‘Snap, Snap, Snap’ “Low Battery”

HEARING rain outside my window this morning, I decided it would be a good idea to have a nice lie in this morning (!!!), and after being fooled by an early breakfast in Barcelona I thought that I would scavenge my own food this morning before heading out into the city.

Before I came to Greece I did write down a list of things that I wanted to do and see, but the itinerary style I’d noted them down in the first few days soon went out of the window after about ten minutes.

Having arrived in my hotel after dark last night, I felt that it would be a good idea to familiarise myself with the streets in the same way that I had got here last night, by heading back in the same direction as I did yesterday.
A few streets in and I realised that something wasn’t quite right….

This sounds like a very stereotypical, and ignorant thing to say, but so many things here do look the same. I’m sure someone could say that about England, but seriously, any city which is built in rows and blocks (Yes, you Milton Keynes) might be easy to navigate, but it also makes it difficult should you not have a map and only vaguely know where you are going.

Most of the main roads in Athens are pretty easy to find so as I wound my way down little alleys towards tons of traffic, I always felt like I was going the right way. Sadly that didn’t turn out to be the case on several occasions as I thought I was heading to somewhere familiar, which then just turned out to be another square with a ton of traffic on it.

What made it even worse this morning, was the fact that walking around I was already beginning to get hungry. I dipped into a local Spar (Apparently they have those here) before heading back in the direction I thought I should be going.
Purely by luck I eventually stumbled upon the “Omonia” station which is the closest to my hotel and after buying a ticket I was ready to take the two stops down the line to Thessis which is there my first set of sightseeing begin.

Following arrows this way and that to get onto the right platform I soon learned thanks to a tannoy announcement in English that the line I needed to travel on would be closed between 1-4pm today so my only option was to get my Athens guide book out and begin walking in the direction of the city.

Immediately, this became one of the best ideas I have had.

Walking down the street I began to get a nature of exactly what life in Athens might be like. Chaotic, would be my way of describing it, but with little merchants and shops all over the pavement and paths, it’s easy to forget that you are in a highly developed European culture.

Reading through the book I have on Athens (and I probably should have done this before booking a hotel) the Omonia district of the city is quite run-down and you can see that from the amount of graffiti that is on the walls and the number of pavement slabs which are crooked and need replacing down every street.

Traffic once again played a huge part in my journey. My suggestion to anyone hoping to drive a vehicle down the streets of Athens would be, “just don’t bother”. I usually spend my time walking to destinations with my ipod blasting on full but sampling the sounds of the streets of Athens is deafening enough without musical distractions.

I walked down the main ‘Athena’ street from Omonia station and headed towads the next station which is Monassarium. Down the street I caught a glance at the main market in the city, which was rather grand and looked hugely busy. Best to avoid that whilst on a mission and with a massive bag I felt. Looking in at it though, it gives you a sense of what Athens has always been like. Street vendors selling things to the public without Wallmart and Tescos filling up every nook and cranny with an ‘Express’ version of one of their stores.

Whilst walking around, I constantly feel my eyes being drawn to different sight, each more exciting and intriguing than the one before it. Out of the corner of my eye, the view of a momument on a hill grew closer and closer until I eventually came to a crossroads where I turned in the opposite direction and once again it disappeared into the distance out of view.

The map that I have of the city is about a clear as mud (at least it’s there as apose to any signpositing in Athens at all) but I decided to follow a few people with cameras who were heading towards an ancient looking graveyard just off the main road.
Walking in I brought myself a ticket (and tickets to several other sights in the process) and discovered that I was actually at the Museum of Kerameikos, somewhere on my list of places to visit.

There was a small museum which I walked around and to briefly sum up Kerameikos it was an ancient burial ground where arhiologists found the ruins and gravestones of tombs. Most of the inhabitants lived around 500-550BC but some of them were in remarkable condition.

After walking around the museum, you can walk out into the main grounds of the museum where some of the more well kept gravestones are still in place. Walking through, I was sad to discover that the battery on my camera was dying and almost immediately the damn thing stopped working!

Luckily it was about time to leave the museum, and I decided to return to my hotel back past the market for a recharge of both my cameras batteries and my bodies after a 1000% increase in the amount of walking I usually do on a daily basis.