After the formalities of visiting the Poros Port Police to check in as we are bound to do with current legislation, we amused ourselves by locating a local beach for a swim. That evening Peter produced a very nice bottle of champagne and shared the good news of the safe arrival of a new grandson, Camillo Hornsby, born on 31st August to Flora and Chris in San Francisco. The Hornsby dynasty is looking safe with two grandsons now on the scene; well worth celebrating!
Glad we had Peter’s good news before planning the next stage of our onward journey. What is going on must have something to do with our boat name. We are once again feeling as we did in May; disbelieving of the weather forecasts ahead, hoping to wake up from a bad dream.
Most forecasts allow us to look about a week ahead and we are looking at unrelenting strong head winds, storms and heavy rain both east and west of the Corinth canal.
It was a tough call on Monday morning to strike north east to Athens and hole up in Alimos Marina just south of the city. It was a miserable motor through bumpy seas fetched up by a strong headwind which averaged about 25 knots, but we eventually tied up in the Marina. Alimos is vast; it took 17 minutes to walk to the administration building to check in and as Nigel needed to return to visit the police office the next day, a bike was commissioned! The Admin office is only halfway around. The marina itself is quite rundown, but has been recently privatized and there is hope that new management and some investment things will improve. One problem remains that they insist on booking ahead which defies the fundamental rule of sailing, that things change and you need a safe harbour. One hopes that in time they will become more flexible.
Our 3 night stay provided an opportunity to visit the Acropolis and Parthenon, which Peter had never seen before.
Unfortunately Nigel is suffering a knee problem which limits his walking distance, so Peter and Mo set off to explore the Acropolis. In vain however, as the long queues were untenable, so we switched to Plan B and spent a superb afternoon in the Acropolis Museum. A good choice as it rained hard all afternoon!
It is a brilliantly designed building over, but revealing, archaeological excavations, on a scale of the Parthenon itself. Set on 3 floors the exhibits were stunning and the stories engaging. The friezes of the Parthenon were on display in ‘in situ’ positions. Many of the missing parts, a lot of which had been plundered over history, were replicated in white plaster next to original exhibits. Plaques below showed where the originals were indeed housed today: the Louvre, the Vatican and of course the British Museum courtesy of Lord Elgin in the early 1800s.
We all certainly learned a lot about Ancient Greece and it did strike us all that the destruction of great treasures in this civilization was part of a pattern all too often seen across the world in other cultures.
More pictures below give a taste of the richness of the exhibits we were privileged to see.
Deja Vu 
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