Today's journey was really a pre-journey, just to get us in position for our second boat trip tomorrow.

Given that we bunked off to the seaside yesterday, we thought we ought to make amends with a final bit of Acropolis-worship this morning. So we set off bright and early, calling in at a bakery en route (I love the sesame-crusted bread rings they make here...), and eating breakfast on the hoof.

Past the Panathenaic Stadium, unearthed in the late 19th century, and reconstructed to host the first modern Olympic Games in 1896 (when all of 13 nations took part):


Past another bit of the Byron legend:


And finally to Philopappos Hill, which not only has great views of the Acropolis, but is studded with all manner of historical sites, far more than we had time to explore:






Then home, collecting second breakfast on the way (tiropita, that super-indulgent classic Greek cheese pie, made of feta and ricotta).


Then pack up, wash up, tidy up, sweep up -- and off down the road to the Metro. Two stops, change, and then to Piraeus, at the end of the line.

We were incredibly lucky here. We didn't know it until we reached our destination, but after ours, there wouldn't be any more Metros out of Athens until about 7 o'clock in the evening because of industrial action (and the trams would be out for a few hours too). This was not technically a "strike", but rather an extraordinary meeting of the tram drivers' union. The effect, however, would be the same.

Anyway, we got here.

Piraeus is quite interesting. There seems to be a big ship at the end of every road. There's a marina. There's a beach area. There are ruins. There's a church with oranges.







And there's a very moving monument, by Panayotis Tanimanidis, to what has been called the genocide of the Pontic Greeks (these are Greeks who had been living on the southern shores and in the mountains along the Black Sea since well before the birth of Christ).

The creator describes it as "a huge, cumulative wave made of 101 cylinders of compressed springs to symbolise dismembering, breaking apart and the power of reconstruction... The spring cylinders are constructed in such a way that one can identify the sea's endless movement, the water's changing course, the ebb and flow of faith, the ebb and flow of effort, the ebb and flow of refugees that never stop and keep bleeding out into the same seas. This cumulative wave is made of 360,000 small waves, one for every soul departed..."

Again I'm reminded how fortunate we are that we travel of our own volition.





We're in a hotel tonight. This will make managing tomorrow's overnight journey fractionally easier. But we're already missing the freedom of a self-catering space...

Never mind, this evening we finally got round to trying a couple of Greek beers: Fix and Mythos. Refreshing. Good with Graviera cheese and "polyspora" bread sticks...

Cheers.