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West African Merchants
Now that's something you don't see every day . . . unless you're in Athens! Athens Public Resources
We did not do much today as we are exhausted from our late arrival last night. We slept in, enjoyed another good breakfast in the Executive Lounge and joined up in Syntagma Square where I was using the free internet. The free internet is at certain key locations across the city and is quite straightforward to use though it can be weaker in certain areas of coverage. Also, it requires a web confirmation of terms which means I could not get my iPod Touch connected.
I went out into the city on my own at first and used what is an
excellent Athens subway system, very affordable at 1 Euro for any connection within an hour or 3 Euros for 24 hours. It is additionally well signed, evidently a benefit from the 2004 Olympics, and clean. Purchasing tickets is also very simple which is unfortunately not always the case, such as in London. It is such a good system that we will use it to go to the train station tomorrow morning.
I first picked up our train tickets, also a simple affair with no games like Greece's neighbor to the north; then went to Sytagma
Cutest Little Girl
At our favorite restaurant square in Athens. for the internet where I uploaded all of our Santorini blogs.
Numismatic Museum
After Jennifer joined me we went to the "pneumatic museum" as it was open today and saw what was largely the private collection of a wealthy German merchant who lived in Athens during the 19th century in the Italianate mansion in which the museum is now located. The collection there is quite impressive, but the programming and presentation could be improved as it is confusing to figure out what text panel is associated with which display and in what direction one should rotate in the room. But once you figure out the system, it is good. Going to look at a museum about currency may seem like a particular pleasure but we would recommend that anyone coming to Athens visit this place as you can learn a lot about history through coinage and it also gives a lot of information on the political and commercial situation for each region throughout history. Some of the interesting aspects were a description of what different types of trades would earn and how much different things cost. In addition to Ancient Greek coinage, they also had a good Roman
Good Bye Acropolis
Another street merchant on the bottom left selling these tomatoes that flatten completely out when smashed to the floor and then take back their shape in a few seconds. Cool. collection and even some medals, the last being of less interest to me. It cost 3 Euros per person to visit, you get an audio guide and to take time on the exhibits will take about an hour and a half to visit.
Other than this museum, the other two that fell by the wayside were the Benaki, which I still do not clearly understand what is housed there, and the National Archaelogical Museum which is truly regret we did not visit as many of the items housed there are from the sites we visited days before. We could have done it today, but frankly the last few days were stressful and we would get to the end of a day and realize that what had felt like two days worth of "doing" was actually one day. That's not good on vacation.
We are still without word on Curious George, we guess he really like Santorini.
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