Athens Revisited

We left our comfy stateroom Saturday morning and took a cab to the Hilton Athens. It was before 10AM and I was sure we’d have to check bags and go hang by the pool for half the day waiting to check in, but they said the room would be ready in 40 minutes and we could wait in the Executive Lounge. It was nice to know that Hilton still loved me. I plan to keep that Hilton Honors Gold American Express card until I die, and then someone will have to pry it from my rigor mortised hands as I’ll be holding it just in case there’s a franchise in the afterlife.

This hotel is either kept incredibly well or went through a recent renovation. Marble shower and bathroom, luxurious bathtub, spacious modern room, really fast Wi-Fi (yay!), and new furnishings. We also have in-room coffee as well as access to drinks, adult beverages and food in the Executive Lounge. They brought us a bottle of wine and fruit on our arrival. Our room (and the Lounge) faces the Acropolis, and we have a balcony. The view and the light at sunset are beautiful, as is the Acropolis at night.

We’d had a big breakfast on the ship so we got settled in the room and headed to the Athens Archaeological Museum, opting to figure food out later. What we were looking for were artifacts from some of the many excavations we’d seen this week. Truth be told, much of the booty from these sites has ended up in museums all over the world, either because the early excavators were greedy and wanted the goods and fame for their home countries, or because Greece didn’t have the infrastructure or systems to care for these precious objects. They’d like them back now. I’d say in most cases fat chance.

Museums can be overwhelming, so I took the broad stroke approach; high level viewing while looking out for items from specific excavation sites, and certainly reading about fabulous things that caught my eye, like hedgehog vases and octopi painted on tiny pots.

I also photographed cooking instruments and food related items. Some of the coolest ones were a smoker to calm bees, skewer holders for a grill site, gravy boats, and “fry” pans. I plan to have a gallery specifically for those entries on the website.

I was very excited to find the items taken from Akroteri we’d seen yesterday, especially the wall art with crocus flowers, starlings, and impala, and two young children boxing. There were many pots, and some tools, but it was very obvious that these people really had packed up and left before the big one came.

We also saw statuary from Delos, I particularly liked a marble statue of Aphrodite, Pan and Eros where Pan is coming on to Aphrodite and she’s going to whack him with her flip flop. We saw parts of the pediment from both the east and west walls at Asklepieon on Kos, and a statue of Asklepios himself. And much that was taken from the Acropolis in Athens and sites in Piraeus.

We meandered a long time and I needed a snack. They have a great café with a no-nonsense barista. “NEXT! What size, small or big? Ice cream? You better eat in 2 minutes or you drink it.” It was toasty in the museum. We split a kasseri cheese pastry and a chocolate almond candy bar. Steve’s excuse for chocolate is that it cleanses the pallet and he needs it to get the (fill in the name of whatever he just ate here) taste out of his mouth. Originally chocolate was required to remove the nasty taste of eggs or fish.  It’s morphed to just about everything.

After our tasty bite we went back to more meandering, with plans to hit the museum shop on the way out. Euros are like monopoly money; you don’t really register them as money when you’re spending them. Could have been dangerous but it wasn’t to be. While the museum is open 8AM to 8PM, the shop closes at 4, unbeknownst to us. We missed it by 20 minutes. Bummer.

We cabbed it back to the hotel, having to figure out why all the cabbies were giving us a hard time. Once again the police were out in force is Syntagma Square because of a scheduled protest, and the cabs would have to take a circuitous route back to the hotel. We asked questions and looked perplexed, and magically the price got lower. I’ve always said my selling style was surround and confuse. Works for cabs, too. We grabbed a beer and a snack in the Executive Lounge, and retired to our room for naps and blogging. Our best laid plans for exploring at night turned into a way too comfortable perch in bed looking at the Acropolis in its lighted splendor and a World Cup match on TV, while we perused all the pictures from the trip thus far. All this history is very tiring!