By the time Tony co-founded Lonely Planet Publications in 1973, he already had the travel bug. And ever since, travel and discovery have been at the heart of his life and career.
▲ Approaching Athens Airport over Lemos – with my Greek Islands travel companion Nick Varian I’d flown into Athens and took a taxi to Piraeus
▲ Ferry activity in the port of Piraeus from the Hotel Mitsis N’U
It’s the port for Athens and for most visitors that’s all it is. You travel out to Piraeus and leave as soon as possible on a ferry to one or other of the many Greek islands. That’s been my Piraeus story as well, until this time when my ferry to Folegandros was cancelled due to bad weather/rough seas – see my recent blog on Greek Islands.
As a result my one-night stop at the very pleasant (and very close to the ferries) Hotel Mitsis N’U became two nights and I discovered there were lots of interesting reasons to spend some time in the busy port. Starting with the wonderful Archaeological Museum of Piraeus.
◄ Tony & Piraeus Athena statue – in 1959 workers installing a new sewer line in the city uncovered an amazing collection of particularly fine bronze statues. Larger than life-size the 3rd to 4th century BC statues are of Apollo, Artemis and Athena and it’s assumed they had been crated for shipment to Rome in the 1st century BC and were in a warehouse when fire swept the city and buried the storeroom in heavy ash and broken tiles. The ‘Piraeus Bronzes’ are some of the finest examples of classical and Hellenistic Greek art.
▲ The museum features many other fine works like this double bas relief of a warrior pursuing a wounded Amazon. Outside the museum stands beside an ancient Greek theatre.
▲ I’m regularly delighted when my Lonely Planet guidebook works perfectly, without the guidebook would we have ever walked to the other side of the harbour to search out the excellent Yperokeanio Restaurant? It’s a seafood specialist at Marias Chatzikiriakou 48.
▲ Church of the Life-Giving Spring of Hadjikyriakei – there is no shortage of impressive churches, like this one on the way back from our restaurant excursion to the ferry harbour. No shortage of statues either, plus a couple of other harbours – Zea Marina (Pasalimani) which has lots of boats including some superyachts, and a nice food market along one side of the harbour. Amazing number of oranges – good looking ones – are just falling off trees along the streets. We walked on to the second harbour Mikrolimano (Munichia), stopped for a beer and then climbed up and descended down back to our hotel by the ferry harbour.
▲ Metro Station – the attractive Piraeus Metro Station is also right by the harbour and features a curious little (voluntary, free) Electrical Railway Museum. It’s very slick although all in Greek – there’s a detailed booklet to go along with it in English. I like the photos of the strictly male.union gatherings? From the Metro Station there’s a €9 train service direct to the airport, we used it when we returned to Athens after our islands excursion.
▲ Yes, I did love Piraeus
▲ Approaching Athens Airport over Lemos – with my Greek Islands travel companion Nick Varian I’d flown into Athens and took a taxi to Piraeus ▲ Ferry activity in the port of Piraeus from the Hotel Mitsis N'U It’s the port for Athens and for most visitors that’s ...
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© Tony Wheeler’s Travels 2013