Athens Day three
My third day in Athens was warmer and less windy than the ones before, and the storm we had sailed through the previous Friday had completely gone leaving blue skies and warm temperatures. As this was a Monday, the museums were closed, something I should have thought about when I planned the trip. Instead, we wandered, and it turned out to be another six-mile day.
It started with a walk through the National Gardens, a large area of trees and plants, lakes and a café behind/next to the parliament building. We saw plenty of noisy parakeets, a few magpies and other birds including ducks and geese on one of the ponds. It’s easy to forget you are in the middle of a city, and it was a shaded walk.
We came out by the president’s residence (hence the guards) and on to the Stadium, the site of the first modern Olympics. The next day there was to be a presentation by the Greek Youth Olympic Gymnast team, or similar, and the team was warming up before a rehearsal. Speakers played music, we sat in the royal box – two marble thrones halfway down – and watched the warm-up, which was very impressive. There is no shade there though, and you should bring your own cushions if you are planning to stay a long time, so after a while we wandered back around the main road towards Plaka, again.
There, we stopped for a coffee at the Melina Mercouri café, a pleasant little place with a large menu. I can recommend the frappe with Kahlua, wink, wink. After that, we took a stroll above the Roman Forum, had lunch in one of the squares nearby, and later, ended up at The Arts Foundation for coffee.
The Arts Foundation in Monastiraki is worth a visit and not only for any exhibition that might be sowing. It is an exhibition space and café housed in what was once a prison. Some of the cells/rooms are used for meeting spaces, shops and small displays, it has another space upstairs and a shaded courtyard that’s popular with the younger, student set. It also plays good music and the prices are very reasonable. It’s not easy to find, being in one of the many side streets in the area, but you can search for it and use your Map-Ap on your phone to lead you there.
Our six-mile day ended with another festive occasion with Irene and her band (we went back because we had laughed so much the night before, and the food was good), and tempting though it was to get up and make a fool of myself dancing to Zorba, I stayed in my chair and went unnoticed.
