“Of the many smells of Athens two seem to me the most characteristic – that of garlic, bold and deadly like acetylene gas. and that of dust, soft and warm and caressing like tweed.”    Evelyn Waugh

  From our apartment overlooking Alimos Marina in Athens we see every day the hazy gloom which we are told is dust from the Sahara being blown in by the southerly winds . All the cars are covered in fine particulate which must be a real problem for those with respiratory problems .

We have been out each day riding the trams, touring the sights and eating the local treats – like gyros and good coffee. Saturday was International Museum day and all the attractions had free entry. We didn’t know this at the time but had (unkindly) assumed that the ticket machines were not working, until we were told about the free admission. There are thousands of tourists in the town and I can only imagine how unpleasant it would be in the 40 degree heat of mid summer. The Acropolis and Parthenon took us half a day to get around and took my breath away with it’s immense scale and history. We spent the following afternoon visiting the new Acropolis Museum (2009). Just amazing were the glass walkways spanning a large urban settlement found on the site dating from Archaic to Early Christian Athens which has been excavated and is now mostly covered by the glass walkways both on the exterior walkways and interior spaces of the ground floor.   Restoration of the Parthenon has been going on for many years and the museum has many of the original pieces from the frieze, the metopes and the pediments of the building which have been used in the reconstruction.