Italy/Greece : Day 15 - Athens

We slept in today... it felt so good! We went down to breakfast at 7:30am, stopping at the kids' room on the way (they were still sleeping). We'll meet them in the lobby later. We saw a lot of people from our group enjoying a late breakfast. Everyone is in a good mood and ready to explore Athens on our own.

Our first stop was the Plaka and in order toget there, we had to take the Metro. We walked about 10 minutes from the hotel to the station; Cheryl figured out which direction we needed to go; and we jumped on a train! We got off one stop too soon... We should have listened to Cheryl!

We meandered up and down the streets and past the shops displaying their wares.

Athens is full of graffiti... it's everywhere! But, I think it's part of Athens' charm.



Can you see the place behind Jim and Chris? Restaurants would just setup tables right along the side of the street.

We had lunch at a little place like that. We had our favorite... Greek Salad...

And stuffed tomatos!

After lunch, I asked the waiter to show me where we were on the map. Did I mention that we were lost? We were trying to find the Acropolis museum. I gave the map to Cheryl and we headed off!

Athens is full of ruins. Here are some places we saw on our way to the museum. This is called Hadrian Library. It was right in the middle of the Plaka with shops all around it.



This is the Statue of Nike in Hadrian Library. It has no head or arms...

This is what it's supposed to look like. A pretty good likeness, if I do say so myself.

Here is another place called Temple of Hephaistos:


Where the Parthenon is impressive because of its size, the Temple of Hephaistos is impressive because it's so well preserved. We saw it in the distance when we were at the Parthenon two days ago, and luckily stumbled into it today!




Wow, that was a lot of pictures of one building. You can really tell how much I enjoyed seeing it! Here's a last building, called the Church of the Holy Apostles. It's not really considered a ruin because it was built in 1000 AD, but it's still a cool building.

Thanks to Cheryl, we finally found the Acropolis Museum! The muesum is located at the base of the Acropolis hill; built right on top of more ruins of the city surrounding the Acropolis.


There are three floors to this museum and each floor has a glass floor so you can see the ruins underneath.

This also means that if you are on the lower floors, you can look up and see the people above you in a less than flattering angle. At least we were all wearing shorts! The museum contained all the pottery, stone panels and statuary found at the Acropolis site. The stars of the museum were the peplos that decorated a building at the Acropolis. They didn't allow any photos in the Acropolis Museum, but here are the repoductions that we took a picture of two days ago at the Acropolis site:

After the Acropolis, Jim was done with walking. We headed back to the Metro. Oh wait! Look, gelato! There is always time to stop for a gelato! Chris has his...

And how about a swim on the roof before dinner...

Time for our second farewell dinner. Surprise! We are not eating at the hotel! Fabrizio took us out to Monastiraki for a traditional Greek dinner: Greek salad, stuffed mushrooms, and choice of entree. I got the mushroom risotto, which was GREAT! But, there's more... fruit and then a brownie with Greek ice cream. Greek ice cream tastes kind of strange. I prefer gelato. The last thing they brought was a liquor that is supposed to help with digestion. I didn't like how it tasted. YUCK!

Well, time to say good-bye to Fabrizio and all our travel companions. We need to go to our rooms and get packing! We are leaving tomorrow morning!