Athens Nov 10

November 10, 2025

After a fairly decent night of sleep for me (but not for Diane), we went by bus on our Panoramic Athens excursion, driving about 20 minutes from Piraeus to downtown Athens. We saw the historic downtown stadium ("the world's only white marble stadium"), where the first modern Olympic Games were held in 1896 and where the 2025 Athens Marathon ended the very day that we arrived (Nov 9). We only drove by, so didn't get a real good view.

We also drove by some ongoing archeological excavations and the few remaining pillars from the temple of Zeus.

We drove to the Acropolis ("high city") which was a city-state back in the ol' days. We got within about 200 yards of it. The lines were very long to buy tickets (students!) to go up and get near it, and our tour group did not do that.

We also saw the rock where Paul spoke to the Athenians:

The centerpiece of the Acropolis is the Parthenon, a temple which served multiple religions over the centuries. It had lots of scaffolding around it, and was not directly visitable. In this photo, the Parthenon is the columned structure on the right.

We then wandered through a shopping area called Plaka just below the Acropolis, until we had a thunderstorm (the tour guide said it was the most rain they've had in months). The marble used in many of the sidewalks made walking back to the bus hazardous in the downpour.

Overall, the tour was somewhat disappointing in that we spent 3.5 hours on the tour and didn't see much, except for the Acropolis (from a distance) and Athens traffic. The roads are narrow (not meant for tour buses), shared with many tour buses, motorcycles, and cars. The traffic lights are badly timed, and the rain compounded the delays. The guide narrated Athens history to kill time in traffic, which was interesting while kind of overwhelming.

After attending an afternoon lecture on tomorrow's Ephesus visit, we ate dinner at Manfredi's, an onboard Italian restaurant purportedly the best in the Viking fleet. I had a humongous ribeye