Athens July 13, 2009

Pereus (Athens) July 13, 2009

Woke up and off to brunch. Quiche too salty but we pass the time nicely with a well travelled couple from South Africa and Roddy from England. Disembarked from the ship at the Port of Piraeus and took the tour bus to Athens. Athens apparently has 3 natural ports.

Vicky (real name unpronounceable, like the tetragrammaton), our tour guide, was acceptable. She gave us all the "whisper system" connecting us with headphones and wireless headsets to her microphone. So when I went to talk to her about my wife being in the bathroom, delaying us from heading up to the Parthenon, Shayna heard it transmitted to her stall.

The Greeks still use the phrase "mule of Athens" to describe old people who stay active and busy, and compare them to the mules who dragged marble up to the Acropolis in ancient times.

Vicky tells us about Dracon, who gave the laws and lent his name to the phrase "Draconian", Klisthenes, who in 6 B.C.E. divided the population into tribes rather than by income, paving the way for democracy, and Pericles, who allowed the poor to vote. She told us about the Persian Wars in 5 B.C., Darius, Marathon, Mleradis and Phidipides. She told us about Xerxes and Thermopoli and Leonidas, and the Peloponnesian War .

Our bus drops us off at the Acropolis. Down below we can see the Theater of Dionysus, seating 70,000 people and still used for events. We ascend to the Acropolis. On the way back down to Pereus we drive by the Olympic Stadium. After the 2004 Olympics, the Greeks apparently have more stadiums than they know what to do with. The Olympic Stadium is actually from 1896. The Athens marathon ends there every year, and it can seat 69,000 people.

We pass by Parliament where the guards with the funny shoes are conspicuously absent, National Library, Sculpture of Lord Byron and the Royal (now National) Gardens.

Its strange to think that I am as old as Modern Greece, established in 1974. The bus drops us off at the Plaka, the touristy shopping area our cruise shopping director insists we have to visit. We walk to the Acropolis Museum, which our tour guide never tells us is closed on Mondays. We walk along the sides of the museum, buying a souvenir magnet of an erect satyr along the way and an ice cream bar that somehow manages to hide a Kit-Kat bar inside (delicious !)

At the Plaka, the streets of chatchke stores go on and on. Shayna buys a 9 euro Ring of Life bracelet and I get two 2004 Olympics t-shirts on clearance for 5 euros each. We stop by an Instant Pita place and get a delicious cheese pie with some kind of sweet sauce on top. Taxis are hard to flag down, but finally we get one. Athens flies by: a dirty, polluted, graffitied mess of poverty and small commerce and prideful etiologies.

We have dinner on the ship at the King & I dining room, Thai themed. Entertainment is a great British singer Jacqui Scott (http://www.jacquiscott.com/biography.html) performing Broadway standards from Aida and such. Shayna likes an Edit Piaf song, Theme to Love, she sings. Shayna buys Jacqui's CD. Later we see her carrying her own bags. A minute later we see a gay guy running up the stairs screaming "Jacqui, Jacqui !" and point out her trajectory to him. We are rewarded with the sight of his boyfriend taking pictures of Jacqui and her starstruck fan, and Shayna gets a picture with Jacqui all of her own.