Trip to Athens – 10th to 11th May 2011

May 2011 was the last month in my wife’s pregnancy before travel restrictions came into effect and we had decided to make the most of it by having our “Babymoon in Greece”. While I just wanted to visit the Greek Islands, Eva insisted on including Athens, with the sole reason being the  famous bollywood actress Katarina Kaif’s dance number in front of the Acropolis… As it turned out, a one hour period on 11th May, made that our most adventurous (and dangerous)  day ever (details later), so I have decided to split the Athens part into a separate blog.
We took the 7:30 AM Air Baltic flight on 10th of May and reached Athens at around 2 PM, including an hour halt in Riga. The first sign of troubles to come were there as soon as we reached Athens. I got a message on my mobile that our flight to Rodos the next day has been postponed from 7PM to 10PM. Thankfully (really.. thankfully), we went to the Aegean air counter on airport and asked for an earlier flight, and they put us on 4PM flight instead.
We took the airport metro direct till Syntagma Station (~14 Eur ticket for two) which was a 30 min ride, changed metro to reach Omonia station and from there our hotel (Hotel Katarina) was a 5 minute walk. The hotel was a little away from the center, but decent with pretty good breakfast. We got the second sign of trouble when the hotel receptionist told us about the big transport strike next day and we should leave for Airport early, as all modes of public transport were to shutdown in the afternoon!!!
Weather was perfect (~20 deg C/sunny) and after freshening up, we left the hotel around 4 PM.

Syntagma Square and the Ermou

  
Pics (from top left): Syntagma metro station, Syntagma square, A Sculpture on the Square, Parliament building, Ermou street, Panaghia church

Our first stop for the day was the Syntagma Square, which we reached by metro. There was no day pass available for metro, but each ticket cost just 1.2Eur (less than half of what it is in Stockholm). It is the center of tourist activity in Athens with a fountain, numerous statues, trees and lawns… Also, one can see the parliament building on one side of the Square.
But for us, significance of Syntagma Square was that it is the starting point for the most famous shopping street of Athens, the Ermou. Eva had a list of shops she had to visit including Mother Care (she was 5 months pregnant.. :-) ) and the giant electronics store Public. We kept walking (and shopping) on Ermou and saw the Church of Panaghia Kapnikarea on the way, but unfortunately the spices shop for which we had got good reviews was closed by time we reach there. At around 6 PM, we boarded the metro again from Syntagma to reach the Acropoli metro station.

The Plaka

Pics (from top left): Plaka entry, a small monument in Plaka, Souvenir shop, Eva looking for a hat, Our dinner restaurant, Well lit Acropolis in the distance

Our final stop for the day was The Plaka, a typical European old town with narrow stone paved streets, open restaurants/bars and innumerable touristic souvenir shops. The area is also known as the “Neighbourhood of the Gods” because of its proximity to Acropolis. We had a wonderful time there with shopping some souvenirs and having a wonderful Italian dinner at an open restaurant with a wonderful well lit view of the Acropolis in the distance. Our babymoon had begun with a romantic evening, one of many to come.

The Acropolis of Athens

Pics: Postcards from the Acropolis of Athens

The next morning we got up early, had our breakfast and set out for The Acropolis, the only reason we had come to Athens (imagine, we left hotel by 7:30 AM!), . We reached the Acropoli metro station and walked up the hill to the ticket counter. There we got the first (and mild as compared to later ones) shock of the day. The ticket counter person told us that Acropolis is closed on the day due to national strike.. Thankfully, immediately another person told us that it has been decided to open Acropolis till 12:00 noon and gave us some relief. The Acropolis contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architecture and historic significance. We bought the 12 Euro combined ticket to various attractions of the city (all the rest that I will cover) and climbed a further up to enter The Acropolis. Never had I imagined ruins could be so beautiful and breathtaking…. This was definitely better than the Ancient Forums of Rome. We covered all the buildings inside Acropolis including Propylaea, Temple of Athena Nike, Parthenon and Erechtheion. Don’t remember the historic significance of any of these, but that can be found on Google..

Temple of Olympian Zeus

 
Pics (from left): Temple of Olympian Zeus in the background, Monastiraki metro station, Church outside Monastiraki

We were really short of time and left Acropolis after spending a couple of hours to walk towards Temple of Zeus. It was a short 5-7 minute walk. This again was a ruin of an ancient temple with a few pillars remaining of a structure which once must have been quite massive and impressive. We spend around 10 minutes there clicking some photographs and moved on. We took the metro again and reached the Monastiraki metro station which itself is a tourist attraction with some ancient structures within the station. Also, there is a nice market just outside the station.

Hadrian library and the Ancient Angora

Pics (from left): Hadrian’s library, Ancient Agora, Temple of Hephaiston (in Agora)

Close to Monastiraki station, our first halt was Hadrian library, and then walked towards Ancient Agora of Athens. Both of these offering more ruins of ancient structures, but beautiful in their own different way. We were really short of time now and couldn’t spend much time at any of these monuments…
This bought us to the end of our itinerary and we headed back to Syntagma to catch our 1:00 PM bus to Airport for which we had bought tickets the previous day itself (The ticket counter is besides the Syntagma square and the bust starts from there as well).

The Adventure

As soon as we stepped out of Syntagma metro station, we could see something’s not right. The whole square was lined up on all sides by security forces in riot gear. I had never seen so many people in police uniforms at one place and was frightened a little bit to say the least. We quickly moved towards our bus stop to get out of the place as soon as possible. But then we got the biggest shock of the day… we were told that all public transport has been stopped (few hours before the schedule) and the only way to get out is to hire a taxi, that too if we are lucky… And, the very next moment we saw a huge stream of people coming in towards the square from one side… Hundreds.. no thousands of people shouting slogans, raising banners marching in…. Suddenly we saw some of the policemen running towards a group of people who had tried to throw stones at them... The crowd became unruly, and policemen started to baton-charge and threatened to open water cannons and tear gas shells….Now we were scared and started running to take shelter.. (remember that my wife was 5 months pregnant)…
And then, from nowhere a group of 4 girls in their twenties asked us if we were ready to share a taxi to the airport.. They had already talked to a cabbie and wanted to divide the fare. At that moment, I would have paid 10 times the taxi fare all by myself, so this was an absolute win-win arrangement. We were 5 people in the taxi when maximum allowed was four and cabbie asked one of the girls to put her head down and hide as there was police all around. Finally somehow we reached airport and found out to our relief that the flight was on time…. That one hour was the most adventurous hour of my life and while now we at times laugh thinking about it, we were really really scared then… :)
Finally we took our 4PM flight and headed towards our next destination Rodos.. The best of this trip was yet to come.. :) … but that in the next blog…