Last Night in Europe

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We were one of the first off the ship again using self-disembarkation since we travel with only one piece of luggage apiece. We decided to splurge and get a cab if we could to avoid the long walk to the bus, metro, switch, walk to hotel so after ignoring the first few taxi's starting at €30 we settled for the €15 ride.

The weather had changed since we left two week prior, a little cooler. We took the metro up the the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, it had just opened and crowds were non-existent and as a plus they allowed photography which was nice. It was impossible to read all the descriptions of every piece - I love history but that can put me to sleep - I would focus on the context signs where groups of artifacts came from and what era they were made. They have a room dedicated to Egyptian artifacts which seemed redundant but was nice to view in a non-rushed way.

It was raining when we left so we made it back to our room to pick up some rain gear and grab lunch - back at our tried and true Souvlaki Row. The vendors were out in full force selling umbrellas. We were riding the tourist bus but it was a slow crawl due to traffic from the rain. We went to the local meat market just to see how the locals shop, we only spent a few minutes here among the animal carcasses up for display amid the smell of blood.

We hopped back on the bus and went around the Acropolis on the south side to see what remains of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus. There was a young girl there who looked like the backpacked in and started to feed two dogs (Athens is full of dogs running around without leashes, or owners) and couldn't get rid of them when she eventually tried to leave. All three walked away together. We stopped by a small coffee shop and had some coffee. I tried the Greek Coffee, unfiltered, tasted like thick mud, most of the sludge was on the bottom of the cup, probably 75% coffee, 25% of the cup sludge.

Walking past the Theater of Dionysus (it looked muddy, we didn't go in) to the new Acropolis Museum. Maybe due to the rain and it was a Saturday it was crowded. The first few floors were unimpressive after the items we saw in the Archaeological Museum we visited earlier and the kids loved to set off the annoying alarm at the exit on the first floor. A few of the original statues/columns comprising the the porch of the Caryatids on the Erechtheum where here (one of the six is in London, one in Paris) and all the ones on the Acropolis are concrete replicas. As last as 1950 photo's show they were well preserved but since then pollution has caused them to deteriorate more than they had in the previous thousands of years. We dodged in and out of the massive tour groups and continued upwards.

Moving up we came across a video showing the history of the Acropolis, how it would have looked in it's prime and the history of the Parthenon as a Temple, as a Church, Mosque and how the parts were haphazardly stripped and carted off elsewhere throughout it's history. The Venetians when laying siege to the Turks hit the ammunition stored inside the Parthenon in the late 1600's causing the most damage.

On the top floor of the museum they have a recreation of the top of the Parthenon in the same dimensions, size and orientation of the original to house what remains of the two ends (East and West Pediments), the frieze that wraps all the way around and the statues on the outside, very little of the originals reside here which was kind of sad. I know England has many of the pieces and Greece wants them back. it was really neat for them to build this, basically a home for the wayward pieces of the Acropolis to return home.

It was getting dark as we left the museum and we walked to the west side to the Thissio neighborhood to eat dinner. We tried to get a table with a view and we ended up not getting much of one unfortunately. It started to rain again as it had been doing off an on all day but the umbrellas kept us dry. We took our time getting back to the room to eventually call it a night before returning to Atlanta the next day.

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Recap of all our photos on Kodak Gallery (no registration should be required):

Athens, Greece

Turkey by Sea - Dardanelles, Istanbul

Varna, Bulgaria

Sevastopol, Ukraine

Sochi, Russia

Black Sea

Istanbul, Turkey

Kusadasi & Ephasus, Turkey

Med Sea

Jerusalem & Bethlehem, Israel

Cairo & Giza, Egypt

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