Our Strange and Unpredictable Backpacking vacation in Greece! During The COVID-19 Pandemic (Athens Day 3 & 4 )

 The Temple of Olympian Zeus taken across from Zappeio Gardens

Day 3 (12th March 2020): Athens & Piraeus Sea-Port

As usual, had a very hearty breakfast at our Hostel, by 8.30 am we are out exploring the streets of Athens. Today we had planned to visit Athens on the whole, we will either walk or make use of our 2 days Blue Bus Pass. It was just a short distance walk to The Arch of Hadrian than take the Vasilissis Olgas Ave to Panathenaic Stadium.

Panathenaic Stadium

           

Panathenair was originally build in the late 5th Century BC, underwent numerous transformation and finally hosted the 1st Modern Olympic in March 1896. The only Stadium build entirely out of marble, can sit more then 50,000 spectators.  
During Winter or Summer Olympic Games year, the Olympic flame travels from the ancient site of Olympia moving around Greece before finally arriving to this Stadium for an official hand-over ceremony to the new host country.
From there, we crossed the road into the Zappeion Garden and found the Zappeion Exhibition Hall.

Emily posting at the Zappeion

The front lawn of Aegli Zappiou

We cut through Zappeion Garden into the National Garden and came out to the Hellenic Parliament.
We walked further up to Syntagma Square, there we found the most luxurious hotel in Athens 'Hotel Grand Bretagne' rumored 1,000 Euro per night for a double room.

From Syntagma Square, we hopped onto the Blue bus to take us to back to the Acropolis as we wanted to visit the Ancient Agora, it was a short distance walk from Acropolis using the Apostolou Pavlou towards the Hip and vibrant Thission neighborhood. 

Walking along Apostolou Pavelou with the Acropolis on my right, my left are street-lined with assortment of cafes, restaurants, bars and retail shops that can rival any part Monastiraki area. It has such a cool vibe here, very vibrant with lots of youngsters, local and tourist. The Alfresco eateries were almost full with early lunch crowds. I really like the atmosphere here, we even saw a handful of street vendors selling homemade souvenirs..... maybe our next future visit we could stay around here or definitely spend more time in this neighborhood.

 

The Apostolau Pavelou

Observatory and the Church of Agia Marina.

We continued walking downhill keeping to our left we found the entrance to The Ancient Agora, alongside the sunken railway tracks.

The Agora in modern Greek means "marketplace". Meaning this archaeological site was once a place for gathering during ancient Greek dating way back like 5,000 years ago

The Temple of Hephaestus is the best preserved temple of ancient Greece, was build between 449 and 415 BCE

 The Stoa of Atallos is the most striking building in the Agora. It was completely destroyed by the Heruli in 267 CE, but it was rebuilt in the 20th century (1953-6). The original Stoa was funded by the King of Pergamon, Attalos II in 159-138 BCE. The Stoa of Atallos Museum’s collection contains various items found during the excavations of the Ancient Agora, like ceramics, jewels, weaponry and coins.

 The view around the Agora was beautiful and had a very peaceful and serene atmosphere even though its was very sunny and dry. 
The entrance fees was 4 Euro each during winter season.
Its now about 11.30am, too early for lunch as we just had a very hearty breakfast. We continued our hide towards Monastiraki.
From there we hopped on to the Blue Bus back to Bus interchange stop at Acropolis and transfer onto the bus going to Piraeus  Sea-Port.

Piraeus Port

By the time we reached Piraeus, at Mikrolimono's viewing-point it was about 2.00 pm, way passed our lunchtime!. Not really hungry but rather urgently needed to pee! 

Quickly, some photos taking, we hiked down towards Passalimani in search for foods and rest-room for our last bus taking us back to the City was about 4.30pm there.

At Piraeus, we finally noticed the lack of tourists here, most of the restaurants are either closed or with very few customers. We finally found one restaurant, with a 'tripadvisor' recommendation. We are the only customer there, then later on 2 more couples came into the restaurant. We ordered Fried squids, Salads and local fish ( don't recall what name) with beers & coffee for me and orange juice & tea for Emily. Total bill was 32.00 Euro, guess was ok cause it came with a killer view of the bay. The fried squids wasn't great at all, was soggy seem like wasn't fried well. The owner was very friendly and we empathised with him for the lack of diners during this challenging period.....so no complain from us, paid our bill and off we went continuing our hike down to Passalimani for our rendezvous with the Blue Bus.

                      Piraeus port is the biggest port in Greece and one of the most important ports of the Mediterranean, a major shipping industrial and transportation center of the country. City life focuses on the three parts of the port: the central one, the Zea marina and Mikrolimano.

Zea marina (Pasalimani)| This marina is the docking place for some of the most impressive yachts and cruisers. On the coast we can see many restaurants, taverns, bars and retail stores but unfortunately all are almost empty even-though is about 3.30pm when we were around this area. 

I was thinking to myself, OMG! Summer is just around the corner, it supposedly to be the peak season for Tourism, Greece will suffer greatly due to COVID-19 pandemic as more and more travel restrictions will be enforce from countries all over the world. This will definitely impact the Greek economy, I read somewhere during my research on Greece for this vacation, that the Greek tourism industry has became the mainstay of the country economy; 90% of the tourism revenue generated comes from abroad, by foreign visitors. In addition, 5 billion euros have been invested in the tourism sector last year. 

We did not venture onto the main port, where all those big cruise ships and ferries berth, as we will be going there the day after on Saturday to board the Blue Star ferry for Santorini.

Our Bus came around 4.35pm, within half an hour we are back at our hostel's neighborhood. 

We decided to stay in tonight, having had a late lunch and had walked about 18,000 steps today as tomorrow will be another hiking day to Lycabettus Hill. 

Dinner was package soups and bread from our back-up provisions.

Day 4 (13th March 2020) 

To day, we are hiking Mount Lycabettus, as usual after breakfast, we walked to Akropolis Metro took the red line to Syntagma, changed to blue line to Evangelismos station, which is the nearest metro station from Lycabettus Hill. 

At the top of the hill you will find the Greek whitewashed church of Agios Georgios (St. George). The viewing platform in front of the church provides sprawling views of Athens, stretching out to the city’s coastline.

The tallest of Athens' 7 hills @ 277 meters above see level, rises abruptly right in the middle of Athens, it is visible from almost everywhere. When I first saw this hill from across the Acropolis, I wondered what is at the top, it was calling me to climb it. So today is the day we will climb Lycabettus Hill.

This shot was taken while we were at The Acropolis

There are many routes leading up to the top, there is even a funicular (cable car) The Teleferik to the top for 7 Euro round trip or 5 Euro one way. It was an easy hike for us, we took a few combination of routes from dirt hiking paths, steep vertical steps to normal vehicle roads.
We started from Evengelismos Station, walked through many many private apartment buildings uphill finally came to St George Lycabettus Hotel for an urgent restroom call then took the road up-hill. At the side of the road we noticed many small steps leading to some jungle path, we just followed up onto the steps. As we are not actually following any distinct route, we just hike up-hill going through many small and narrow walking dirt paths till we came across a small church at the side of the hill. (now I know is the Church of St Isidore). From there we took another walking jungle path up-hill till we saw a small parking area which then eventually leads us to a zigzag walking path to the back of a restaurant, there is a staircase leading us to St George Church.

 

The zigzag walk way with beautiful view of the city

 

The St George Church

From up here we have a 360 degree view of Athens City. This hike took us less than an hour from Evengelismos Station to the top. We spend about 45mins there taking photos and admiring the view. 

The Acropolis taken from Lycabettus Hill viewing point

The Panathenaic Stadium captured from Lycabettus Hill

 By about 10.30am, more and more tourists came up, so we decided to hike down using another route. Which took us to a totally different part of down-hill area.

There was this morning market we came across, selling from house-wholes necessities to fresh meats. I must say this is really a charming neighborhood which later I found out called The Kolonaki neigbourhood. Besides the morning-market, there are lots of small cafes, boutiques, lots of bakeries and even an art galleries were found here. We even came across a hospital too. 

Navigating these narrow streets; congested with cars and pedestrian was a revelation; (just cross the street, don't look left or right, the oncoming car will give way to you, that's how we follow the locals) 

Walking through the morning-market for about half an hour, we decided to make our way back to Evengelismos Station and back to Plaka area, where we have yet to explore. 

Today was the last day we will be staying around Plaka area, as tomorrow we will be boarding the Blue Star Farries to Santorini for 4 days then to Mikonos for another 4 days.

Plaka is the oldest district in Athens, built at the foothill of the Acropolis, with picturesque neoclassical houses with mainly pedestrian streets. Walking uphill through the Anafiotika area, we enjoyed wonderful and pleasant view of many cafes, taverns offering local foods with cool gardens or courtyards, retail shop selling souvenirs and artifacts lined-up on both sides of the walking streets.                    The photo on the left is the Lysicrates Monument.

                                                   Saint Nicholas Ragavas

 

The Arch Of Hadrian

As you have noticed, there are less and less tourist roaming the streets, yes by now many countries had already enforced travel restriction esp. most of the Asian countries and the PRC. 
After exploring the 2 main streets ie.Kydathineon and Adrianou looking for souvenirs which are easy to carry in our backpack, we look for supermarket to purchase some food for our long ferry ride tomorrow. 
After purchasing enough foods for tomorrow's journey, we went back to our hostel to unload our groceries before coming out again for dinner at our favorite restaurant across the streets. I was craving for the grilled squids! Its was really very yummy. We planned to have an early night as we will be taking the 6 am metro from Akropolis to Piraeus station. 
Dinner was delicious as expected, we order Grilled squids, cucumber Greek salad and Fried Anchovies. No knowing that; this will be the last sit-down meal we will ever have in a Greek restaurant for this vacation. Bill was less than 20 Euros. 
During dinner, we found out that Greek Government will be implementing partial lock-down and social distancing with effective from tomorrow onward!


Look-out for my continuation blog.....Day 5, 6 & 7 on how we fared in Santorini during this Partial Lock-down period.