Lazy Layover in Athens

Cameron and I woke up today around 2:30 in the afternoon with no clear plan whatsoever as to how to use our last 24 hours in Athens. We found one of the little cheap restaurants my book recommended for lunch, and then headed north past Omonia Square to the National Archaeology Museum. Although the building itself wasn't nearly as impressive as the New Acropolis Museum, the collection inside definately dwarfed what we'd seen in Athens during our first visit. The National Archaeology Museum is, just like the Egyptian Museum, consistantly considered one of the Top 5 museums in the world. I saw in person, yet again, a good number of pieces that I'd learned about in art history.

On our way back to the hostel, we came across a Greek Communist Party march coming from Omonia Square. In recent days, Omonia and other public gathering places around the city have apparantly been very lively; rioters throwing molotov cocktails and rocks at riot police and SWAT teams, homemade bombs being put into trash cans, etc etc. Although we'd heard of riots and strikes happening when we were here before (even stumbled into a Muslim protest of sorts at one point), things have apparantly deteriorated significantly even in the course of a few days. The German Government is looking to purchase investments in Athens' temples and semi-nationalize Greece's ouzo industry in order to bail out the Greek government. Selling off some of the Greek islands has also been proposed, all as alternatives to Greece being kicked out of the E.U. for not performing economically.

Easy night in at the hostel bar again watching CNN. Going to get to bed here in a few minutes because, although we don't have an early day getting back to Paris tomorrow, getting a full night's sleep is always a welcome irregularity. I hope to get back to Paris and be able to upload a whole bunch of pictures to Facebook and here now that the blogging is all done. Thanks for the patience on the photos!