Athens Greece

We visited Athens, or Piraeus as it’s called locally, for 1 1/2 days. On day one, which was an afternoon, I went on a bicycle tour of Athens. Because I was on a bike, I didn’t take a lot of pictures as I was planning to do that on day 2 when I was scheduled to tour the Acropolis and the Parthenon as well as a museum and some other city sights. However, back on the ship the first evening, I received a note from the excursion desk that the archeological guard union was on strike and we could not visit the Acropolis and Parthenon. As a result, I decided not to spend a couple of hours on a bus riding around and just went back in to town and walked around shopped and had a lunch there. When I got back to the ship that night, those that went on the tour told me apparently the strike ended as quick as it was called and everything was open.

So net result was not so many pictures as you’ll see. One of the fun things about touring by bike is you can cover a lot of ground, but still get the feeling for the place as you ride through and also make stops to hear the history from our guide. The Greek equivalent of the White House is there and as we rode through the flower gardens behind it, we were able to stop and watch the changing of the guard. They do this in the front and at the back entrance to the building. All the tourists go to the front of the building and there is a sizable crowd there to watch. They do the same ceremony at the back entrance and we basically had the street to ourselves which was a nice way to watch. We went past the first Olympic Stadium where the modern Olympics began in 1896, the athlete housing and continued through the streets and ended up riding through the Plaka which is the heart of the old city filled with shops and restaurants. (and I didn’t run over anyone)