Upon arriving in Athens this morning, we have gone a total of 2,687 nautical miles and were in nine ports over twelve days.
When we arrived in Athens 12 days ago, we did not have time to see the city. So we took he ship’s tour today while other passengers disembarked.
Piraeus means “passage way” and that is what it today – it’s the main port of Greece for ferries to all the other Greek islands. It was built 2,500 years ago.
Quick facts: Greece has a population of about 11 million with 5 million of those in Athens. The city is built over ruins, many having been discovered in the 1950s and 60s. Traffic is a huge problem.
We took a drive around the city before heading to the Acropolis.
One of the things we saw was one of the stadiums where the 2004 Greek Olympics took place. We also saw Constitution Square, the Royal Palace, the Temple of Zeus (just ruins) and Hadrian’s Arch. These were all seen as a drive by on the bus One of the areas we would like to see if we return to Athens is the Plaka area which is mostly pedestrian with narrow cobblestone streets – pretty much for tourists with shops and restaurants.
We were then scheduled to go to the Acropolis which means “upper town” and sits 230 feet above the city. We climbed the stairs to the top to find that the workers were striking because they hadn’t received their wages in almost two months. It was a peaceful protest, but we were not able to get in to actually walk around the Acropolis. So, we went down to an area where we could at least take a few pictures. 
History came back when we saw the Pantheon, dedicated to the Greek goddess Athena.
While you can’t see the Propylaea (entranceway to Acropolis), you can see the small temple on the right above which is the Temple of Nike (Winged Victory.)
We had to buy postcards to see pictures of what we weren’t able to see today. So, we figured this was a good excuse to come back to Athens. We also want to see the rather new Acropolis Museum which everyone on the ship who saw it said it was the best! You even walk over ruins and can see through plexiglass below.
However, since we weren’t able to see the Acropolis, we were taken to the National Archaeological Museum, which was much better than I had anticipated. It is such a huge museum that we could only see parts of it. We saw the Bronze Collection famous for its unique, large-scale original statues. We also saw the Prehistoric Collection with collections from the Mycean period. One special item was a gold mask that is thought to belong Agamemnon and would represent his face. There were many other beautiful golden items in this collection. The marble statues we saw were interesting as they progressed in style from different periods. There is no way to list all we saw or include pictures, but it was well worth the visit!
We considered staying in town to see more, but by the time our tour ended, there was not enough time to really do any major thing – plus we were concerned with traffic congestion since we had to be back on board at 4:15 p.m. So, we went with the tour back to the ship and had a late lunch.
We enjoyed relaxing on our balcony the rest of the afternoon. We had dinner in the Lido because they repeated the BBQ dinner they had our first night when Doug skipped it. It was good – and I got to have BBQ lobster tail again, which was so good!
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