Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Greece Trip Report Day 17: Athens National Archaeological Museum, Hellenic Motor Museum

Day 17, Nov 25, 2018, Sunday:


We paid up for the room and completed check out formalities the previous evening. So in the morning we brought down our bags and kept them at the reception, returned our key.

We walked toward Hadrian's library. The Monastiraki square was empty. 

Monastiraki square:

 Taxi near the church...
 Metro station...


We noticed taxis waiting there. We had to walk in the other direction though.



Hadrian's library:


We reached Hadrian's library at 8 am.



Hadrian's Library was created by Roman Emperor Hadrian in AD 132 on the north side of the Acropolis of Athens. The building followed a typical Roman Forum architectural style,The library was on the eastern side where rolls of papyrus"books" were kept. Adjoining halls were used as reading rooms, and the corners served as lecture halls. 








 During Byzantine times, three churches were built at the site.




 The church is closed for renovation.

We saw the museum also








National Archaeological museum:


We then came back to Monastiraki square and caught a taxi to National Archeological museum after bargaining the price as 5 euros. 


We were at NAM at 9 when it opens.



AWESOME museum... all artifacts from archaelogical sites are here... Mystras, Mycenae, Epidavros, Tiryns... everywhere we had visited


























We had kept our bags in their locker room, have to carry jackets though as their cubicles are small. At 11 am our phone kept ringing.... a British number. After ignoring a couple of calls we picked up. It was from Booking.com. We had booked B&B Lepa Kuca for that night... son had 7am flight to Houston the next day. We had arranged airport transfer also with the owners, early for son and at 11 for me.

We had booked Lepa Kuca 4 km from Athens airport for 3 different dates thru Booking.com.
First 2 stays went smooth as I had reported in my blog posts.
Booking.com guy said the owners had a health emergency and our booking is canceled. Booking.com were offering another option Sweet Home in the same price range and same locality but could not confirm early airport shuttle to catch our 7am flight. They said they'll get back to us. Calls were getting cut, wifi was not working.

We decided we'll handle this later in the evening. We went on with our museum visit.

Hellenic Motor Museum:


After some 4 hours at the NAM we came out, had some food, then walked to Hellenic Motor Museum. 

It is a car museum owned by the Theodore Charagionis Foundation and opened in March 2011. He was a racing car driver till the birth of his 1st child, then turned his passion for cars to renovating and collection. He feels pleasure is not just in possession but sharing!

The collection of the museum consists of 300 cars of which about 110 are displayed periodically on the three top floors of the Athenian Capitol shopping mall.






The reception is on 3rd floor. The display is on 3, 4 and 5th floors. Heir instruction is to start with the 5th, come down to 4th and then finis off wit the 3rd and exit. We did so and had a GREAT time. I'll post all the pictures online and give the link here, same for NAM also … there are too many pics to be posted in this blog.
[As promised, here is the link to the full albums
NAM:
Hadrian's library, Hellenic Motor Museum:







 Lightning Mcqueen from the Disney movie,,,Cars




We were done by 3.30. We could have walked to Victoria metro station and returned … one metro ticket is 1, 40 euros. Taxi is just 5 euros, quite fine for 2 people. We caught one just as we were exiting the museum and got dropped at Monastiraki square.

We walked to our hotel, tried to search online for accommodations near Airport. We were nervous about airport transfer, did not want to miss the 7 am flight. In fact even with Lepa Kuca we had retained our car when we had to catch the Santorini flight at 6.55 am. We had not been too sure about the owner's punctuality. We even considered staying at the city center but our hotel Tempi was full, the ride to the airport is 45 minutes by taxi. Too much hassle.

We booked into the much more expensive Sofitel at the airport on our own. It was 200 euros but just opposite to the airport and we can walk into the terminal.

We had earlier asked the hotel Tempi to book us a taxi at 5pm to drop us at Lepa Kuca. We had asked them to cancel it at 3.30 when we were searching for alternate hotels. Now we were ready to leave at the the previously scheduled time 5 PM. The hotel's regular taxi guy came up to the hotel, helped with our luggage, loading into the taxi standing at the intersection (hotel road is no car zone). He drove us to Sofitel for the price of 38 euros.

We got an email from booking.com that they are not getting any response from the other hotel.

We had a pleasant night at Sofitel. 





 


Son walked off at 5.15 for his flight the next day, I did so at 11.

Booking.com has credited 60 euros into our account as they have a policy of refunding the difference in the rates when their booking gets cancelled... in our case since the difference is huge, they met us half way!


VIDEO LINKS:


Athens museums, Benaki and National archaeological museum:

Hellenic Motor Museum, Athens:


It had been an AWESOME vacation. We hope to be back in Gorgeous Greece to enjoy other regions and islands we have missed!

We had a LOVELY vacation in Europe [Berlin (day trips to Hamburg and Potsdam), Munich, Bavaria (Fussen, Neueschwanstein, Hohenschwangu castles, Ehrwald, Zugspitze, Garmisch, Mittenwald, Wies, Linderhof, Etal), Belgium (Brussels, Bruges, Gent) and Netherlands(Leiden, Ansterdam) ]
Apr 12-29, 2019 including the Easter week.

The report starts here:


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