329 that each competitor was given to get all the way to Singapore. However, we obviously saw much more on our way to Delphi and we’re still convinced that we could have won the series if we’d taken part!

We had fewer than 24 hours to spend in this little town, but we were glad to have broken our journey between Patras and Athens here. We arrived late in the evening after our marathon 36-hour journey from Matera, but got up bright and early the next morning to beat the crowds and visit the famous archeological site, home to the Temple of Apollo and the mysterious Oracle. For me, the setting on Mount Parnassus was the most impressive part, particularly as all the most interesting finds from the site had been relocated to the local museum.

The sceptic in me thinks that this has a lot to do with being able to charge a higher entry fee to visit both the site and the museum, but perhaps it’s actually more to do with preserving the finds in a climate-controlled environment. Either way, we visited both and managed not to spend all day in the museum by setting ourselves a strict “only look at two things in each room” rule.

Our bus to Athens wasn’t until the evening, so we spent the afternoon writing and travel planning while sitting on a terrace with the most incredible view over the Gulf of Corinth.

Cat count

Greece has delivered on cats and the cat drought of northern Italy is a distant memory. I’m already regretting deciding to keep count and we’ve had to set up a tracker! At time of writing, we’ve seen 68 cats.