2020-09-29 37 23

Location

in a plant bed directly next to a sidewalk of a residential street in Ilioupoli, near Athens

Participants

π π π (talk)

Expedition

The day I arrived in Athens for a vacation, I noticed the next hash was just outside the city, only 600 m from a metro station. So I made plans in the morning to visit the hash in the evening. After visiting the archaeological sites of Kerameikos, the Agora, and Hadrian‘s Library (which is directly next to Monastiraki metro station), I split from my mother, who was in Athens with me, in the late afternoon, and bought a metro ticket. After initially entering through the barriers for the wrong line, I went back and took the correct train. I exited at Syntagma station to change to another line, but unfortunately, because Google Maps does not separate the train destinations on either end of the line, went in the wrong direction. I noticed after two stops and had to exit and take the train in the opposite direction. I arrived at Alimos station after 18 minutes and walked up the stairs in the direction of signs indicating Athens, but noticed I was on the wrong side of a huge 10-laned road. So I went back down into the station to exit on the other side, but when I resurfaced, found myself on the same side, having taken the other side of the stairs toward the same exit. So I had to cross the street via traffic lights, then walked the last 600 m through the hot and dirty residential streets.

The hashpoint lay less than a metre into a plant bed in front of a modern and much less decrepit house than what I‘d seen elsewhere. Fortunately, I was able to stand at the fence and reach over to the location of the coordinates using my arm without having to enter the property. I took pictures and laid an x at the fence with some stones, then left and took a different route back to the train station, encountering numerous street cats. I took the correct train both times, and exited at Monastiraki station exactly 90 minutes after I‘d bought my ticket, which was valid for 90 minutes. I met back up with my mum and we went along a shopping street, passed Kapnikarea church, entered the Cathedral of Athens, watched the guards in front of the Greek parliament and then went into Plaka to eat dinner.

I only noticed that this was a virgin graticule when I wrote the report. This apparently constitutes only the seventh logged expedition in all of Greece!