My Eurotrip 2009: Day 7

Museums & Shopping
Thursday, May 7

Siena and I made our way to downtown Athens again on public transportation and our first stop was the National Art Gallery. I never knew just how much she knew about painting techniques, different periods (Renaissance, etc.) and styles. She gave me a mini lesson while we wandered through the mix of modern and old paintings.
Our next stop was the Benaki Museum, which is a private museum. Yia Yia had given us some spanakopita to take with us and we found a shade tree near the front steps of the Benaki Museum and ate it before going inside.
Afterwards, we went down to the area of town called Plaka where there are many shops and old buildings. We didn't do much shopping, but we enjoyed the view of the Acropolis from the narrow streets. When we had our fill, we made our way back to Pallini to rest for a while until Despina came back from work.

We had a snack and then left for downtown again, only this time our goal was to see the sunset from Areopagos. We climbed to the top of the rock and had an amazing view of the city and the sun setting through the clouds.
On our way back down, we saw the moon still in the sky and it was almost full. We wandered the streets for a while, taking in the orange and pink sky that was the backdrop for the old buildings. We made our way towards a metro station, but before we made it to the square, we stopped at a small restaurant and got some souvlaki. We sat out in the square and watched the night life start to brew as we ate our delicious food. Before we boarded the metro, we got one last glimpse of the Acroplis lit up against the black sky.