I had been to Athens a few years ago, and it quickly dawned on me where to get on the metro. After more than an hour and sixteen stops, I emerged from the ground into a 31-degree, but quite windy summer.
The city had not changed at all, and the area was the same; this hotel was just a few blocks from my old accommodation.
I checked into a simple, three-star hotel. The room was small but sophisticated, and I only panicked for a few minutes about the 28 Celsius in the room, until I realized that I had to turn on the air conditioning. I took a shower and bought a ferry ticket for the next morning, which was more expensive than a plane ticket to Athens.
After a sandwich and orange juice, I walked to the Numismatic Museum of Athens, a cute little two-story building with coins arranged by era, region, and theme. Instead of coins with images of rulers, I liked the ones depicting animals the best.
The owl of Athena – specifically the “Athene noctua”, the little owl species – is a prominent symbol in Greek and Roman mythology, associated with wisdom, knowledge and protection. 449 BC)
The Aegina tortoise coin was minted on the Greek island of Aegina, about 24 kilometres southeast of Athens. These were among the earliest coins of Greece, dating from around 550–431 BC.
My favorite is the little eight-armed golden one from Eretria, 500–465 BC. I would love to bill my clients in octopus…
I had to laugh a lot when one of the wall decorations featured a piece of my childhood. (For those who don’t know, it’s a metal case, a piggy bank. You put a coin on the dog’s tongue and it eats it at the push of a button.)
