Athens, Volos and Kavala

Museum entrance

Photo of a Photo you can't get this pic due to scaffolds

Glyfada is part of the “Athens Riveria” meaning an attractive beach area. Glyfada is a yuppy neighborhood/city and is very removed from Athens, with the benefit of being on the same Tram system so getting into and out of Athens from here by Public transit is good. Keep in minds the roadways in Athens are chaotic, crowded and not well developed so you won‘t want to drive those. On leaving Athens it took us nearly 2 hours to get out of the city and that was with the use of a GPS. 60 mins from Glyfada to the Acropolis by tram was good by comparison. Our stay at the BlueSky Hotel was great, room quiet,  good breakfast buffet,  on a quiet side street but just a block walk to most everything. The staff there were very helpful and even gave us their copy of the Lonely Planet guide for Athens to use during our stay. They warned us to stay away from Syntagma square and provided great guidance on using Public transit around it. I would recommend this place to anyone planning to visit. See them on Trip Advisor where they have earned a top rating just like the Pelops in Olympia.


Not so for Athens itself. A friend of ours from our Millarville acreage said Athens was to be used as a transfer point only from airport to ferry and back, not a place to spend time. We reserved judgement until we experienced the city. Our original plan got changed on us so we limited ourselves to the important World Heritage Site of the Acropolis and Museums. We had hoped to get a broader perspective and understanding but that wasn‘t to happen.

Us at Acropolis

After many days/weeks/months of violent strikes and protests the Syntagma square or city centre was to be avoided. We did that and while we did not see any violence or protests we did see a city; and country for that matter, that is in deep turmoil. Graffitti is everywhere to the point of defacing some antiquities and nearly all buildings. We only saw 1 police car in all the time we were in Athens, and 3 in all the time we were in Greece. The same graffiti was seen even in the smaller villages but at first we thought it was only locals doing it. Now we understand the collective disgruntlement of a country that is obviously allowing its population to express itself openly in this manner, since this graffiti isn‘t in out of the way locations but everywhere. So people are seeing it done and not caring to report it. Conversely businesses are not removing the graffiti either reinforcing the behaviour. I will not show photos of the graffiti since that enables the behavior even more.

Throngs of people and some UA's

Apparently the Acropolis area was the site of strikes/closure for a few days leading up to our being there. It was open the day we were there, but the crowds while not overly large were bottle necked walking up and into the Parthenon itself to the point of being quite hazardous on slippery marble. Add 32C heat to the mix and minimal staff that couldn’t care less and you will also form the opinion our neighbour did about Athens, and he was there 3 years ago, so it clearly hasn’t improved. On the contrary the people of Athens were very helpful, as soon as they saw we were looking at a map or looked lost they were ready to help. This just confirmed our great opinion of the Greek people in general.

Alexander the Great

Iliad and Odessey

Church of the Metamorphis

New theatre in old ruins should be fantastic

We overnight-ed in Volos area view from our penthouse room ( Really!)

We have now travelled east in Greece and are close to the Turkey border just outside Kavala. 

We decided to spend the weekend in a small resort village just outside the resort city of Kavala.

Aqueduct in Kavala

A view of our beach just outside Kavala

We had an apartment with full cooking facilities so it was nice to get some of our own cooking back into the mix again. Good break. We also spent a lazy morning checking out Kavala. It's aqueduct system was definitely on par with Segovia except that Segovia's was an engineering marvel since most of it was dry stacked rock not mortared. We are loving it as always. Absolutely great place.

Curved engineering of the day

Kavala Castle