Day two:History, sun and gyros

After an odd night's sleep (wide awake at 1am - stupid jet lag!) we headed down for breakfast that the hotel offers and is part of our package. I was surprised to see the variety of foods as Greeks aren't known to be big breakfast eaters - I guess the hotel has figured out their tourists! There were baked goods (croissants, cheese pie?, bread), fruit, boiled eggs, bacon (cold and too soft though), cereal, yogurt, assorted deli meats, feta cheese, mushrooms... We were able to make our plates up pretty easily - my favourite, yogurt with nutella!

We then had to decide what to do today. As it was shaping up to be another scorcher, we opted to head to the National Archaeological Museum as we figured there would be air conditioning, lol. The other option was to climb some big hill Jeff found on our map. It is supposed to have a great view of the city, but all I could think of was what sweaty messes we would be. We have a pretty stellar view from our room and from the penthouse of the hotel anyway.

Side note - the elevators in this hotel are divided by even and odd floors. I've never seen that before. They're also a little unnerving as they make scary sounds and don't remain open despite trying to keep them from closing!

We walked quite a ways down town, which is covered in graffiti, to the subway station where we bought tickets and made our way to the train. It took one transfer to get to where we were going. We didn't get lost once! 

The museum, as hoped, was beautifully air conditioned and after our walk we were grateful for the respite. We spent a few hours wandering through the exhibits. It was pretty incredible to see pieces from ancient (neolithic) Greece that were over 6000 years old! I can hardly comprehend what life would have been like back then. We sure saw a lot of pots and pans - even back then they were creative in style! We also saw huge sculptures of gods (Poseidon, Aphrodite, Dionysus) and men (e.g. Emperor Hadrian who was worshipped as a god), as well as endless figures carved from different materials and lots of jewelry. There was lots to see and after we had our fill and things began to look the same (which is inevitable after your first 100 items in an exhibit), we stopped for lunch in the museum cafe. It was a disappointment (neither of our meals were all that tasty - phyllo pastry kind of stuff). I got a slushie that cost more than 5x than what we'd pay at home (whoops!!). Oh well.

When we got back to the hotel we put our trunks on and spent a few hours at the pool. We were lucky to get seats as Jeff had read that it gets quite busy up there, but maybe that was more during high season. It was beautiful again and a lovely way to spend the afternoon - warm breeze by the pool.

We grabbed dinner from the same gyro place as last night (cheap, easy and good) - we each had a chicken and pork kind, both were delicious. 

We have to be up super early tomorrow to get to the port where a ferry will take us to the island of Naxos. We have to be ready for the bus at 5:45am... eww. Jeff thinks the ferry ride will take 4-6 hours; I'm hoping it'll only be 4.

So, pretty early to bed for us so we can be up for our 5:15am breakfast.

It was another relaxed, even-paced kind of day. We're enjoying ourselves and looking forward to experiencing what 3 of the Greek islands have to offer!

Off to the next leg of our adventure (but first, bed).

With love,

Amanda and Jeff xo