Day 25 - Athens

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Our last day in Athens and to be honest we have done most of what we wanted so it was sort of a free day. We decided to take the train out to “Marina” where we thought the marina of Pireaus was, but no. This turned out to be a scungy old suburb of Athens that you certainly would not go to at night and should avoid by day, full of rough looking people, broken down and tagged old buildings and as so forth. So back on the train we went to Pireaus itself to give it a second go. Well the second time there was no better than the first and if anything at all be said about Pireaus it is don’t bother except to transit onto a ferry to leave.

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After the disappointment of the morning we set off on a walk to the Palanthic Stadium the site of the first modern Olympics in 1896. The stadium was originally from Roman times and like much of Athens was partially destroyed circa 300ad. The stadium was rebuilt using much of the original retaining walls and to very exact standards conforming to the original design and materials. It is a fantastic monument and not greatly visited, when we are there were several families and the kids were running around the track pretending to be athletes, we sat on the king and queens seats and enjoyed the afternoon.

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