Athens

We made it!  We left Naxos bright and early on the 25th and took the Blue Star Ferry for 5 and a half hours to Athens. It was a long ride, but it was beautiful!  We arrived and went looking for the metro to get to our place. Up to this point Greece had been a laid back, peaceful experience.  Athens certainly changed that!  Dealing with the Greek language for the first time without subtitles (the Islands had lots of English everywhere) was overwhelming.  We had no idea which train to get on since the labels were in Greek. 



We have no idea what is in the shops unless there are pictures.  We got to the apartment and used the Greek spelling to match up the bell to ring.  It was like a pictograph.

This morning we woke up and after a breakfast to go from the bakery we headed over to the National Archaelogical Museum.  After all, it is Greece.  We saw some really amazing artifacts today. 

We saw the Antikythera Mecahnism today - its essentially an astrological analog computer from between 200 and 100 BC!  Blew our minds.

Click here for more information on the Antikythera Mechanism

Antikythera Mechanism - AMAZING!!!

I couldn't believe the similarity in the jewelry from so long ago and from today. 

 These are dress pins!  I have always wondered how those toga dresses stayed up!

Aphrodite

The kids did really fantastic for the first two hours of our visit, but the third hour the girls started getting a bit restless.  We made it through  the whole museum without issue though and headed back to the apartment.  Its just a short walk, and we managed to find a nice sized market to buy supplies for dinner tonight.  Nice sized in Europe as far as we can tell seems to mean about 5 short aisles, produce, dairy, and frozen food.  So tonight we are back to turkey and gouda sandwiches.  We then went out in search of some pizza and gyros.  About ten minutes later we were back in the apartment, watching National Geographic on cable and relaxing. 

We are resting up because tomorrow we are heading out to start seeing the sites of Ancient Greece!