Around Athens In Three Hours

My voyage on-board the Celebrity Infinity came to an end, docking at the port of Piraeus, just southwest of the city of Athens. I have talked about the Celebrity Infinity in two previous blog posts but for this post, I am going to talk about our brief tour of Athens before we had to go to the airport to catch our flight. While on our city tour in Rhodes, our taxi driver connected us to a tour company in Athens who was able to show us around the city for a few hours before taking us to the airport (for a reasonable rate).

 

Before disembarking the Celebrity Infinity for the final time, I was able to capture a beautiful sunrise over the Greek hills and mountains. It was a fitting end to a wonderful cruise ship voyage.

We met our guide, and he began the tour with a drive along the coast of Piraeus. I did not get great pictures or videos here as I was in a moving car but the marina and coastline looked nice. It was also especially quiet as this was still the early morning.

We stopped at a viewpoint to get an overlooking view of the Piraeus coast with the mountains in the background. I want to highlight two places of interest, and they are both stadiums. The curvy-looking bowl stadium is the Peace and Friendship stadium, which is a basketball arena, home to the Olympiakos EuroLeague team. The red structure to the left of it is the Karaiskakis Stadium, home to the Olympiakos football team. I have seen many videos about the Olympiakos supporters and I would have loved to go see a football game here sometime.

We drove into the city of Athens proper and drove to the site of the Acropolis. Because our minibus could not stop in the bus parking area and we were in a time-crunch, I could only grab this picture from the vehicle, so at least I could say that I have been to the Acropolis, albeit briefly.

After passing the Temple of Zeus and Hadrian's Arch, our next stop was the Greek Parliament where we arrived just in time to see the changing of the guard. This was special to watch, as I do not recall seeing a ceremonial changing of the guard like this before. The guards are all in their uniforms and are moving very slowly. The changing of the guard occurs every hour, and between each changing, the guards must remain perfectly still. I would imagine that there is a serious amount of training to carry out these duties.

We did some more driving around, and then our next stop was the Panathenaic Stadium, which was the site of the first modern Olympic games in 1896. You had to pay to enter the stadium, so I was content with taking pictures outside the stadium looking in.

That was the brief tour of Athens. It was nice to get to see at least a glimpse of the city, though I may have to plan a longer stay in the future. Our guide dropped us at the Athens airport and we said our goodbyes. Our guide talked too much at some points but he was okay.

I want to point out one more thing. While at the Athens airport, I visited Antetokounbros, which was the retail store of Greek national hero and basketball superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo and his family. The store had some cool merchandise, though it was out of my price range. There were other cool things to check out, including a life-size Giannis made from Lego, and a replica Larry O'Brien trophy.

More pictures and videos of the Athens tour are below. Keep in mind that many of these pictures and videos were from the minibus and may not reflect the usual quality of my media.