Mediterranean Cruise 2012

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Hello again!

What a time to land in Athens! We hit town the same day the Chancellor of Germany, Anna Merkel arrived to be confronted with a national protest in Athens. Over 7000 police and army reserves were ready and waiting for riots - streets were blocked off and plenty of police everywhere you looked. We were advised to be out of town by midday otherwise we'd be caught up in the protests and unable to get back to our ship in time.

We took a bit of a gamble and did the hop on hop off bus chancing they would know where to be at the right times - this proved to be successful. We saw parts of Athens we hadn't seen before and ended up at the new Acropolis Museum where we had a late lunch and could look up the Acropolis.

The new museum is fantastic and how impressive the diggings are which are still ongoing are - you will see that they have covered some of the diggings by a covered glass walkway so you can see them better. It was a massive museum and amazing how much they had recovered over the years and the manner in which they cleaned the artefacts by laser.

On the way home to the ship we were lucky to get back to the ship without any mishaps... although as you can see by the short shorts on this girl it was surprising there were no accidents.

The traffic in Athens and Piraeus was a lot worse than we get in Australia!! All traffic going in all directions.

That night we had dinner at the Japanese restaurant - The Tamarind - onboard with old friends - Steve & Marlene Chapman & Dave & Jeannie Sladden - we had a fantastic night. It has been about 8 years or so since I've seen them so it has been fantastic to catch up again and we will keep in touch.

We have been doing a heap of walking both on and off the ship and am so glad that I can do it thanks yet again to those injections - if only I'd known how effective they were I would've had them done much earlier!

Also doing more exercises and feeling better about it. Loving the food onboard and the great service - it is really something else.

Unfortunately there must have been some spice or pepper in the food and had a bit of a bad night because of that but didn't last too long thank goodness.

As I write this we're sailing past some of the Greek Islands on our way to Mykonos where we'll probably have lunch. We're there just for about 8 hours.

Bye til the next one.

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