Back to Athens

On Saturday, June 16^th, we caught the hydrofoil back to Piraeus.  This took only about an hour-and-a-quarter.  At the port, Costas was waiting for us with his bus, and we drove back downtown to the Acropolis Select, where we said our final goodbye to him.

For lunch, Mary Joy and I, wanting our first gyros of the trip, walked to Monastiraki, to a souvlaki place suggested by Danae and the Rick Steves book, Bairaktaris.  It was a lively place, with a very, very good bouzouki-guitar duo.  The walls were plastered with photos of the owner with various celebrities, none of whom I was able to recognize.  Our gyros were served with but not in pita, no tzatziki, but they were good. 

After a while, two men from a nearby table got up and started dancing to the music.  Later, another guy got up and joined them.  Eventually, the staff cleared some tables out of the way, to give them more room.  It ended up with one guy, who was very good, all by himself, while the musicians speeded up and finished with a light-speed version of the theme from “Zorba the Greek.”  He was able to keep up with them, and when it was over received loud applause from the other patrons.

That evening, the group had their farewell dinner at the Balcony restaurant, perhaps the best meal of the trip.  The owner explained each dish to us: very creative variations on classic Greek cuisine.

We had to leave early, because we needed to take a taxi to the airport at 3:45 a.m. for our 6:30 flight to Zurich.  We said goodbye to Danae and the others, a very congenial group whom we had enjoyed getting to know over the course of our two weeks on the tour.