Athens (Piraeus), Greece – Monday, December 20
December 20, 2021
Last updated on December 21st, 2021 at 02:13 pm
Day 3: After breakfast, enjoy your free time exploring Athens. You may consider a stroll through the city or a visit to the National Garden. Enjoy dinner on your own. (Breakfast)
December 20th – Free day in Athens
Today there were no Viking tours planned. After breakfast, we were on our own. Tara, our Viking tour director was at the Viking desk in the lobby to answer questions and help us plan our day if we wanted her help.
Alan woke up not feeling well. He didn’t sleep well, getting up about 2 hours before Joyce woke up. He posted a few pictures on the blog, did some reading, rested some and we went down to breakfast.
After breakfast, Alan decided to rest a little more. Joyce read the tour books and looked at the map of Athens to have some places to suggest, should Alan feel better.
Around 10:30 am – 11:00 am, Alan decided he felt like at least walking around a bit. We decided to walk to the Plaka, a shopping district close to the Acropolis. Tara had marked the map showing us what we would see on our Viking tour on Wednesday and marking things she thought we might be interested in.
We have been given somewhat confusing information about the safety of walking around Athens. I mentions to Tara on our first day, our travel agent had suggested we not venture around the city on our own. Tara responded Athens was a safe city and she didn’t know why a travel agent would say that. Yesterday, both Tara and Laila recommended several times that we take pictures of our passports with our phones and leave the passports in our room safe. Today as we talked to Tara and the other tour director at the desk, they again talked to us about our passports. They also warned to put nothing of value in our pants pockets or in zipped pockets of a backpack. They also told me to watch my bag, a small across the body bag that sits in front of me.They proceeded to relate a story of some other tour guests that foiled a pickpocketing attempt by yelling a warning to the mark. The person was taking a picture while a young woman was attempting to unzip a backpack. So, we left our passports, camera and backpack in the room. We carry money, credit cards and a paper picture of our passports in a pouch on a lanyard around our neck, under our clothes. I walked with my hand on my small purse, resting in front of me. We didn’t take pictures at the same time, watching out for each other. Since I’m writing in the evening, you can rest assured we encountered no trouble. The places we walked were not so crowded that other people were close to us. The rest of our time in Athens will be spent on Viking tours until we are delivered to our ship.
We walked from the hotel to the Plaka, about a thirty-minute walk. The day was beautiful, a cloudless sky with temperatures in the upper 50’s. We walked along the narrow streets of the Plaka that were supposed to be pedestrian only, but were often shared with motorcycles. Joyce had identified a jewelry store, tour guide book store, ice cream shop and locally owned café within the Plaka that sounded interesting. She wrote the names of the shops in a piece of paper. Alan had arranged for daily international cell plans that just need to be activated each day we wanted to use it, so we were confident with the paper map and cell phone navigation, we could find our way. That was not the case. The streets wind around and of course the street signs are Greek. We didn’t do something right and couldn’t figure out how to get cell service away for the hotel, so we weren’t able to find the stores. We walked around, window shopping, visited one jewelry shop, saw some nice scarves and ponchos. We were a little surprised there weren’t more shoppers. Possible reasons could include that it was Monday, it was quiet season and of course – COVID-19. Anyway, we wondered around, coming back to Syngrou Ave., near the National Gardens. We walked through the National Gardens to the other side and viewed the outside of the Presidential residence. We felt very safe as there was a large police presence in the area. We continued past the residence on Irodou Attikou toward Vasilissis Sofias Ave. the north boundary in the National Garden. It was nearing 1 pm and we wanted to observe the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in front Parliament which was in the north west corner of the National Gardens. At 1 pm, 3 soldiers were seem marching toward the tomb. Through ceremonial arm swings, high stepping, and slow coordinated movement, the two new guards were in place and the two relieved of duty marched away with the 3rdsoldier. Alan was able to get nice video of the ceremony, while Joyce enjoyed watching the ceremony as well as a young boy in the crowd attempting to imitate the movements of the soldiers.
After the ceremony, we began making our way back to the hotel. We came across a mini market of local goods – cheeses, honey, local crafts, Christmas ornaments and dried fruits. Many of the merchants were eager for us to sample their products. We tasted several and purchased some dried fruit, a Greek lotus. We continued on, walking past the ruins of the Temple of Olympian Zeus and Hadrian’s Arch at the south end of the National Gardens. Most of the Temple of Olympian Zeus was under scaffolding.
We got back to the hotel around 2:30 pm ready for a rest. We both rested for a couple hours. Alan still isn’t feeling great, but decided he needed to eat something. Joyce researched the food available at the hotel not seeing much we were interested in or was open at the time. We settled on returning to Vassilis, where we ate on Saturday. Alan had pork schnitzel and Joyce had a very tasty seafood risotto, containing a large prawn, shrimp, mussels, and octopus. We returned to the hotel. Alan slept and Joyce read and blogged. Hopefully, the sleep Alan was able to get today will help him tomorrow. We also managed to walk over 13,000steps!
