24 hour trip to Athens, Greece summer 2004

In summer 2004, I went to Europe for about three weeks to visit some of my friends and relatives. One of my friends happened to work for Lufthansa Airlines at that time, asked me if I wanted to go to any major city in Europe to which Lufthansa had service to for couple days for a relatively small price. I was all for it and chose two destinations, Athens, Greece and Stockholm, Sweden.

I have arrived in Athens very early in the morning and had only around 24 hours to explore this wonderful city.

By far the most famous attraction in Athens is Acropolis.

Acropolis is citadel or high fortified area located on a high rocky hill above the city of Athens which has several remaining structures and the most famous of them is Parthenon.

Since, I didn’t have much time to waste, I have booked a half day sightseeing tour which included visiting Acropolis.

Here are several pictures that I took during the tour.

One of the buildings that is part of Acropolis

Views of Athens from Acropolis

 

Probably the biggest reason that I picked Athens out of countless destinations was that Athens were hosting Summer Olympics in just a week and I was really curious to see whether Athenians were truly excited about Olympics coming to their beloved city.

Little history about Olympic Games

According to the  history, the first Olympic Games are traced back to 776 BC as they were dedicated to the Olympian gods and were staged on the ancient plains of Olympia which is located according to Greek mythology in the western part of the Peloponnese. Olympic Games continued for 12 centuries and were banned by Emperor Theodosius in 393 A.D. as “pagan cults”. The first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896 in Athens, Greece. The person responsible for giving Olympics the second chance was Frenchman named Baron de Coubertin who offered to host first Olympics in 1900 in his native Paris, but the delegates from 34 countries agreed to move the Games to 1896 and chose Athens to be the first host city.

 

So enough about history.

 

After my sightseeing tour was over, I started to ramble through the city on my own to fulfill my curiosity regarding Athenians’ attitude toward hosting Olympics and off course to learn about the city of Athens as much as I possibly could in several remaining hours before the next flight.

 

Here are some random pictures

 

Can anybody guess make and model of this car…

That’s me

I only had three, four hours to learn about people, culture, food, Olympic mood and at the end of the day my emotions and feelings about Athens were mixed.

On one side, I was so excited for the opportunity to walk through Acropolis and I expected the Athenians be super excited and enthusiastic about their own city hosting Olympics for the first time in more than hundred years but in my opinion they were not so into the Games.

I truly anticipated to see the city full of Olympic symbolic, clean streets packed with thrilled tourists, enthusiastic shop owners jumping up and down and fully engaging with their customers in attempt to make a deal but after spending nearly half a day on the streets of Athens I didn’t experience all of that.

During that visit (that was my first and the only visit to Athens and Greece too) I didn’t fall in love with the city like I did for example with Prague or with couple other European cities.

I was not sad to say goodbye to Greece but was excited to head to the airport and take a flight to Stockholm as my next travel opportunity.

Nevertheless, that is  just my opinion.