After a late breakfast at the Grande Bretagne, we went for a quick walk around the Akadimia district to the northwest of the hotel before checking out. We took the Metro to ATH where we departed on United in the afternoon for EWR.
Morning
One last breakfast at the Grande Bretagne!
And, our last view of the Acropolis from the GB Roof Garden!
Akadimia
We decided to take a walk in the area before our noon late checkout. We walked to the northwest which leads into the Akadimia district.
This church on the right is the Catholic Cathedral Basilica of St. Dionysius the Areopagite. Maybe we can just call it St. Denis?
The Academy of Athens is one block to the northwest. It was founded in 1926, intended as a continuation of the ancient Greek academies and as something of a successor to Plato’s Platonic Academy, basically the first Western university. This district, Akadimia, is named after the Academy of Athens.
We continued on, crossing the street and reaching the Vallianeio Megaron, a building that formerly held the National Library of Greece. There are various sources online which cite various different dates for the construction of this building. This is Athens, an official website by the Athens city government, indicates that the first foundation stone was put in place in 1888 and the building was completed in 1902. It’s basically new compared to all that we’ve seen on this trip!
Even the lamp posts are fancy!
We walked up the stairs to take a closer look at the building. The National Library has moved away from this building as it is too small, however, there are still supposed to be books or perhaps library services within this building. It did not appear to be open during our short visit though.
After briefly admiring the architecture, we continued on.
It is worth mentioning that we saw drug paraphernalia on the premises, particularly these marble stairs. We didn’t notice anyone actively doing drugs or even anyone that looked particularly sketchy. This is probably an activity that happens late at night.
During our visit, everywhere we went to in Athens seemed very safe. Petty theft is a concern but unlike American cities, violent crime generally isn’t a concern, particularly during normal hours when people are out and about.
A look back at the Vallianeio Megaron as we backtracked to the southeast to check out the building on the next block.
This building, between the Vallianeio Megaron and the Academy of Athens, is the original building that contained the University of Athens, formerly the Othonian University. Its not clear if the building has a name other than being referred to as the University of Athens. This building is still part of the university but most university functions take place in other facilities.
This statue, on the left side of the building, is a memorial to Rigas Feraios. He is considered a Greek hero who was killed by the Ottoman Empire as a prisoner.
From street level, we could look up and see a wide mural painted near the ceiling of the building’s portico.
We continued walking to the middle of the building.
This statue, on the northwestern side of the path that leads to the building’s entrance, depicts Ioannis Kapodistrias. He is considered to be one of the founders of the modern independent Greece and was the first head of state with the title “Governor of Greece”.
Seated opposite of him on the southeastern side of the entrance path is Adamantios Korais. He was an academic and writer who is described as being important to the Greek independence movement.
We decided to go take a closer look at the building.
We walked up its front steps and took a closer look at the mural above. It contains figures and the names of various subjects of study. On the center section, we see, from left to right: rhetoric, poetry, history, archaeology, philosophy, legislation, medicine, theology, astronomy, and physics. At the very center is ΟΘΩΝ Α (Otto I), the first King of Greece and the founder of the university. He was forced to flee in a revolution in 1862.
This is an 800 year old olive tree! A sign explains:
Eight centuries old, olive tree, offered to the Municipality of Athens by ERGOSE S.A. within the framework of the environmental action for olive trees' rescue, which have been expropriated for the construction of the new railway line (Korinthos - Patra section), and comes from Elaionas village in Aegialia's area. It was transplanted in December 2015 by the Directorate of Green and Environment of the Municipality of Athens, with the assistance of: the Ministry of National Defense, the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, ADMIE S.A. and the "Topiodomi LTD" company.
Sponsors: ALTIS, KLORANE.
We started to head back, walking away from the front of the university building. This sculpture was on the northwest side of the path.
This statue of William Gladstone also stands on the northwest side. According to the War Museum here in Athens, he was a politician who had studied Greek History and had a role in the Greek annexation of Thessaly and Arta from the Ottoman Empire.
Looking to the northeast, we stand in front of the university building. There are two fountains on either side of the path.
This sculpture stands on the southeast side.
This statue on the right side of the university building depicts Patriarch Gregory V, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople. This seems to mean he was the head of the Eastern Orthodox church, with history dating back to Andrew the Apostle as its first bishop according to Wikipedia. He was executed by the Ottoman Empire for not preventing the Greek revolution that was taking place. He is considered a martyr by the Greek Orthodox Church.
We continued to the southeast to take a closer look at the Academy of Athens.
This is quite an impressive structure that gives a hint of what some of the ancient temples like the Parthenon may have looked like.
This seated statue on the right side of the academy depicts Socrates.
Socrates’ pupil Plato is seated opposite of him on the left.
Athena Promachos stands atop a tall pillar on the left side of the academy.
Apollo is atop the pillar on the right.
The figures on the front of the building on the pediment are the Greek gods.
The Owl of Athena is sculpted atop the right and left wings of the building.
We spent a bit of time looking at the building as well as everything around it before continuing on.
The Academy of Athens as we walked away to return to the Grande Bretagne.
There are some figures sculpted onto the facade of the narrow building section in the center of this photograph.
This building is the Athens Ophthalmology Center. Its a nice looking building. And, it has two orange trees on either side of the entrance!
We walked by in front of St. Denis.
We wondered if there was some sort of Buddhist significance to this building due to the symbology on metal gates, fencing, and window bars. This was formerly the residence of Heinrich Schliemann and currently contains the Numismatic Museum of Athens. The swastika symbol, along with the opposite facing sauvastika, has been used in Buddhism long before the Nazis were a thing. It seems that Schliemann had seen the swastika on ancient Greek pottery from Troy. The swastika has apparently been used all over the world for thousands of years!
The Smithsonian Magazine has an interesting article titled “How the Swastika, an Ancient Symbol of Good Fortune Used Around the World, Became the Nazi Logo“. It all began with Schliemann finding this symbol in various archaeological digs. The symbol seems to have become common knowledge and was used by many companies, even Coca-Cola! The Nazis picked up on it and coopted it as a symbol of their ideology.
We returned to the Grande Bretagne to check out.
ATH to EWR
We descended down into the Syntagma Metro station one last time and headed to the Athens International Airport. Once there, we checked in and passed through security and passport control.
We headed right to the Aegean Airlines Extra Schengen Lounge. We didn’t really have great expectations about this lounge but it turned out to be much better than we thought it would be! The food options were pretty good! Just don’t get the cans of sparkling mint & spearmint spring water, it tastes like toothpaste!
There is an olive tree just outside the lounge.
We headed to the gate at around 3pm and soon boarded one of United’s 767-300s. This particular aircraft is painted in the Star Alliance livery.
We left the gate a bit early and were soon in the air on our way to EWR.
We often complain about United’s catering. Its usually mediocre at best. The same applies to today’s meal. The mashed potato-like mass on the upper right of the main plate is actually created polenta and was absolutely disgusting. It reminded me of vomit. Although I’m not particularly fond of United’s food, its rare that I won’t eat it. This was one of those things that just wasn’t edible to me.
We flew over eastern Switzerland.
At least the ice cream was good as it has been in recent years.
The pre-arrival meal wasn’t fancy or really that good but it was much better than that creamed polenta!
Soon, we began are descent into Newark. We passed by Midtown Manhattan on our left. It was around sunset but was unfortunately rather cloudy. A few of the buildings caught some sunlight though, resulting in them appearing as if their tops were brightly illuminated.
We then passed Lower Manhattan.
And then the Statue of Liberty.
We made a quick turn to the right and landed on EWR’s shorter runway.
We did see some nice color in the sky above the city of Newark as we headed to the gate. Cory Booker, former Mayor of Newark, recently made history for giving the longest speech in the US Senate at 25 hours and five minutes!
After entering the US, we caught the next The Parking Spot shuttle and returned to our car and began driving home.
Commentary
Hotel Grande Bretagne
We definitely enjoyed our stay at the Grande Bretagne! Our spacious room was fantastic, particularly the large bathroom with its nice tub. From a service standpoint, the Butler service was fantastic! Having a single point of contact really makes it much easier to interact with the property.
There were a few service failures though. For some reason, housekeeping did not service our room on our first night. We don’t know why. Our room was serviced every other night though. We also had some incorrect restaurant and service charges appear on our bill. They were resolved at checkout but it did take a bit of time for it to get done. The Grande Bretagne is considered by some to be the #1 hotel in Athens so any service failures are unfortunate.
Athens
We thoroughly enjoyed the city of Athens. We saw so much of the history that modern Western society is based upon. This was basically the beginning of it all.
The city was surprisingly gritty in appearance though. There is graffiti everywhere, and none of it is attractive. It stands in contrast to the marble that seems to be everywhere. But that marble is starting to fall apart in many of the places that we visited. And many surfaces seem to have accumulated vast quantities of grime, more than we’ve seen in other places. But, at least the parts of the city that we visited do seem safe compared to American cities.
Greece
We didn’t come to Athens with much of a concreate plan other than visiting the Acropolis and some of the other historical sites. We had considered renting a car for some daytrips but we ended up having plenty to do in Athens itself. But the next time we come to Greece, we will definitely need to rent a car and travel around the country, or fly or take a ferry to one or more of its many islands.