{"id":549,"date":"2015-04-28T21:14:32","date_gmt":"2015-04-28T20:14:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/?p=549"},"modified":"2015-05-13T17:30:44","modified_gmt":"2015-05-13T16:30:44","slug":"tuesday-posh-minerva-and-unkempt-piraeus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/tuesday-posh-minerva-and-unkempt-piraeus\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday – Posh Minerva and Unkempt Piraeus"},"content":{"rendered":"

We very nearly missed breakfast. Following our long journey to Athens yesterday, and all the travelling inbetween, the alarm going off at 8am barely raised a groan. Consequently, when we finally crawled out of bed at 9:15am, knowing that breakfast finished at 9:30am, it was with a certain amount of expediency.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, we made it to breakfast, and I can tell you that the Minerva instantly won a massive double-brownie point by having BLACK PUDDINGS on the breakfast menu!…<\/p>\n

With no particular plan for the day in place, and knowing that we would have to be back on board by 12 noon (so a trip into Athens was out of the question – luckily we’ve been there before), we opted for a leisurely stroll into Piraeus<\/p>\n

To be honest, our expectations weren’t high. Piraeus is very much a poor cousin to Athens in terms of visitor attractions, but being a port, it does have its fair share of tourist-ey nounce.<\/p>\n

\"Piraeus_01\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Piraeus_02\"<\/a><\/p>\n

To say it’s a little bit unkempt is being kind to the place. Piraeus looks like a city that has grown exponentially, with high-rise apartments built upon high-rise apartments. At some point, however, whatever money was being spent upon the place clearly stopped; old buildings have fallen into serious disrepair, and the small number of ancient inner-city remains have become overgrown and inaccessible (as have many of the public parks). It’s a shame, but by the same token, it is also one of the things that makes Piraeus vaguely interesting. Whichever way you look at it, Piraeus is a city; large and sprawling, with a serious traffic and parking, problem, and graffiti on every available wall space. Trees continue to grow, however, in some of the most unexpected places, and I couldn’t shake off the image of of a post-apocalypic world similar to that portrayed in ‘I am Legend’ or ‘The Walking Dead’ (but without the zombies, of course). Many of the snapshots I took of the city are just that; modern, but un-maintained high-rises, with greenery creeping up around their foundations…<\/p>\n

On our way back to the ship, along the waterfront, we did come across a large catherdral of particular magnitude and opulance, which stood out almost sore-thumb-like against the backdrop of decay. Its interior was quite magnificent…<\/p>\n

\"Piraeus_03\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Piraeus_04\"<\/a><\/p>\n

We set sail a little later than scheduled, at around 12:30pm. Regulations state that all new embarkees attend an emergency lifeboat drill, which happened at around 12:40pm, after which, the restaurants opened for lunch and the voyage proceeded.<\/p>\n

It’s been a lazy, relaxed afternoon aboard the Minerva, as we passed several Greek islands on our way towards Cannakkale, where we are due to arrive tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Tonight was formal night.<\/p>\n

Unlike most of the formal nights we’ve witnessed of late; you wouldn’t be seen dead out of your cabin in anything less than formal gear… dress code is something that is adhered to, it seems, quite religiously.<\/p>\n

Not only that; when we turned up the Verandha Buffet restaurant, we were informed that dinner was being served ‘a la carte’… so no getting out of that then…<\/p>\n

On the plus side… wine was courtesy of the Captain. I’m really starting to like the Minerva… and its high standards… I think we’re definitely talking 4-star cruising here…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We very nearly missed breakfast. Following our long journey to Athens yesterday, and all the travelling inbetween, the alarm going off at 8am barely raised a groan. Consequently, when we finally crawled out of bed at 9:15am, knowing that breakfast finished at 9:30am, it was with a certain amount of expediency. Fortunately, we made it to breakfast, and I can...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,12],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":554,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/549\/revisions\/554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peterwoolley.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}