Funnily enough Karen and her friend Fran were on the same flight to Athens.

We picked up re hire car, tried to remember to stop saying "grazie and per favour" and bread the Athenian traffic with mad Greek drivers. Pretty easy actually except most streets near Stan's aunts place are one way.....tricky.

We caught up with Maria and Nick, Maria used to run an English school, she is very understanding and has terrific English. Then we headed into the acropolis. Very impressed by the efficiency and cleanliness off the trams and metro.

It was around 6 pm but still very hot. We explored the Acropolis, tried to take photos of the Pantheon without the scaffolding, and despite being hold on the way in that it was about go close, we spent an hour amongst the ruins. Amazing how theses ancient civilisations could creat such massive buildings, and how much destruction us humans have done over the centuries. They are trying to put buts back together but it would be like doing a 1,000,000 piece jigsaw without the picture and lots of pieces missing. The new museum of the Acropolis is a modern building, much disliked by the locals. We liked it especially the way a modern sleek building was built over an archaeological digging site incorporating the old and new so seamlessly

We ate Mediterranean style - 10 pm dinner outdoors at a taverna with Maria, Nick, their on John, fiancé Natasha and poodle pup.