This was our third day caching in Athens, and we had a long list of places we wanted to see today as well. The weather was great, and once again we managed to find all caches without any DNF.

Approximate time out caching/traveling: 12,5 hours
Total walking distance: 21,63 km / 13.44 mi (32 719 steps)
Flights taken: 0
Total cahes found: 18
Total DNF: 0
Cities visited: Athens
Famous places visited: Panathenaic Stadium, Mount Lycabettus
Most memorable cache: GC554T6 Kallimarmaro
Biggest surprise: How far we ended up walking
Weather: Sunny
Temperature range: ~25°C / 77°F

Changing of the guards

We got a very slow start today, but that turned out to be a good thing. This meant that we arrived at the parliament just in time for the 10:30 changing of the guards, which apparently was a huge thing on Sundays. We had no idea what we were going to see, only that it was something larger than normal.

And large it was! The road was blocked of, and the local Police did their best to keep the humongous crowd outside. Lots of tourists with no respect, and I honestly can’t understand how the Police managed to keep as calm as they did. And still people complained…

The changing of the guards was definitely worth watching, even though we barely had room to breathe. We did a quick stop to grab something to eat, before we continued on our planned route.

The Panathenaic Stadium

The next big thing on our list, was a visit at the Panathenaic Stadium. One giant chunk of marble. Amazing how they managed to put thousands of people in here. While here, we had to take the time to go inside, and climb to the top! And a climb it was! Extremely steep stairs! Almost unbelievable that they managed to get thousands of people up and down these stairs.

A walk in the park

After a quick visit to the back side of the stadium, to find another cache, the park was the next on our list. We found several caches, including one we had to give up earlier today. But after getting some hints from the previous finder, we found it – and with the original log. So I guess the throwdown most people have logged lately is missing, and we found the original 😀 Since we found this, we are back down at zero DNFs in Athens!

The highlight of the day was when we discovered two tortoises. 

Mount Lycabettus

After a quick visit to the War Museum, we started to climb the extremely steep hills leading up to Mount Lycabettus. We didn’t have enough energy left to climb all the way to the top, so we took the funicular instead.

The view, behind all the people, was amazing. It wasn’t hard to understand why this tiny area was so full of people… We found the cache up here, took lots of photos, found information for the earthcache and just sat down and relaxed a bit. And then we took the same way back down.

Overcrowded metro

After a quick stop at the cache near the funicular, and a short hike back up to finish the earthcache, we continued to the nearest metro station. We quickly realized that we had to take a deep breath before entering the overcrowded metro. Not much room left in there, barely enough to get the door closed. There was so much people, that we almost had to fight to get of at the next station. At least people use the public transport here 😛

Time for food

Once we got back to the area around the hotel, it was time to find some food. And after walking more than 21 km, it was nice to sit down and relax a bit. A nice way to end the day.

Trip report

Curious about which caches we found?
You can see all of them on our trip report in cachetur.no, which you can find here.

Pictures