Athens to Barcelona – Aegean Antiquities & Chic Shores – Day 14 – Athens, Greece – Pics Part 1!
Thurs Oct 10, 2024

Hi Gang! We’re now officially on the second leg of our journey. And Eagle eye readers may have noticed that I changed the heading to be “Aegean Antiquities & Chic Shores” which is the theme for these next 12 days. We’ll travel from Athens to Barcelona stopping at some new ports we’ve never been to and some old favorites. 

Today, all but 10 of us, were totally new faces that boarded the ship. So we’ll have to teach all these newbies the ropes! Regent was nice enough to give the 10 of us a free excursion to the Acropolis and thru the city of Athens. 

We did have to change rooms between segments since we booked them as two different cruises but good ol’ Regent moved all our stuff while we were out touring. Now that’s 1st class luxury! Love this cruise line!

Athens is the capital of Greece. It was also at the heart of Ancient Greece, a powerful civilization and empire. The city is still dominated by 5th-century BC landmarks, including the Acropolis, a hilltop citadel topped with ancient buildings like the colonnaded Parthenon temple. With its urban area’s population numbering over three and a quarter million, it is the eighth largest urban area in the European Union. 

Athens is one of the world’s oldest cities, with its recorded historyspanning over 3,400 years, and its earliest human presence beginning somewhere between the 11th and 7th millennia BC. According to Greek mythology the city was named after Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, but modern scholars generally agree that the goddess took her name after the city. Classical Athens was one of the most powerful city-states in ancient Greece. It was a center for democracy, the arts, education and philosophy, and was highly influential throughout the European continent, particularly in Ancient Rome. For this reason, it is often regarded as the cradle of Western civilization and the birthplace of democracy in its own right independently from the rest of Greece.

On our tour we spent the majority of our time at the Acropolis which was built in the 5th century BC after the Greeks beat the Persians in the Greco-Persian War. It took 200,000 people working for 30 years to build it. The Acropolis is made up of 4 main temples. They are the Parthenon, the Erechtheion, the Propylaia and the temple of Athena Nike. 

After our tour, we got back on board and had lunch and chilled. I’ll send an update after dinner. 

PS: Factoid we learned… The name Marathon comes from the legend of Pheidippides, a Greek messenger. The legend states that he was sent from the battlefield of Marathon to Athens to announce that the Persians had been defeated in the Battle of Marathon. That distance was actually 26 miles so that’s why all marathons are 26 miles long. Cool!

PSS: When we got back from our tour, somehow a car drifted into the water next to the pier and we watched them lift it out of the water. I included a pic. Crazy!!