Saturday 17 June 2017 - Zea Marina, Athens

Well we are still to plan.  We try to get up early to leave for Athens before it gets too hot.  But we are slower than planned, not helped by the fact that both men’s bathrooms are shut!  It is pretty sizzling by the time we get to the bus stop at 9am. We have finally worked out where the big supermarket and bus stop are.  We buy our tickets from the kiosk and the bus arrives almost immediately.  The bus is sort of air conditioned.  There is cold air coming out, but with the doors opening so often it doesn’t cool down very much.  It is a slow journey of nearly an hour and by the time we get to Syntagma I am dripping and we still have to walk all the way up to the Acropolis.

So with map in hand off we go.  We wind up in the Plaka and then climb more.  We have taken a rather roundabout route but eventually we make it to the main entrance.  The place is now heaving and there is a huge queue just to get tickets.   Now we realise we should have brought out passports to prove we are EU citizens (well for the time being) to get half price tickets.  So it costs us an extra 20 Euro.

There is obviously a cruise ship in because there are tons of groups with numbered labels on.  It makes it difficult to get around!  But we do have a good walk around and find that it is now after 12 noon.  So we should escape mad dogs and Englishmen time and find somewhere cool to eat lunch.

We make it down the Plaka and avoid a few very touristy restaurants.  We finally stop at a rather up market looking place and eat there.  It has chairs in the shade with fans blowing at us, which helps a bit.  We have a nice, if expensive lunch, including a starter of sea urchin which is delicious.

So we must find our way back to the bus stop.  Although we would have liked to get to the Acropolis museum (which is no longer on the Acropolis) it is too hot to stay in town and we must get back to the Marina before the office shuts at 5pm to pay for our stay so that we can leave in the morning.  I make a deal with Richard.  Next time we want to visit Athens we will do it in winter!

We make it back to Piraeus in good time and Richard persuades me to go to Starbucks which he discovered yesterday.  I must say a large glass of iced tea does make me feel better.  So we pay our bill and start to get the boat ready to leave.  We have so much credit on our water and electricity that we splash water all over the place including me.

We also do our last shopping.  We have found a very smart wine merchants who sell French wine at prices not that much more than we are paying for the more expensive Greek wine which we do not like that much.  So we buy half a case of Louis Latour wines and a couple of Greek whites they recommend and they deliver it to the boat.

We decide to go out to a bar we found the other night on the edge of the Marina that has a swimming pool (not that we want to use it) for a cocktail before a light supper on the boat. 

The weather has started to look threatening, so we take an umbrella.  We need it.  Half way through our drink the skies start to open and we have to move seats to under cover.  By the time we get back to the boat the rain has set in. 

Richard looks as the weather for tomorrow.  It says the rain should stop in the middle of the night and then just be cloudy all day.  That should be good enough for us to move on.