Directly opposite Arundel Castle is Arundel Museum which tells the history of the town spanning over thousands of years. It was founded in 1963 by a group of local people who founded the Arundel Museum Society, a registered charity that still runs the museum. It moved to its present location next to the River Arun in 2013. Tickets are £5 though you do get a discount if you show your ticket to Arundel Castle.
The main reason for my trip to Arundel was to visit the castle. I’d seen a video online which inspired me to research more about it and once I saw how easy it was to reach by train I was sold. I will say though that as a visitor and from the ground there is no real way of seeing the whole place in its glory (other than on approach by train) as it is surrounded by trees but the gardens and interiors more than made up for it.
Last September I visited Arundel in West Sussex for three nights – my main aim was to visit the castle but I also wanted to visit the cathedral and the Wetland Centre, all of which will feature in their own posts. I found Arundel to be a really pleasant market town with lots of independent shops and cafes that were reasonably priced. The train journey from Nottingham was quite long, requiring a change in London that lead to a bit of a mad dash via tube but all in all the trains worked well and I was blessed with glorious sunshine for the whole time I was away.
A random round up of Athens things and places:
Do not underestimate the temperatures. Super obvious but I chose to travel mid May hoping that the weather would be a little cooler than the height of summer, which of course it was, but only because summer in Athens that year hit record breaking highs and many of the outdoor sites including the Acropolis shut down to visitors. This was perhaps unusual, though with climate change it’s probably the new normal. The temperature while I was there was in the 28-29C range the whole time and didn’t really let up even in the afternoon/late evenings. I had the idea that I’d do outdoor sites early in the morning and then in the afternoon when it was cooler but soon gave up on that idea and was just careful about keeping to the shade where possible.
As ever, whenever I’m in a new city I take pictures of anything that strikes me as interesting and then I go and research it later. This post rounds up all those random statues I photographed around Athens. The first is that of Yannis Makriyannis. Located not far from the southeast entrance of the Acropolis, though tucked away a little bit in the corner of a small grassy area, this statue is of one of the men who fought for Greek independence in the 1820s. He also is known at least in Greece for his memoirs which were notable for being written in Demotic Greek, the standard spoken language of modern Greece. It translates as language of the people.
Historically the Evzones were light infantry units in the Greek army, today they are members of the Presidential Guard. They stand guard at both the Presidential Mansion and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I knew that they do changing of the guard ceremonies and I wasn’t particularly interested about going out of my way to see them but after leaving the Panathenaic Stadium I happened to come across one such ceremony outside of the Presidential Mansion.
Hadrian’s Library was created by the Roman Emperor Hadrian in 132 AD to the north of the Acropolis. Having spent a long time at the Athenian Agora that day as I wandered through the streets of Athens doing a bit of souvenir shopping I hesitated at the library entrance but ultimately decided that I was both a bit too hot and a bit too ancient monument fatigued to pay the entrance fee and go inside. What I did do was take some photos as I was walking by.
My last full afternoon in Athens was spent at the Athenian or Ancient Agora (not to be confused with the Roman Agora which I did not visit). It was the heart of ancient Athens where supposedly democracy first sprang to life, as the social, political and commercial hub of the city, a meeting place and a site of temples and of shops.
Another small church on Ermou Street, the heart of a popular shopping district, is the Church of Panagia Kapnikarea. Panagia as we’ve already seen relates to the Virgin Mary but more interestingly Kapnikarea relates to either the tax collector responsible for the church or the tax on residential buildings that produced smoke from cooking nearby. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary this church actually belongs to the University of Athens.
The Church of Panagia Pantanassa is another one of those tiny churches that you could almost but not quite blink and miss it. One of the oldest churches in Athens its name come from the Greek for the Virgin Mary. It has some confused origins, either dating from the 7th or the 9th century depending on which source you trust. Located at Monastiraki Square, one of the busiest areas of Athens, it was curious to see how few people were paying attention to it – now lower than the ground level it initially would have dominated this part of the city.
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