The National Gardens of Athens
The National Gardens of Athens is the best place to escape the city and with the areas of the Plaka, Acropolis, Thission, Monastiraki and Psiri all connected by pedestrian streets and parks you barely have to go through Athens to get there.
Behind the Tomb of the Unknown soldier on Amalias street, at the top of Syntagma (Constitution) Square is (formerly The Kings Garden) the National Garden, it is like a tropical paradise right in the middle of the concrete jungle of Athens. You can spend hours wandering around the shaded pathways past flowers and trees and ducks. There are two duck ponds and a duck population that has gotten completely out of control. There are the remains of ancient Athens scattered around and several dozen cats. The National Garden is a great place to escape the noise and heat of Athens. Especially if you like ducks.
Athens National gardens zoo In what used to be the private garden of the king an event took place that changed the course of history for Greece and made it what it is today, a small country in the eastern Mediterranean, instead of a large country spread over two continents with its capital in Constantinople. This event was a the bite of a monkey.
After the first world war things were looking up for Greece. The Germans had been defeated and Turkey which had been allied with them, was falling apart. Under Eleftherios Venizelos, Greece's greatest statesmen and one of the most intelligent and respected leaders in Europe, the country had tripled in size and it's army controlled Smyrna on the coast of Asia Minor, an international city full of Greeks who had lived there for thousands of years, as well as many other towns on the coast which were also full of Greeks. The Greek army had the support of the European powers and what was left of the Turkish army was disorganized and on the run. It seemed that Greece would achieve it's dream of the megalo idea: the Great Idea, a greater Greece with it's capital in Constantinople (Is