Day 11, Thursday - Athens: Benaki Museum, Archaeological Museum
Thursday was museum day on our schedule. The Benaki museum contains primarily cultural folk art of the last few centuries. In the basement, we found many regional costumes from different parts of Greece. There was also a special exhibit of photographs of Athens in 1830 when the population was only 5,000. We also saw plenty of weaving which Pam took a great interest in. There were many icons too. The solid gold diadems with golden leaves in the shape of olive and bay leaves from the classical period was the most impressive exhibit.
On the top floor was a small cafe with a balcony overlooking the city. The man behind the counter was quite pleasant. We met another American about 65 years old from Illinois. He came to Europe during World War II and decided to stay. He has been back to the U.S.A. only five times since then.
After coffee and pleasant conversation, we went to the post office to mail some packages back home and continued to the National Archaeological Museum which contains marble statues of the classical period. I took lots of photographs. There were two special exhibits, one on Athens, and one an Thiva, also known as Santorini. Some people think this was the place known as Atlantis and that references to it mistakenly added a 0 to the size so that it could only fit in the Atlantic Ocean. We left that museum around 6:00 p.m. and walked back to our hotel stopping at two Byzantine churches and a weaving store.
When we returned we went to pick up our laundry, we were surprised by our bill. The cost to wash clothes is about the same as the cost to have them dry cleaned. There wasn't much we could do since the prices were posted. We should have looked first.
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