Author: marionvermazen

Athens is one of the cleanest cities I have ever visited. We saw no litter. This morning we took the metro to the ferry terminal. The ferry was running late. As we waited we saw a boat collecting litter in the harbor!

The ferry that we took to the island of Sifnos was a high speed ferry. We didn’t think it would be a rough ride but is was certainly rougher than expected. It was a three hour ride with one stop. The seats were 14 across and it was almost full. We were supposed to stay seated. They were passing out seasick bags but luckily both of us survived. It was not a fun ride.

The ferry stops at several islands. The stop to let us off was very quick. We and a few other people hurried off the back of the boat as a few others were getting on up front and then off they went. I bet they didn’t stop for even ten minutes.

We rented a car and drove up the mountains to our hotel.

I took a long nap and then we walked into the nearby village to buy snacks for dinner. The grocery stores were closed from 1:00 to 5:30 so we had coffee while we waited.

As the sun set we had a nice picnic on our balcony with three cats circling looking for handouts. We will be on Sifnos for two nights before moving on to the next island.

Today we planned to visit the National Archaeological Museum. On Tuesdays it doesn’t open until one in the afternoon, so this morning we visited the National Garden.

On our way there we just happened to pass the tomb of the unknown soldier as they were getting ready to do the changing of the guard.

Duke remembers that when he was in Athens in 1975 there were gyros vendors on every corner. We have been looking for a vendor selling gyros ever since we got to Athens. On the way from the park to our hotel we finally found a gyros place so we each had one for lunch. They were really good.

This afternoon we went to the Archaeological Museum. It was very well laid out and very interesting. For instance, this mask of Agamemnon is actually a funeral mask from about 1550 BC. In legend King Agamemnon led the Mycenaeans to defeat Troy. This mask is from about three centuries before the fall of Troy to the Mycenaeans. So even if Agamemnon existed this can’t be him.

Many of the statues on the museum were copies, Roman copies of the Greek originals! This statue of Athena is a Roman copy. The original was forty feet tall and was located in the Parthenon on the Acropolis.

The golden age Greeks made wonderful lifelike bronzes in the 4th century BC.

For dinner we went back to the Gyro place where we ate lunch. We had another great meal.

Today Duke and I did the Rick Steves Athens City walking tour. It was excellent. He explained the history of Athens from 500 BC. He started with when Athens was a city state, through control by the Persians, Romans, Macedonians, Byzantines, Ottomans, and Nazis. It’s a long and confusing history but he makes it clear.

For dinner we went looking for gyros. We ended up having a wonderful grilled meat platter for two.

After dinner we went up to the roof of our hotel to check out the acropolis.

Skiathos is just under 20 square miles in size. it rained all day today. As I mentioned in my post yesterday we are definitely here in the off season. One web site I read today said that in summer the population can be 70,000 but in the off season it is about 4,000. It didn’t take us long to explore the west end of the island this afternoon. We saw a couple of beautiful beaches and almost no people.

We also went to a high point and visited Kounistra monastery.

We have only seen 4 or 5 restaurants open. When we checked in here the owner of Hotel Rene recommended 3. We are eating at one each night we are here. Tonight we ate at Akrogiali.

We started with a Greek salad to share. All our food was wonderful but my squid and onion in a special sauce was fantastic.