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.
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.
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:
[As promised, here is the link to the full albums
NAM:
Hadrian's library, Hellenic Motor
Museum:
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.
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:
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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