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Published: December 30th 2009
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Medical Centre
Lyn with the Staff Captain - Tobias Akkermons, Dr Adriaan Schwartz and Nurse Thelma Ong. Hello everyone,
Here we are at Piraeus - or just about to leave here after spending a morning touring around Piraeus - for about 5 minutes and then 12kms down the road to Athens. We visited all the usual places, Consitution Square, Royal Palace and saw the guards with pom poms on their shoes, The Acropolis, and many other historical places.... such as the Hard Rock Cafe, KFC and MacDonalds!!
From the Acropolis - 200 metres above sea level - we could see all over Athens and think one of the photos shows this. We've confirmed the theory 'beware of Greeks bearing gifts as we discovered - under the Acropolis two cups of tea cost us over EU10!!' 10 Euros equaling approx $16.60!!
We were dropped off in downtown Piraeus where we thought we would have a greek lunch - how hard is that to find??? Well we found lots of glassed in cafes/restaurants in the city square but they all only served coffee and cake and were full of smoke - very few places have smoke free areas or none at all. Anyway we finally found a place and they were really good to us and so
John had a toasted ham and cheese sandwich while I had spanokopita - John asked for a Greek Expresso Coffee - they gave him 2 glasses of water as well, and the Expresso was so thick the spoon almost stood up in it - then he knew the reason for the water!!! We also had Greek Honey Puffs - um yum!!!
While walking back to the ship we ran into one of the navigational officers and he filled us in on the operation of the boat and also told us that the weather on the previous cruise was dogged with high winds and inclement sea conditions and we've had nothing but smooth sailing - the issue at Rhodes was because the pilot boat couldn't get to us ... probably not because of the high winds but John suggested it was because it was a public holiday!!
We didn't do much more shopping - incidentally the European rage is long flat boots for women - the flatter the better, and only bought some Campari for John when coming back on board. Think we're supposed to hand over all alcohol as we come back on board - we've seen some
do that - but for goodness sake - what do they expect us to drink while on board?????
As some of you may know this shipping line are clients of ours and had arranged for me to do a tour around the Medical Centre - we did this yesterday and would you believe one of the doctors contacted me last night to meet with me regarding working in Australia for us?!!
Would you believe there are 17,000 taxis in Piareus/Athens??? Most would be Greek Australians living here on Workcover or pensions from Australia.... this is from a taxi driver!!
Well tomorrow we're off to Iraklion which is the largest city on Crete. The city was built by Arabs on 824AD..... just thought you'd like to know that.....!
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dottipitt
non-member comment
Parthenon and Acropolis
Very interesting day in Athens and lovely photos , good to see you both in some of them too. Iraklion should be fascinating too being so old ,will look forward to hearing about it. All the best for a great evening, thinking of you..love as always xx