Oriana - Day 15 - Athens

Day 15 Athens

We had all decided to go ashore together today, so I was up first to watch us sail into Piraeus – a ship-spotting paradise. As the sun rose, we sailed past several ferries laid up for the winter, as well as three cruise ships – also laid up – Thomson Spirit, Louis Cristal and Louis Orient.

We were delayed berthing due to having to wait for several ferries to clear the port first. It was quite cold, but dry and sunny, and by the time we went ashore – clear blue skies. We caught the HoHo bus at the dock gate – 20 euros each – getting off at the Acropolis and switch to the blue route bus for a tour of Athens before getting off at stop number 2 for the Plaka. The tour was well worth the money, taking us through areas I have never seen before on my three previous visits. Some of the stops looked extremely interesting and if we had had more than 7 hours we would have hopped off (the buses run every half an hour).

At the Plaka stop we started walking towards the Acropolis before turning down different narrow streets. We found the Agora ruins and I particularly wanted to visit a tiny Byzantine church I had spotted on a previous visit but not had time then. We found it fairly close to the Cathedral and popped inside. It was being restored and a man was crouched on scaffolding, painstakingly touching up an archway. What remained of the original paintings in the ancient dome were beautiful.

We thought we had better start heading back towards the bus stop by then. As we headed down a long main road we spotted one of the HoHo bus stops so waited about 10 mins, before our bus came along. It indicated towards us and then carried on past! Arghhh!  We had to carry on walking to the stop by Hadrian’s Arch and as we neared the bus pulled in and stopped.

We asked about the stop by the Hard Rock Café and were told it wasn’t one for that particular bus!! It sure looked the same to us though. We changed again at the Acropolis and got back to the port and 4pm. Plenty of time to grab some afternoon tea before going up on deck for sailaway at 5pm.

It was the crew pantomime in the evening and IMO was the best show/entertainment of the cruise. It lasted about one and a half hours and was very very funny – especially the E. Purser, Ian Wynne Smythe as one of the Ugly Sisters!