We spent the morning wandering Pláka, the old historical neighborhood of Athens featuring labyrinthine streets and neoclassical architecture. Sharon did a lot of shopping. While she shopped, I explored the area and people watched.
As a rule, I try to blend in when we travel. I purposely don't wear anything that marks me as an American. I keep a low profile. Northern Europeans travel the world. I think that I can pass as a generic EC tourist. Over the years, I have had a number of people come up to me and start talking to me in German. I am fascinated by what some Americans wear and how loud they are. There was a group of Texians straight off a cruise ship near us at dinner last night; it was clear that they were Americans from a mile away. I saw a number of Americans while I was people watching today that stood out like a sore thumb.
We grabbed lunch on a street corner near the hotel at The Greco's Project. Sharon had a pork gyro and what I think were leek balls, while I had a Greek salad.
After dropping stuff in the room, we caught a taxi to the National Archaeological Museum. Using a Rick Steves tour of the museum, we focused on the highlights. There are number of very interesting pieces, including the Mask of Agamemmmon, the Artemision Bronze (either Zeus or Nepture), the Artemision Jockey and the Grave Relief of a Horse.
We took a taxi back to the hotel. This is our penultimate day; we fly home tomorrow. We relaxed a litte and started to pack.
Getting cleaned up, we wandered up to the roof top bar for a cocktail. The place was packed so we just took our table. We finished the night with dinner in the hotel's GB Roof Garden Restaurant. We split an eggplant appetizer. For mains, I had a very good Handmade open seafood ravioli, with prawns and star anise scented sauce, while Sharon had Seabass ‘en papillote’ with capers, fennel, green peas and lemon. We had Tiramisu for dessert.
With a very long day on deck for tomorrow, we crashed very early...
No comments:
Post a Comment