Bob and Ann in Greece 2008

Please visit April 28 slideshow

Our new hotel, Philippos, is a small step down from the Herodion. The room is smaller and the bathroom is a lot smaller - when I lean over the sink, my rear end hits the wall behind me. It's nice and quiet, though, and the breakfast is adequate. I couldn't get my wireless connection going because of the way they have their router cinfigured, so we had a delay in posting blogs and reading email.

Modern Olympics Games Site

This morning, we met our city guide, Anastasia, and our bus and driver. We took a short orientation tour on the bus of some sites close to our hotel, including the site where the modern Olympics began in 1896.

Draped Women


Parthenon

We then visited the Acropolis, the main archeological site in Athens built in the 5th century BC. It was Easter Monday with free entry, so there were mobs of people there. We climbed the hill through the main gate until we could see the Parthenon which once held a huge statue of Athena. Restoration is in progress so there was scaffolding around the site. This took away some of its magic, but it was still amazing to see what the Greeks could build so long ago. There was also a temple for Athena and Poseidon known as the Erechtheion which had a porch with statues of several draped women which Ann's college humanities class taught were the first instance of this style of sculpture.

Lunch was next in an outdoor taverna in the Plaka. Harris, our guide, makes eating simple by ordering our meals family style. We also have bottled water, wine and beer as part of our meal. This is unusual for us. On our RS tours, we have to pay for our drinks.

Temple of Poseidon

After lunch we got on the bus and drove south along the Aegean Sea to Cape Sounion. Our goal was to visit a temple high on a cliffside bluff dedicated to Poseidon. When we got there, the walkway to the temple was closed because of Easter Monday. Our guides were surprised as were the dozens of other tourists that were there. We were able to walk up a nearby bluff and take pictures, though.

Throughout our day, our day-guide was very good at explaining Greek history as well as Greek Mythology. I, for one, get very confused about what is real and what is myth.

Now it was time to drive back to our hotel and on to dinner at a different restaurant. We had a good meal of several tapas-like dishes and lots of wine upstairs in the loft. When we left, we met some friends from our RS Turkey tour in the main floor part of the restaurant. Bill and Betty along with John and Pat were on the RS tour of Greece.

Bedtime was after 10:00.

The map of our route is below. To see it in Google Earth, follow this link.