Turkiye and Greece - April 29, 2026

April 29, 2026

Yesterday was a somewhat hectic day. It began with a visit to the European Union / Greek immigration control. What was touted by the ship’s staff as “just a couple of minutes” ended up being an hour and twenty minutes. To quote Maxwell Smart, “Missed it by that much!”.

We did take a “panoramic tour of Athens”. What this means in lay terms is “You will see a lot of trees and buildings but not much else”. It was a good time for a short nap.

We then had a quick tour of the Athens Archeological Museum. They had a large number of artifacts from early Athens history, some dating back as far as the 18th century B.C.

After returning to the ship we had dinner and spent most of the remainder of the evening packing.

This morning we left the ship and prior to checking into our hotel we made a journey to the Acropolis of Athens. The parking lot is at the bottom of the hill so it was a climb to get to the top. It was well worth the hike. Where you could no longer go into or onto the structures, they were still magnificent to visit.

The Parthenon was huge. Large portions of the structure have been destroyed over the years due primarily to invasions and wars. A restoration effort is underway to rebuild portions of the structure. Of course the restoration has been ongoing since the 1980’s.

A smaller structure, the Temple of Nike, is still primarily intact. Where it is not a primary temple on the Acropolis it was still impressive.

The Erechtheion (I’m not sure how it is pronounced) is also currently known as the Temple ofAthena. Part of the reason why is that Athena is the namesake of Athens. There was an Old Temple of Athena that sat between the Parthenon and the Erechtheion but was destroyed by fire in an invasion around 500 B.C.

We then visited the Acropolis Museum. There were many artifacts from the Acropolis. A large number of the artifacts were reproductions as the originals had been taken long ago by the British Museum, the Louvre, and others. Unfortunately none of the artifacts are going to be returned any time soon, and probably never.

We did see one model of what the Parthenon was supposed to have looked like. It was impressive.

Flat Lizzy went with us yesterday, but had to spend the day in our backpack as backpacks were not allowed in the museum. We felt bad that she didn’t get to go to the museum. On today’s excursion we let her out of the backpack so we could make sure she could go with us.

Flat Lizzy at the Acropolis Museum.