November 28th, 2009

The excursion to the Acropolis started shambolically, for all their cultural heritage the Greeks had us waiting ages and walking miles to the coaches. They even let street hawkers onto the coaches which never happened in Egypt. (On the return we even left passengers behind.) Athens does have traffic problems - odd numberplates are allowed some days, even numberplates on other days.

We did get to the Acropolis, along with gangs of youths from some Mediterranean country. The guide wasn't that audible in the chaos, but as she was on a long diatribe about how great the Greeks were, and how despicable it was for marbles to be in the British Museum, not hearing every word wasn't such of a loss. Such rants encourage me to think we should hang onto the friezes. The Parthenon is big, but not something I'd like to have in the back garden.

We were dumped in Cathedral Square in Athen's Plaka district for two hours, and left to fend for ourselves. Apart from the tablecloth selling women (who uttered curses after each refusal) there were North Africans selling strange jelly like blobs. These blobs they dashed to the ground, making a flat splodge of colour. But wait a minute or two and the blobs reformed into their original shape. In passing there's a lot of marble on show in Athens, much used material.