Final Day at Athens

This will be my last entry on Athens. Sorry for the delay as I've lost a lot of my enthusiasm in blogging recently, plus, Day 5 wasn't as interesting as the previous four days. Nevertheless, I did have a good time and do miss Athens dearly.

First stop, Panathenaic Stadium

Made from white Pentelic marble, this stadium was restored as an exact replica of the ancient stadium which once stood here in the 4th century B.C. to host the first modern Olympiad. We were not allowed to go in, but we did visit the toilets there which was also made from marble and surprisingly the temperature in there was really cooling.

National Gardens

The thing which I liked about the gardens here is that you can see big juicy oranges hanging from most of the trees here. If only I'm not allergic....

Tomb of the unknown soldier:

Took photo with the guard but scared of standing too near. There's changing of guards every hour but we missed it.

Lunch:

From fried aubergines, Moussakas, fried calamaris, to something which I haven't ordered before, Soutzoukakia (spicy meatballs served in tomato based red sauce). By that time, we concluded that Greece is not a good place to go on a diet. There's olive oil everywhere and in great amounts. A commented that if we accumulate all the oil we had in our meals over the last 5 days, we could have a whole bottle of olive oil which we used to buy back home for cooking.

A lot of people often mistaken me for a Japanese tourist. Maybe it's because I was wearing my fishing hat and looked fairer thanks to the SPF50 sunblock which I'd applied.

Temple of Olympian Zeus:

One of the 16 columns lies on the ground as it fell udring a storm in the 19th century. While we were there, all of us thought that it was on purpose to show how the columns were constructed.

Kerameikos - ancient cemetery

It is the most ancient and biggest cemetery in Athens where citizens who were honoured by the city of Athens were burried. I got a surprise when I found this really huge tortoise happily eating the grass and a bigger surprise when I found 3 others.

Ancient Agora

The temple of Hephaistos is the best preserved temple. The only one with the roof intact and it was magnificient. Ancient Agora was something like the modern city centre, where people come to sell and buy goods, learn of the latest news, meet others to discuss matters etc. It has administrative buildings, temples and courts as well.

Finally, we made our way back to our hostel after buying kebab to eat on the way before our long 3 hour flight journey back to London. Thanks M for letting me camp in your room before I continued my journey back to Liverpool the next day. Luckily, there wasn't any rail works going on, so my journey from London to Liverpool took only 2 hours.

That is all from me on Athens. Hope that you've enjoyed reading it as much as I did blogging about it.

Now, I'll have to announce that I will be MIA for the next few weeks as I have my finals coming up real soon. Anyone who has any luck to spare, please lend it to me from middle of June till beginning of July. Good luck to everyone who are having their exams too!

P.s. I'm afraid that if I do blog in the next few weeks, most if not all of them will be emo blogs. So, keep away from my blog if you don't want to be overwhelmed by despair. Don't say I didn't warn you.