European cities A THENS


Essential for anyone interested in the origins of western civilization, Athens mixes monuments and museums with lively shopping and inexpensive restaurants. Fall is an ideal time to visit, because it can be hot in mid-summer, particularly for essential sights such as the rocky bluff of the Acropolis, topped by the 447BC temple the Parthenon, with all its Doric columns. Athens is a good city to get a grounding in the richness of antiquity, particularly in places like the Benaki Museum, before heading out to see big-name countryside locations.


Be y ond Tere are huge names in the Athens hinterland. Delphi, the place of oracles, and Mount Olympus, home of the gods, to the north. And Olympia, where the Olympic Games originated, plus the Spartan Mani Peninsular on the Peloponnese, southwest of the city across the Corinth Canal.


From top: Statues of the Porch of the Caryatids in Acropolis, Athens; pedestrians on chain bridge, Budapest


500 kms N BUD APEST Berlin London Paris Budapest


Often bracketed with Vienna, with which it was once the joint axis of the great Austro- Hungarian Empire, Budapest straddles the Danube, while its upriver neighbor shoves the river into the suburbs. Huge fleets of river cruisers tie up here at the start or the end of their adventures. On the west side rises the steeper and older part of the city, Buda, and on the east the newer, more commercial sector, Pest, with boulevards that could belong to Paris. Tis is a place of extremes: on the one side, the fantastically elaborate period coffeehouses which match anything in Vienna, and on the other the new proliferation of ‘ruin pubs’, bars created in ruined buildings using all kinds of souvenirs from the Communist era as both furniture and decoration.


Athens


Be y ond It’s a gorgeous and inexpensive 90 minute riverboat trip up the Danube to Szentendre, a lovely little riverside town, cobbled and ancient, packed with crafts shops and artists’ studios, with market stalls offering wines, cheeses and goulash by the shovelful.


78 | asta.org


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