Blogs from Athens, Attica, Greece, Europe - page 16

Wednesday: This is museum day! We both got up early and ate a quick breakfast before catching a taxi to the National Archaeological Museum, which was created to hold all the fabulous finds from around the country. Every single item is exquisite and speaks to the breadth of culture of the Greeks. We started with the Cycladic Period ( Truly the National Museum was spectacular. We continued through the Mycenaean Period ( There was even a special exhibit of the finds on the island of Santorini. A village fully evacuated in 1525 BC just prior to the volcano blowing up, leaving behind all their household goods as if it were yesterday. Covered in thick ash until the 1970s it has become quite the find and a great education on the same level as Pompeii or Herculaneum. ... read more

Monday: As mentioned in yesterday’s posting, we arrived on Easter so nothing was open. And it turns out that the government has selected 3 May as the workday holiday tied to Easter. So nothing will be open on Tuesday. No government offices and NO archeological sites! This means our plan of having time in Mycenae, Epidaurus and Napflion are being crunched into one day: Monday 2 May. We are on holiday and prefer to take things slowly with careful, educated steps. So we decided to cancel our visit to Mycenae and focus on Delphi and then return to Athens. It was a sad decision but appropriate considering all the things we want to do in Athens. To get things moving we met our guide for Delphi at 8:30 AM and were up on the hillside and ... read more

Athens... read more

After missing our 0430 flight to Athens, which we were one hour early for (don't ask, I'm still furious and awaiting a refund) we arrived in Athens in the late afternoon. We quickly got our rental car and were off to drive northwest into the mountains to visit Delphi and Thermopylae. Dennis wanted to visit Greece during this trip to see some historical sites, mainly Sparta and Thermopylae. I think the only reason he agreed to this trip was that I humored him for a 3 day Greek tour to see what he wanted to see. I had briefly visited Athens 20 years ago on Mediterranean cruise with my Mom and grandparents, and looked forward to returning both here and Istanbul. We drove for about 3 hours and arrived in the town of Delfoi after dark ... read more

Geo: 37.9792, 23.7166After sleeping late again and enjoying breakfast with a view of the Acropolis, we took a walk around the square and a few of the streets nearby. Shops were open and busy with Saturday morning shoppers. Seemed to be mostly locals. We were back in the hotel, repacked and ready for our ride to the cruise ship terminal by 11:30. The driver arrived ten minutes before the scheduled time; we checked out of the hotel and were ready to go. We had another English-speaker as a driver which was nice although we had not paid the extra fee to guarantee an English-speaking driver. Nice that it turned out that way although this driver did not have very much to say. He answered our questions politely, but didn't offer any of his own comments. We ... read more