Athens

by The Philosophical Fish

The boat bucked and shivered in the wind….and we slept like logs.

Today we will finalize things with the boat and then we will visit the Archaeological museum at the Agora below the Acropolis. A fitting way to spend our last day in Greece.

Our plane leaves tomorrow morning at 0800, we land in Heathrow and will spend a few hours in London again to kill the layover. It’s a bit shorter this time, 5 hours. We leave Heathrow at 1710 and arrive in Vancouver at 1835. Now that’s efficiency!

After a whirlwind checkout in which three people surveyed the boat from stem to stern, we have been given a clear bill to leave. They brought a diver around to check out the bottom of the boat and he again confirmed that there was no damage to the keel. That was a relief.

We can happily give a plug to the charter company that we booked through. They were helpful, friendly, efficient, and everything was simplified through them. It is a bit nerve-wracking booking a trip like this over the internet, but in the end it went extremely well. We would recommend Hellas Easyacht to anyone. Ria, Socrates and Poppi were fun and easy to deal with.http://www.easyacht.gr The costs were as stated and they arranged our pick up and drop offs at the airport for us.

We jumped on the tram and headed back into Athens. We hung out at the Agora for a few hours and went for a Tavern Lunch. We would have liked to have made it to the National Museum in Athens, but we will have to wait until next time. It is supposed to be one of the most important museums in the world, but the checkout came later this morning than we had anticipated (Everything is on Greek time you know).

The Agora was overwhelming. It has been built and demolished several times throughout history and it is astonishing that anything survived, yet there are so many ruins that it is truly awe inspiring. You can feel the history.

We did a bit of shopping in the Plaka district off Syntagma and headed back to the marina. A light dinner at the Kitchen bar and back to the boat to polish off what wine we had left. The nightclub kicked into action at around 2am and the bass throbbed through the hull of the Elephant.

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