![\"Halkida\"](\"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2016\/10\/halkida-1024x768.png\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For the next 2 nights I’m staying in the city of Halkida<\/a> (alternative spellings include Chalkida, Xalkida, Halkis, Chalkis, Xalkis).<\/strong><\/p>\n The capital of the island of Evia<\/a>, Halkida is connected to the mainland by two bridges. At the narrowest point, by the ‘old bridge’, only a few metres separatge mainland and island.<\/p>\n My day however started back in Athens, where after breakfast I checked out of the hotel, and asked if I could leave my luggage for a few hours. Before my train to Halkida, I decided to go for a morning walk around the city.<\/p>\n I headed first to Syntagma Square, and then walked (via Ermou Str and the Plaka District) round to the Acropolis. I didn’t actually go in to the Acropolis itself, but I instead went to a hill opposite the Acropolis with views down over the city.<\/p>\n The weather in Greece at this time of year isn’t exactly cold, but it is the sort of weather where you might want to have a jumber with you. In the sunshine it is pleasantly warm – like an English spring day. When cloud cover returns however, the temperature drop is noticable.<\/p>\n The then continued my walk, down towards Monastiraki, where I sat and had a drink in the square. By this time it was 11 and I decided I would make my way back up towards Syntagma to get the Metro back to the hotel.<\/p>\n After collecting my luggage from the hotel I walked up to Larissa Station, the main railway station of Athens, from where I would be able to get a train to Halkida.<\/p>\n I was slightly early for the train, and with a short wait at the station I dozed lightly on a bench on the platform while listening to the radio. I was awoken by the man sitting next to me. \u00ab’\u0395\u03c1\u03c7\u03b5\u03c4\u03b1\u03b9 \u03c4\u03bf \u03c4\u03c1\u03ad\u03bd\u03bf,\u00bb he said… “The train is coming”. \u00ab\u0391\u03c7,\u00bb I replied: \u00ab\u039a\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03bb\u03b1\u03b2\u03b1\u00bb (“Got It”). And with that the train arrived.<\/p>\n At a cost of \u20ac6,50, the train isn’t bad. It is a little slow – the train takes just under 2 hours and you have to change trains once the suburban train gets out of Athens. The bus by compariston is about an hour, but more expensive.<\/p>\n On arrival in Halkida I made my way to the hotel – on the mainland side, overlooking the narrow Euripus Strait<\/a> towards Evia itself. I’m staying the Hara Hotel<\/a> which has a rooftop garden, breakfast room & bar. I’ve not been up there yet, I’ll check it out at breakfast time tomorrow.<\/p>\n Once settled in to my room I made my way down to the sea front and crossed the bridge: Now I was on Evia for the first time. I walked along the pedestrianised promenade; there are countless bars and restaurants along there. Eventually I decided it was a little cold and I could feel a few spots of rain, so I went in to the Goody’s restaurant<\/a> (Goody’s is Greece’s biggest fast food chain – It’s essentially a Greek-style burger house).<\/p>\n Having been on my feet all day, I’ve returned to the hotel now for a bit of a rest, put the TV on (I’ve been watching the Greek version Deal or No Deal) and look through the day’s photos.<\/p>\n I might head in the other direction when I go out to dinner tonight: maybe head South from the bridge towards the harbour, and see what I can find. If all else fails, there’s a meze place on this mainland side of the bridge which looks interesting.<\/p>\n I’m off to see what I can find.<\/p>\n \u039a\u03b1\u03bb\u03cc \u03b2\u03c1\u03ac\u03b4\u03c5.<\/p>\n Fred.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The weather in Greece at this time of year isn’t exactly cold, but it is the sort of weather where you might want to have a jumber with you. In the sunshine it is pleasantly warm – like an English spring day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12,78],"tags":[37,13,81,80,79],"class_list":["post-92","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-athens","category-halkida","tag-acropolis","tag-athens","tag-evia","tag-halkida","tag-monastiraki"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2016\/10\/halkida.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92\/revisions\/97"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fred-hart.uk\/greece2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}