Geoff writes: last day in Athens, with a mid-afternoon flight.  Another cold and cloudy day. We spent an hour or two at the Roman forum, part of our 12 euro ticket which got us into five separate sites, including the Acropolis. It’s great value – each time you go somewhere, they rip off a section of the ticket, so you can’t use it again. We got to the forum, which was open, but the ticket office was empty, so we managed to sneak in without losing part of our ticket – the last part, in fact, so we thought we could later revisit another site (the Agora) we had had to rush around on Thursday, given the daft closing times they have here of 3pm.

The forum was good – big, reasonably well preserved, and, that early in the morning, empty. It was also freezing, so we decided to use the ticket to go back to the Agora, and the indoor museum there. We went to the ticket office to hand in our ticket, to the guy who ignored us for a while, before telling us it was free on Sundays. So much for sneaking into the forum. Still, we went in and did see all the things we missed on Thursday.

Then a wander around the flea market for an hour or two, lunch, and the bus back to the airport. We took the bus rather than the metro because we wanted to see the outskirts of the city. Predictably, like most modern cities, and most roads to airports, they were very drab and uninspiring.

We really liked Athens. The weather wasn’t disastrous, it only really rained on one day. The archaelogical sites are great, as is the city itself, which is really lively, interesting, and not threatening (at least, not in the central areas). And the people were really friendly. The only downside (apart from the weather, and that was just bad luck, it’s not normally like that) was the incredible amount of graffiti (though in terms of litter, the city was very clean in the centre); and the very early closing times of the archaelogical sites and museums. Oh, and not being able to flush toilet paper away, but having to put it in a wastepaper bin instead…

See photos of today.