Today was a cold, grey windy day. But mostly it was cold. I didn’t feel well in the night, but I was damned if it was going to ruin my holiday, so dragged myself out anyway. We decided to got to the tourist information to check out buses and if anything was happening today, but despite the sign saying it should be open, it was closed – we seem to have that kind of effect on tourist information offices. So first destination today was the cemetery. It’s a bit left field for a tourist site, but apparently, it’s like a sculpture park.

Unfortunately we didn’t get there, as we got distracted by the stadium. You can see into it, but have to pay to go round it, and it’s just a modern oblong amphitheatre, so it seemed a bit pointless handing over the readies. By this time we were too far from the cemetery, so we walked towards Lycabettus Hill. I’ve been looking forward to taking the cable car/funicular railway (depending on which translation you read) up the hill since we got here.  The closer we got the worse I felt. I wasn’t up to map reading and Geoff found us to roughly where the map said the funicular was, but we could only find a path up, nothing else. We started the walk up, but I had to stop a few times with pain and then vomiting. What we didn’t ever find was any evidence of a funicular. Anywhere. We assumed they must have dismantled it until we read it was actually underground, in a channel under the surface of the hill. If there are no views it seems pointless, especially if the walk up is pretty easy anyway!

It was freezing on top, so we just carried on down the other side and then walked through the districts of Neopolis and Exarchia. The latter is the anarchist/bohemian quarter and we wandered around looking at shops and the amazing graffiti on the walls. Athens has little litter, but a lot of graffiti, most of it just pure vandalism, but in Exarchia there are some real artists at work. We ended our stroll at Omonia Square, where our original hotel was. It is dodgy and we’re so glad we changed hotels.

By the time we were back in our area I was frozen and although feeling much better, I wanted to have a snooze, so we went back to the hotel. We set  off out at 6pm to have more of a walk and find dinner. On our first night here we ate in the square just a couple of hundred meters from our hotel in the centre of Plaka, but were royally ripped off. The tout that persuaded us to go in promised us free drinks and dessert, but the food was atrocious and they charged us for water we didn’t order (same price as wine), bread, service charge, etc. Touts are in front of pretty much every restaurant and they get very wearing.  We were determined to find somewhere more off the beaten track to eat and started walking down the main shopping road towards Monastiraki district. At the bottom of the street there was a group of young people with signs (in Greek and English) saying ‘Free Hugs’. They waved them at us, but in true British fashion, we just walked by and then stopped to check out what was happening. I assumed they were some sort of religious nutters, but they didn’t actually engage people in chat, they literally just hugged anyone who felt like it. One of the guys came over to us, so we asked him why they were doing this. He looked at me in a puzzled way and said: “Because we like hugging!” So Geoff and I both got a lovely big hug from a lovely young man. We walked away smiling, thinking what a wonderful way it was to bring some random happiness to people.

We wandered around the closing flea market again and tried to find a tout free restaurant, when we came across our hugging friends for a second time. After a quick hug we asked them where to eat and got some excellent tips, so we thanked everyone with a big hug. What nice people the Greeks are!

The restaurant was a proper local place – just what we wanted on our last evening. And then off to a bar (again, no touts), which offered cheap beer. But the amazing thing was that they had a covered roof terrace with views of both the Acropolis and the Temple of Hephaestus, so you could sit in the warm with these amazing vistas. It was really cool. We were the only ones in there until eight lads from Imperial College CivSoc turned up. We were hoping this meant Civil Society, but realised it was civil engineering and once they were on their second round, we headed off. Interesting day and lovely evening…

See photos of today.

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