Athens

We signed up for a ship's tour to Athens, just an easy trip with minimal walking.

It started with a quick tour around Piraeus. It's quite a pleasant place which was almost destroyed by the Germans towards the end of WW2 so there are not many very old buildings although it has been a port since antiquity. From Piraeus the voyages described in the Iliad began.

We had visited Athens long ago (in the 60s!) and in those days it was possible to climb up to the Acropolis and walk around, on and into the Parthenon. Now, you have to buy a ticket to go on to the Acropolis and you can't go very close to the Parthenon at all. There is work being done on it to restore some of the frieze, I think.

We also visited the Temple of Zeus, the largest of all the Athenian temples. It's astonishing that some of the inner Corinthian columns still have quite detailed carving visible. The temple must have been wonderful but I still love the Parthenon best. Such perfection of design.

Our guide was a garrulous woman who had better control of English than most native speakers, but, oh, boy, she never stopped to draw breath. If she could use ten adjectives when one would do, she did! She was a purple prose expert. Reminded me strongly of ICAS Singapore.

We heard all about the Greek economy - well, what's left of it - and the adverse effect the Olympics had on Greece. She told us about the parlous state of her personal finances and how her children were unemployed, etc, etc. We were glad to escape at the end of the trip.

In the afternoon Alan and I went back into Piraeus to have a look around. It appeared to be thriving in spite of the ruinous effect of the substitution of the Euro for the drachma as all the shops seemed well patronised.

I found an optician and had my glasses fixed before having an adventurous trip back to the ship on a series of public buses.

At the duty free shop we bought some nice and very cheap Greek wine and a very crude frig magnet. Who shall I give that to, I wonder?

Sailaway from Piraeus was entertaining with lots of ships and inter-island ferries around but what made it exciting was the very narrow opening to the harbour. It seemed as though we'd only just scrape through but of course the pilot took us through easily.

Off to Naples next.