Athens

What can I say about Athens? Well. . . it rained. Perhaps I should really say. . . IT RAINED!
This was the place where we had the least effective tour guide, partly because he spent more time telling us not to get lost, where to meet and how to find the group if we did get lost; and partly because his slurred manner of speaking and heavy accent made it very hard to understand anything he said. All while the rain was pouring down on us in a deluge and we got increasingly wetter and colder. He did give us some information about the city, the Acropolis and the Parthenon but I'm afraid it was overshadowed by what would happen if we mislaid "the tour group".

The Parthenon was impressive by it's sheer size! And the other Temple (the Erechtheum) and the huge number of ruins waiting to find a place in the Acropolis puzzle were amazing. Mind you by that time we had been set free from "the group" to explore on our own and the rain had stopped for a bit.

The view of the city from the Parthenon was impressive and we had the added bonus of having a dark sky and and bright rainbow against which to take our photographs.

Looking down at the amphitheatre.

You can see a bit of the rainbow in this picture. This portion of the Erechtheum is called the Porch of the Caryatids.

On the way back we had a different view from the bus window.

Did I mention that it rained?

Perhaps we'll go back to Athens someday and see more of the city. I know we only saw a small portion of it's sights and I know that spending more time here on warm, sunny day, would give us a much different perspective.

Next port - Ephesus.