neither here nor there: day 8 (continued)

This series of posts is taking way longer than the actual trip. I blame it on my summer job, which, while pretty much exactly what I was looking for, takes place in an office. Two years, apparently, is enough time to forget all the things I didn't particularly like about working in an office (why does my face feel so oily by the end of the day when I stayed inside and didn't sweat a single drop all day? Weird...) and grad school has officially ruined whatever attention span I had (eight hours is an awfully long time to do one thing). Mainly the fact that the last thing I want to do after eight hours in an office is anything even remotely computer-related. A positive outcome of this, however, is that I might just finish crocheting the blanket I started five years ago.


This is just about the last photo we took on top of the Acropolis. Rather, the last photo that a friendly Aussie guy took of us. To be fair, he must have sensed his first try was totally out of focus because he did take a second image in which at least the Parthenon is in focus. This blurrier version, though, is pretty great, I think.

From there we walked down the hill through the ancient Agora to the Monstiraki market where we enjoyed large quantities of meat, tzatziki, and Greek beer for lunch. We assumed the National Archaeological Museum closed early that afternoon, since that's what our guidebook indicated, so we decided to take the metro to the Port of Pireas. We didn't have time to visit any islands on this brief trip but we at least wanted a glimpse of the Mediterranean Sea.

It was a long walk from the metro station but we got a good look at the water before heading back into the city. At that point we decided to spend our last couple of sightseeing hours in Athens on the bus tour that we'd failed to pick up the day before. We knew the last bus departed from the Archaeological Museum at 6, so that's where we headed, getting there a bit early. As we walked around the square, we were sure we saw people going into and out of the museum. Sure enough, despite the information in two different sources, the museum had apparently switched to summer hours early (we were starting to notice a trend). We vacillated between the bus and the museum for about 15 minutes. The museum was on my list of things to do, but to be honest, I was pretty museum-ed out by then. I kind of just wanted to sit on a bus for a couple of hours. In the end we went with a rather dazed walk-through of the museum. I'm still full of antiquity. I was, however, pretty amazed by all the statues they have that have been found in the sea over the years. They have folks there who actually specialize in conserving art and artifacts found in the ocean.

I was downright pooped that evening. Especially having checked the Acropolis off my list, I felt done. Needless to say, we didn't do much else in Athens. I think I took a long bath and enjoyed some pretzels and maybe a granola bar from the snack bag before calling it a night.