Goodbye Athens!

Last day in Greece! To no one's surprise, we had a fridge full of food and drink. We finished some of the drink last night as Bellinis using up the prosecco and the peach juice and ate leftovers for dinner...all the watermelon salad and some of the chicken from our last night with Alex and Melissa, but that left the lamb yiouvetse and manitaropita plus some fruit and assorted little stuff. We had breakfast and lunch before we had to leave at 11.

Phil was determined to spend the day in the archeological museum and I was thinking about the Elefterios Venizelos museum. But first we had to drop off the big suitcase. There are a lot of luggage drop off places, and we found one in Monastiraki. I went on in the shopping side streets to find a luggage scale as we had a lot of liquids we were trying to bring back. After scoring a scale, I wandered around for a couple of hours on streets I did not know.

Street artists

 This is the Kapnikarea Monastery, 11th century, right in the middle of Plaka

Monastiraki square: I love the this view of the layers of Greece: Orthodox monastery, Tzistarakis mosque, ancient Greek temple of the Parthenon, and the early 20th century metro station.

Finally I got hot and tired and ordered a lemonade and sat and read a book for an hour or so before I met Phil for an early early dinner.

We ate at Nikitis, a very traditional Taverna that we remember, and visited a jewelry shop we remember for years past...the woman has been there for 22 years. And we finally found Enastron, the garden-taverna in Psirri that we had been looking for!

Enastron

Below is the one I mistook for Enastron.

Not Enastron, but very similar vibe!

We also found a weird Alice in Wonderland restaurant, called "Little Kook".

There were 3 or 4 storefronts. This was the biggest

Apparently "Wonderland" translates to "Kook".

We arrived at the airport very early so Phil could do his office hours in wifi and we could have time to check our bag (and redistribute some weight if necessary). This was a mistake: the checkin opens 2 hours ahead of time and there is nowhere to go and little room to sit. Then the gate is not set until just over an hour, so again, we were leaning or squatting on railings.  The Athens airport  is chaotic even in 2026. Our flight was very late: 9:50pm, so.we flew through the night until 12/1am. 

The strawberry moon was quite large and red.

Alex and Melissa met us and took us to our very first Home Exchange. We met Snoopy and Cubie the cats and rolled into a very late bed.