lastday in Greece.

oh where has the time gone? it seems like yesterday we were strolling the venetian harbor of Chania on Crete.  we are not ready to leave.  today i got up early and traced back where we got lost last night.  yes, a left instead if a right, so confusing, these streets are a maze for sure.  we had breakfast and it was cloudy, sprinkling and windy.  not a good sign, but we put on our raincoats and headed up to the acropolis.  a trip to athens without seeing the acropolis is a sad trip indeed.  we relished it all, even though we'd already seen it all.  after the acroplis we went to the acroplis museum, which was spooky, with glass floors showing archeological digs below.  from the third floor down to the first it was a bit unnerving.  the museum itself was very cool, explaining the history, plus all of the original sculptures where there as well as diagrams about what everything must have looked like.

from the museum we headed over to the offices of Dolphin Hellas to say hello and goodbye to our beloved Uli.  her office was sad, but she is busy, so at is good.

from Hadrian's arch, we then walked all the way across to the tallest hill in Athens, Lycebettos, which means wolves hill, though we saw a lot of poop on the trail leading up, we suspect it was dogs and not wolves.  for our last day in Greece, we did not slow down one bit, most people take a car or tram to the top for a reason, as it was very steep, but once we got to the top,  my God, all of Athens lay before us, all the way to the sea.  it had stopped raining, but the wind was howling, and the clouds were fierce as hell, but the view was still the most stunning thing we've seen.  a little cafe was up there as well, so we had a light lunch before heading back down, and all the way back to our hotel.

after a brief pit stop we headed back out to the ancient agora.  this was an ancient roman town, built up around the bottom of the acroplis.  the most stunning was the temple of hephaestos, which was nearly intact because it had been converted to a church.  on the east side of the agora, a fully restored stoa, complete with a visual history of the area from 400 bc.  very cool.

after the agora, we went by Hadrian's libray, but it was closed for the day, so we came back to the attalos for a drink of the rooftop bar and soon we'll go out for our last meal.

for dinner we went to a place suggested by Matt Barrett, Oinopoleio, who had the biggest damn Lamb Shank I've ever seen.  Matt and his wife stopped by to say hi, and a band began to play some very nice rembetika music as we drank the last of our retsina and savored the moment.