Archaeology at the airport

Air travel is not on my list of favourite things, but a wait at Athens airport is ameliorated by a visit to the onsite museum. Excavations prior to the building of the airport, revealed a wonderful slice of Greek history and over 150 finds are displayed on a mezzanine floor above the check-in desks.  While waiting for your steel bird to carry you off into the sky, imagine the ghosts of the Neolithic first settlers, the Bronze age warriors in their fortified settlement,  the gold and ivory wielding Mycenaeans lying in  their chamber tombs, the affluent Atticans at the birth of democracy, Roman farmers enjoying their comfortable farmsteads and villas  provided by the ample vineyards and olive groves and Byzantine Christians worshiping in their tripart basilicas - all sharing the geography if not the time of your visit.  Such informed daydreams are a great way of forgetting that you are about to spend a few hours enclosed in a metal tube.  Non of the aforementioned would believe you if you told them it could fly.