Athens...City of the Old and the New

---

After a long but relatively uneventful flight from New York, we landed in Athens midmorning on May 11th. The airport in Athens is new and clean, actually much nicer that NY Kennedy from which we departed. The airport is quite a distance outside the center of Athens, but it was nice seeing the countryside on our ride into town. Athens itself has only about 670,000 people but the greater metropolitan area has over 3.6 million, so there are apartment complexes dotting the hillsides everywhere. The traffic is actually very light, due to the fact that most people use public transportation and don't even own cars.

When we arrived at our hotel, The Athens Gate, we were please to see that the promotional brochure painted an accurate picture of just how close the hotel is to some of the most significant ruins. Our room on the 7th floor had a large balcony which overlooked the Temple of the Olympian Zeus - right across the street. Even more beautiful was the Rootop Garden and Restaurant on the 8th floor which had lots of outdoor tables with views of both the Temple of Zeus and the Acropolis/Parthenon. We took picture of both ruinds at noon and again at 8pm, showing just how beautiful the sight is in either daylight or dusk illuminated by floodlights against a dark blue sky.

Very near to our hotel was the Plaka, an old area of the city which has lots of small streets and alleys full of little Greek Orthodox churches, shops and restaurants. We had a great time strolling through the area and enjoyed a typical Greek meal in a small outdoor restaurant. The area reminds us of a cleaner and less-bawdy French Quarter.

Finally, as we usually do in a new international city, we took the Hop-On-Hop-Off tour bus. We got a great overview of the city and learned a lot more about the rich 6000 year history of this area. It may be a socialist country in political turmoil now, but this was the birthday of democracy!

After a lovely dinner in our hotel's rooftop restaurant, we turned in to catch up on some of the sleep lost on the trans-Atlantic flight. Athens was wonderful but we're eager to board the Pacific Princess tomorrow!

---

Comments

[Martie]

Athens
Your description was wonderful! I felt like I was there all over again! Glad you are off to a great start!