Saturday, January 16, 2016
Hello!
Up this morning about 6 to organize ourselves and get ready
for the big move into Athens, where we will be for the next three nights.
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| Our room with "the" view! |
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| It is SO beautiful! |
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| Even though it's not exactly a balcony day! |
We had been expecting rain, but instead, we
had the most amazing wind!
It was just
howling outside and the ocean is showing the effects!
Thanos brought us our breakfast at 8:30 am,
which was very nice, but truthfully, we were ready to get on the road.
We left
Sounion
about 9 am and according to Emmy, it should take about an hour to reach our
hotel.
We knew that would be really
early to check in, but figured that if we could park the car in their garage,
we could leave the luggage in a safe place and possibly get to a museum.
(It was definitely a museum kind of
day.)
I had heard and read a great deal about driving in Athens,
but possibly because it was a Saturday morning, we had basically a straight
shot right into town with no problems at all, and Emmy led us right to the
front door of the
Athens Gate Hotel.
We had splurged a little on a room that
hopefully might have “the” ideal Athens view – the
Acropolis.
Robert went in to
get assistance and see about parking, and shortly he and a very nice man came
to take all of the luggage out of the car.
The only problem is that the nice man didn’t have a driver’s license, so
he could only
tell me how to get to
the parking.
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| Gold death mask from Mycenae |
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| Mycenae vase |
Not a good idea.
So, instead, he got in beside me (and didn’t
put on his seatbelt, so lots of beeping…) and directed me around the corner and
then down a very narrow (read: I stopped and pulled in my side mirror) to the
hotel parking.
Down in a circle to a
very tiny space, and I’m parked between huge bottles of water and I don’t know
what else.
Then, up a flight of stairs,
and
voila, I was in the lobby, where
R was waiting for me.
Our room was actually ready by 10 am (YES!) so we were
directed upstairs to their top floor (actually there is a restaurant above us,
on the 8
th floor, but this is the top floor with rooms) and room
707.
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| Gold encrusted bull from Tyrens |
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| Fresco from Tyrens |
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| Original paint from Thera |
I really didn’t even want to look,
but when I pulled aside the curtains, WOW –
There it was!
The Acropolis!
Just amazing, and I am
very, very pleased.
The room
itself is spacious and comfortable, and the bathroom is HUGE and also has a
picture window of the Acropolis.
We also
have a lovely, very large balcony with a table and chairs, but it’s not exactly
balcony weather at the moment.
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| My favorite emperor, Hadrian |
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| The Antikythera Mechanism |
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| The Antikythera Mechanism |
We got situated, and R got the computer setup, and then we
decided to first get transit passes and then head to the National Museum of Archeology.
The metro is just a five minute walk to Akropoli
station, where we bought 5-day travel cards. They are only 10€ each, which is quite a
bargain. Then we took one line to the Omonia station, and changed there for Victoria (also known as Biktoria in Greek). The museum was then about a 10 minute walk
from there.
We got there about 11:30 am so decided that we would grab a
bite of lunch in their café before seeing the collection. We split a spanakopita (spinach pie) between us, with a couple bottles of
sparkling water – then I got my very first Magnum Classic for dessert … yum!
And then, into the collections!
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| A small arch we passed |
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| Hadrian's Arch |
We had noticed the last time that we were in Athens that
some of the rooms were closed to visitors, and the excuse the last time was
they didn’t have enough money to pay for sufficient guards.
(And considering that there were 2-3 guards
per room, we thought they could have done some very successful
redeployment.)
However, this time, the
numbers of guards is basically one per room, but they still had probably ⅓ to ½
of the entire museum off limits!
Fortunately,
we were able to see the things we really wanted to see, but still – if someone
was coming for a specific thing, they could very well have been
disappointed.
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| A fresco'ed room from Santorini |
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|
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Among the exhibits are the pieces of the Antikythera Mechanism, a piece of bronze
machinery recovered in 1900 from the sunken wreck of the Antikythera. The device,
dated at about the 2nd century BC, appears to be a computer for calculating astronomical
events. Over the years and after much
study (X-rays, etc.), a number of working models (several of which are on
display in the museum) have been built in an attempt to reproduce its
workings. For details, go to the
Wikipedia article; it’s fascinating!
We were able to spend a good three hours, and then decided
to head back to the hotel…hopefully picking up a bottle of something bubbly
along the way!
R is very interested in taking buses, but of course, we were
told that there is no published bus map available. (We were told that we could look up bus
routes on-line. Fat lot of help that is when you are standing on a
corner!) We waited at one bus stop for a
few minutes to see if any buses were going our way, but ended up walking back
to Omonia metro stop and taking it
back to Akropoli near the hotel.
We found some very touristy streets near our hotel, where we
actually found a reasonably priced bottle of Prosecco, so we will toast our
Athens visit this evening with some bubbles before we head upstairs for dinner
at 7 pm. We also found an amazing fresh
juice bar, and went in and enjoyed two glasses of freshly squeezed orange
juice. The menu included options for “cholesterol”
“low energy” “smoking” “anti-aging” – which I’m definitely going to try! For each option, they have four ways to do
it. You can get all fruit, or all
veggies, or a combination of the two, and finally, in smoothie form! We watched the gals work, and this one guy
got this incredibly ugly green mixture.
His face was truly a treat, and it wasn’t the most positive response I’ve
ever seen. Wish I’d paid more attention
to what he’d ordered!
Then past Hadrian’s Arch
(in front of the Temple of Olympian Zeus)
and back to the hotel.
So, that’s it for the moment! More later!
m
xxx
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