Athens, Greece

Athens, Greece

Eastern Time plus 7 hours

My entries will be shorter now. We have ports with few sea days in between and there just isn't time. I am also getting a little burned out on the blog.

Tomorrow we arrive in Naples and board a train to Rome. We will spend the night there and have dinner with our Waukesha/Oshkosh friend, Colleen, and her family. They live in Rome and we have really enjoyed visiting them in the past. We are really looking forward to seeing them again.

We arrived in Athens and were picked up by our driver, George. We drove along the scenic Saronic Gulf, past Athens most beautiful suburbs (Glyfada,Vouliagmeni,Varkiza) to Cape Sounion where we visited the 5th century B.C Temple of Poseidon with one of the most breathtaking panoramic views in the world ( on a clear day you can see at least seven islands. Unfortunately it wasn't a clear day. Next Time!

We proceeded to Lycavettus Hill with the best view of Athens City. Here are pictures from it and of it.

We also visited the Temple of Olympian Zeusand then to Panathinaiko Stadium cradle of the first modern Olympic Games in 1896.
The next stop was the famous Acropolis including Propylaea , Temple of Athena Nike, Parthenon, Erechtheion and museum of the Acropolis. We wandered around for at least an hour and a half just soaking it up.We proceeded to the Plaka district including the Tower of the Winds, Ancient Agora and the Temple of Hefestus.We saw various other sites and views in Athens, but those were the highlights.

George then drove us to the little harbour of Piraeus to meet Roscoe, Elaine, Ann and Max for a great Greek dinner. It was a beautiful little harbour full of boats and lined with bars and restaurants. One neat thing about the bars is that between each of the bars etc was glass. Some even had glass roofs. This made everything very light and we could see through the windows where we were sitting and those of the buildings next to us. We had beer in one bar and then walked down the street. We came to a boating club named the Nautical Athletic Society, or that is the translation of the name anyway. We found that out from a Greek man on the ship. We entered and Jeff tried to speak to them. They didn't speak English and we don't speak Greek. We then discovered that Elaine and the President of the club both spoke French very fluently. A conversation took place with Elaine translating. Jeff told him about his race committee work etc. The man invited us in and gave us all beer and wine on the house. He then presented Jeff with the club burgee and took him downstairs for a tour of the facility. We felt quite honored.

We had a wonderful dinner of grilled fish, grilled prawns, Greek salad, and great Greek wine (sold by the kilo)