APRIL 8, 2008 – ATHENS

We woke up at 7am and room service arrived at 7:30 am. Our tour gathered at 9:10 and we were off soon after. We sailed into the harbor of Pireas which is about 20 min on the expressway into Athens. We had to take a shuttle from the ship to the port entry. The shuttle busses are the widest I’ve ever seen and they’d take up more than one lane on a highway. Surely they’re only used inside the port.
I can’t pronounce, much less spell, the name of our tour guide but she sure looked Grecian. The motorcoaches we were all on today were very well appointed and like almost all of our drivers, today’s driver was very careful but not a slow poke. The two cities are continguous one with the other, just like LA. This was a pretty rigorous 8 hr tour. They tell you several times that there are 80 steps to the top of the Acropolis, and that’s not counting the other steps through the tiny streets of the Plaka and other sites we saw.
First we went to the National Archeological Museum, a large structure filled with visitors of all ages including school kids. Some of the latter had little workbooks where they had to draw things and write notes. This certainly helped focus them. The guide had provided us with something new they were trying out. We were given a receiver, roughly the size of a cell phone today, and a single ear bud. The guide talks into a collar mike and you can hear her without shouting over the other noise in each room. This wasn’t perfect but it was a lot better than we’ve experienced elsewhere. There were lots of interesting statues here and what enhanced your appreciation of them was a discussion of how they were made, the culture when they were created, the changes the sculpturers began to incorporate as they gained more knowledge and skill in working with the various media, first stone, then bronzes of the lost wax method. Further, she told us how and where many of them were found, what it entailed to get them into the museum and caring for them. As you may expect, we only got a taste of what this museum holds before we were onto our next site.m
ACROPOLIS: The weather today is perfect for this, around 70 F. So you still work up a sweat but it’s not a killer and on top of the hills, one can sometimes enjoy a breeze. There is scaffolding and renovations everywhere here. She explained how the repairs are being done and that the marble shows up as white now but will become the same patina as the older pieces with time. There’s a temple to the virgins on this hill as well and stadia you can see from the top of the hill that were amphitheatres in old days. The 80 steps didn’t include the flat walking at an upward incline. Like many cities, Athens is on several hills and so the top of this one gives you a good view of the whole city. Also like many metropolitan areas, it suffers from smog, and at this day, some of the blowing sand from the hamseem Egypt is enduring.
LUNCH: We left the exit for the Acropolis and walked down some narrow paths and streets in an older part of Athens. This was fun as you might expect and it led us to our restaurant. Ed and I disagree on it’s name but we do agree that one named after Sisyphis (spelled and pronounced differently here in Greece of course) was right in the immediate area.
We had a wonderful, huge Greek luncheon with local wine (probably a blush of some kind: we couldn’t read the Greek as you know), a great tomato, feta cheese, olive, red onion, cucumber, and olive oil salad. There was hummus and tehina though they tasted different but still delicious. We had this with large slices of crusty bread. We had a meatball, probably of lamb, beef in gravy, moussaka, spanikopita…I think that’s everything. For dessert there was a unique type of ice cream.
LA PLAKA: After we rolled out of the restaurant, we again walked many tiny old streets. The guide gave us our meeting place and we were off for an hour of just wandering around. I got a red hat for my activities and Ed found a Greek fisherman’s hat that fit him! And he liked the way it looked so he got one for himself. Other than 2 diet Cokes and a copy of the International Herald-Tribune, that’s all we bought and we managed to get Euros through a roundabout method too long to recount here. On the way back to the bus, I picked up the latest issue of the Economist (waayy expensive here by the way) and got more change in Euros from a reluctant vendor.
OLD OLYMPIC STADIUM: On the way back to the ship, we stopped here for a photo op. This stadium was rebuilt recently to it’s ancient glory and holds 72 thousand (you read it right) people on it’s all marble steps; the Hollywood Bowl only holds 28 K. This is the same stadium where the eternal flame was started on it’s way recently toward Beijing.
Along the way we saw the Greek Parliament building, Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Hadrian’s Arch, Statues of Lord Byron and Harry Truman (remember the Marshall Plan?), the Temple of the Olympian Zeus, Constitutional Square, the National Gardens, the Academy and University Library.
We got back to the ship about 5:40 p and the ship left at 6 pm.
SUPPER: Twyla and Dave were already there when we got there late. We talked about the various sites we had seen in Athens and the entries in the photo contest. Suddenly Hank and Erna showed up for dessert. We had so much fun and again we were the last ones out of the dining room.
TONITE’S ENTERTAINMENT: Ed had warned me that he wanted to watch the basketball game tonite at 8 pm; you know it’s important to him when he’ll miss the entertainment elsewhere on the ship. So I’m going to try to catch up with all the blogs.
Tomorrow the lectures begin at 9 am so I have to get up early; we are all still tired from the overland and the sleep deprivation. People are tired so it’s good that tomorrow is another sea day.
Apparently Frankie had a very successful white elephant sale while we were on the overland and we’ve asked for another one. This is for folks to auction off their buyer’s regret purchases and donate the money to their favorite charity. One small quilt that a woman bought for $10 went for $150 to the Cancer Society.

APRIL 7, 2008, CONTINUED…

DINNER WITH THE SHIP’S PHYSICIAN: Nikolas and Ursula hosted us along with Jason (of this morning’s trivia) and his wife Jennifer. They are from New Zealand, while the MD and his wife are from Germany. This was quite fun and we never lacked for things to talk about; again we were the last to leave the dining room. There was a discussion of the disabilities folks have on the ship and whether they should be allowed to go on many of these tours. Also how the staff are expected to lift and carry many of these folks up and down ramps, onto tenders and such. It’s not an official part of their job descriptions and many suffer long term injuries in the process.
And the laundry room was a long discussion with lots of laughs and “omigod”. And to clear up the rumor mill: there have been no deaths on this voyage: repeat no deaths on this voyage. Jennifer will convey this information straight from the horse’s mouth to the “stitch and bitch” crowd (knitters, crocheters, and needlepointers).