At last the final day had come; not only of Athens, but of the holiday itself as well. Our flight was in the evening which gave us one last morning to explore. We checked out of the hotel and left our baggage there to make our exploration a little easier. We decided our sight for the morning would be the Athens Military Museum, though like the Naval Museum before it we had no map with it on and hadn’t originally planned to go there.

The museum is free to enter and you’re allowed to use cameras, just no flash photography allowed. There’s a lot to see inside and it is split into different eras starting with the oldest on the top floor. As we had plenty of time to waste we lingered around every exhibition to allow it to all be taken in and to give us ample opportunity to get the photographs we wanted. On the mezzanine floor there are a number of World War Two exhibits that were quite interesting to see due to having seen them in movies and in computer games – it was amazing to see such things in person.

What sits outside the museum is far more amazing however – there are a number of aircraft, AA guns, and other machines of war all parked on the tarmac and slabs around it. Leaving the museum we left in search of another museum. This one was tiring to find and eventually we gave up and went in search of a restaurant instead.

Then it was time to start the long journey home. We headed back to the hotel to our luggage and then took the metro and bus back to the airport where we had to wait a few long hours until our delayed flight was ready for boarding.

Traveling around Europe really does make you appreciate the value of a single currency – we did not have to worry about changing currencies as we changed countries, we could just continue using what we had. As a single currency it also made it easier to compare prices between countries so we could see what was a reasonable price for a meal, etc. I can only imagine the pain this would have been had I done this trip 10 years ago. We had travelled through eight cities across 3 countries seeing the lasting monuments of ancient civilisations, memorials to those lost in war, and one of Earth’s most destructive forces – a volcano.