Greece 2012: Part 2 - Touring Athens - Just the 2 of Us

This is part 2 of a 5 part series on our trip to Greece!

Day 5 - May 31

On the 5th day, John's parents left for Germany, so John and I took that opportunity to sleep late for the first time on our trip.  It was a welcomed rest after several busy days.  That morning we got breakfast from a different bakery, and then, we headed downtown to see the Acropolis.  We took a lot of pictures at the Acropolis:

Theatre on the walk up to the Parthenon

The high point in this picture is Likavitos (Where we had been the day before with John's parents).

This is the Acropolis Museum.  (We went there 2 days before)  The top floor that has all glass windows has the original sculptures from top of the Parthenon organized just like they were originally placed.  I think it's a little neat that they didn't take them far - They're within eye-sight of their original location. (Except for the ones Lord Elgin stole, of course)

The restoration in progress.

These are actually replicas, we saw the originals being restored at the Acropolis Museum.

After coming down from the Acropolis, we went back to the Plaka to wander around and scope out the shops.  We bought a few things and made note of a couple places to come back to later.  Then, we returned to the apartment, rested a little, and did some computer maintenance for John's parents.  (Their computer ended up coming home with us and we left John's behind for them to use... their hard drive is dieing and it will be much easier, and cheaper, to fix things state-side.)

For dinner we returned to the taverna around the corner that John's parents had taken us to when we first arrived.  We enjoyed some Feta Stuffed Beftekia (basically, heavily seasoned ground beef with feta stuffed in side and cheese on top) - Yum!

Day 6 - June 1

On the 6th day we got an earlier start because we were going to a museum that closed at 3.  We had another bakery breakfast and headed to a new part of town to go the National Archeological Museum.  Getting to the museum was a mini-adventure.  We went on a metro line that we'd not used before and then, we couldn't see our landmarks when we got above ground.  After a couple minutes though, we got our bearings - it just took a few minutes longer than it should have taken to get to the museum.

Pictures were allowed in this museum, so, naturally, we took a fair few.  We think some people abused this privilege though - We saw a few folks taking pictures of practically every piece.

Zeus

For a country that's so upset with the British Museum for keeping Greek artifacts, I find it ironic that their National Archeological Museum has a room of Egyptian artifacts.

One of the rooms was a private collection with lots of Gold!

This statue was recovered from a shipwreck

This was also in the shipwreck and was found covered in sea life.  It cleaned up to look undamaged though.

This statue was also from the shipwreck.  Part of the statue was buried in the sand and the other part was exposed to sea life - Can you guess which is which?

A wall of painting that was transported to the museum

An interest grave marker

We were at the museum for 3 hours and 15 minutes, and we decided that 4 hours would have been better.  We arrived at about 11:45 and they close at 3 - we're readers, so if you are too and you ever decide to visit this museum:

1. Allot 4 hours
2. Don't spend too much time in the old statues in the start... things get more interesting, but we had to speed up as we went because we were running out of time.

After the museum, we did some planning and packing for our travel to Tolo the next day, and we got gyros for dinner from a place in Holargos.  We had a nice couple of days in Athens by ourselves, but we were both excited for the beach portion of our vacation to start the next day.