Visit to Athens (4)
On our third full day in Athens, my sister Silvia and I visited our third archaeological museum. This was the National Archaeological Museum where we spent a total of five hours. Our guide book calls the place “one of the world’s most important museums” and “Greece’s pre-eminent museum” and explains that it houses “the world’s largest and finest collection of Greek antiquities”. Two of the most outstanding exhibits are the 460 BC bronze statue of Zeus or Poseidon and the 2nd century BC statue of a horse and young rider.
We took a taxi from the hotel to the museum but walked back on a route which took us down Stadious Street which is like a version of London’s Oxford Street except that clearly austerity has hit it hard. So many department stores are closed and boarded up with the hoardings covered in political graffiti. Like so many streets in central Athens, there are beggars and homeless. We called into a cafe and spoke to a Britain and an Australian with Greek parents who made it clear that they envisaged the readjustment of the Greek economy as likely to take a generation.