We had pretty much a full day before our flight this evening so we got to do the things that we’d wanted to do yesterday but couldn’t because of the strike.
REVENGE
Speaking of the strike, as we walked back to the hotel last night, the clear-up process had already begun. Workers were pressure washing all the rubbish into the road where it would then be picked up by a road sweeper. When we got up this morning and made our way to the National Gardens the roads were spotless, which was impressive. Harder to deal with was the graffiti in Syntagma Square and worse the damage to marble fittings.
Olympic Heritage
We had a pleasant walk through the National Garden, enjoying the sound of the parakeets high in the trees above us, to the Panathenaic Stadium on the other side. This is the site of the first modern Olympics in 1896 and is a temple not only to sporting endeavour but to marble – the place is one giant lab of the stuff!
It’s a dizzying ascent to the upper seats, and the Olympic symbol, with some of the steps being near vertical. It must have been fun to enter and leave the place when thousands of fans were there all trying to get to their seats. There’s a (very) small museum there which mostly houses the torches and posters from each of the modern Olympics and a podium to stand on for the all-important pictures, but that’s about it. Still it is an interesting diversion for an hour or so.
And that was our day and trip done. All the remained now was to get the metro back to the airport to find that our plane had been delayed by two hours, our seats had been changed and the staff forced us to check our only bag.
