My Escapes Greece Greek Week Piraeus Piraeus Day Trip Long Walk Through Piraeus

Long Walk Through Piraeus

My Piraeus visit was a day trip consisting of a long walk of urban exploration.
Surprising, enjoyable in the beginning and towards the end... but uttetly boring and exhausting in between!

My "great Piraeus walk" had commenced at the train station, where I "landed" coming in from Athens... The area around the station was filthy with roadside "sellers" (sort of a "flea market" where mostly migrants were selling their cheap goods).

I proceeded to walk to the port area, on a bridge spanning across the busy street bordering the train station...

Piraeus is one of Greece's biggest cities and a major port city just south of Athens. The port of Pireaus is in fact Greece's biggest port.

I hear it has been recently bought by a Chinese Company called COSCO. This happened recently, in 2016. But my journey presented here took place in June 2009...

I think Piraeus' port is a good place for hopping on a boat heading to a Greek isle...

If you stay in Athens (like I did), you can simply get in to Pireaus by metro. The two cities are literally stuck together. Or, so it seemed...

My idea was to take a walk across what I considered the most important parts of the city (the port and two marinas that stand out on the map).

The journey started at the Piraeus suburban railway station, near the urine-smelling port area, where street sellers were roaming around.

I proceeded to walk across the city with primary focus on the two boat marinas and then head back to my hotel in Athens by embarking later at the Faliro metro station (further north).

I planned this day trip in such a way that I would focus on the area near the water: the ports, the ships and whatever interesting I'd find around...

One of my best finds during the whole trip was this collection of peculiar-looking public toilets!

The (main) port and the three marinas of Zeas Marina, Pasalimani Marina and the Mikrolimano Marina are among the most scenic places in this city. You might add the Kastela (some refer to it as "The Castle", but it's really just a highly-situated residential area) with restaurants, bars and a nice seaside view.

The hotspots of my day trip:

I've found the port area scenic, but also dangerous (as most ports in Europe)... there's not barrier around, so watch your step near the water!

There isn't much to do here besides watching the ships, ferries docked, some departing, others disembarking.

The port area has nothing out of the ordinary to offer, but some of the boats were jaw-droppingly opulent. Many large ferriers operate from this port to various Greek isles...

I always enjoyed contemplating the life in and around ports!

Don't expect beautiful architecture in the port area. It's filled with flat grey houseblocks, which were alike the ugly buildings in the Omonia area, where I first booked a hotel...

There was really nothing interesting on the land, my focus was on the boats.

Still, one has to watch the traffic. Greece is known for mad wild traffic. And, Piraeus was no different.

I had to dodge the wild bikers and furgonettes hauling hastily on the hot concrete (as if there were no obstacles in the port area...).

The port smelled like a mix of wet iron, sea smell, dirty street stinch and hot aphalt...

Speaking of hot aphalt... the heat was unbearable. Thankfully there were a few palm trees around to keep me company. But I had no time to sit under their shade.

Cruise ships were docked at the port, but not clearly visitble due to the fences, buildings and vegetation around that area...

There was quite a lot of movement in and in the close proximity of the port area, but more inland, almost no-one was on the streets.

Perhaps it was the strong summer sun that scared the people away, but it was surely odd to pass through streets of visibly densely inhabited neighbourhoods and being almost the only person on the streets!

After having gone past the boats, it started getting increasingly more boring. Almost entirely barren streets, countless barely distinguishable minimalist concrete buildings.

If you're searching for exciting architecture (essentially beauty), then a trip through Piraeus will dissappoint you...

The Agios Nikolaos Church is one of the few slightly beautiful buildings that I've encountered during this long walk. It was most probably closed, everything was dead quiet around the church.

A number of minimalist glass and steel office buildings also stand along the port area... yet, don't add much value to the view.

The long walk was yet to come... Little did I know about how long time and energy this Piraeus day trip would consume...

On the map, everything looks plain flat... unless you're using 3D maps to plan your itinerary.

As I proceeded to cut across the city, I've found myself climbing long slopes and went a bit astray from my initial plan...

This was about to cost me additional hours of walking and eventually, I finalized my trip by very late afternoon, into the evening.

I reached Passalimani Marina first, then Zeas Marina followed. Truly, the nicest one of all three... Mikrolimani Marina was a bit less interesting northeast of the previous two (which literally were so close, they we side by side).

The marinas were rewarding visual gifts after the long walk and thirst in the hot sun...

Zeas Marina looked like a great place for dining out, spending the late afternoon and evening in Piraeus. Or, perhaps take a trip down here from Athens...

Stunning expensive luxury boats, loads of restaurants, bars and people... many people. Both foreigners and locals.

Indeed, the two marinas are close, but Zear Marina is bigger with more restaurants around, more things to see, whereas Passalimani Marina is mostly used for larger docking larger yachts.

The two marinas are surrounded by a number of strange establishments... there's even a number of military/navy equipment exposed in open air (naval guns etc.).

The military equipment exposed in the bay is actually part of the nearby museum. Honestly, I was more intrigued by the views around thant the run-down museum.

A wicked sight was that of an World War II submarine's top deck - a boat called "Papanikolis".

Not so much beautiful, but strange to see the top "carcase" s

The submarine Papanikolis was built in France between 1925-1927. It was one of Greece's 6 submarines in World War II. It scored a number of hits in the war...

What stood out most at the Passalimani and Zeas Marinas was the plentitude of luxury yachts.

The 3rd marina, Mikrolimani Marina didn't attract much of my sympathy. It was a lot smaller with the usual small sailing boats, fishing boats and a few standard sailing yachts...

It was getting late and my intented few hour walking trip had turned into a day trip.

Seeing Athens in the distance, I took the remaining walk to the Faliro station (in the shade of the Karaiskakis Stadium), where I embarked the train and headed home.

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