Cruise

Athens

A short coach ride to the Archaealogical Museum.

Spoiler alert. Nudity! (and beauty --they're Greek!)

The guide again spoke very fast and a heavy accent meant that many of us 'tuned out' for relief now and again and read the notes by the items.

Some amateur archaeologist , Heinrich Schliemann 150 years ago made a stunning discovery near Athens of a huge trove of burial items --very ornate and intricate gold and bronze work. In his letter to George 1st he states that he is only interested in science and therefore makes no claim to the find but will send it all back to the UK for a museum. I don't know if it's still there but it's probably good he did send it as I suspect it would not have survived the second world war in allied hands. Most of it seems to be in Athens now, anyway.

He also discovered the Minoan city that had been buried and dates back millenia BC.

The Cyclades group of islands formed a distinct culture of their own and were trading heavily, with the West as well as Africa and Asia Minor even 2-3 thousand years BCE. There was a French Ponant cruise I spotted, just doing Les Cyclades, I noticed.

Many stone and bronze Greek statues have been recovered from shipwrecks on the sea bed, which at least means they didn't get arms and legs chopped off by Ottoman Islamists! One statue of a man with a severed penis was next to a woman who appeared to offering up the severed member as an offering to the Gods, probably Poseidon.

At the end of the tour the guide abandoned us for free time without any maps, guidance or anything. Maybe we have do all that for ourselves but the Rhodes guide did a great job briefing us fully at the end.

It was very hot -32Deg C so we did not fancy the queues for tickets for the Acropolis (which we visited about 20 years ago) so took a stroll alongside and were rewarded with unusual aspects of. This walk had also attracted many crowds but much more dispersed.