The New Acropolis Museum

What a treat. After coming down from the Acropolis we went to the new Acropolis Museum. It is a delightful place. No too big, not to small. It houses the archeological finds from the Acropolis on four light-filled, carefully curated exhibit floors. The building itself is an architectural marvel, glass floors throughout allowing a direct view to the floor below, all the way to the active archeological excavation on the below ground level.

Below ground level active excavation

Minotaur

We spent a couple of hours at the museum; it really is sufficient time to get a good taste of it although you could easily spend quite a bit more time there.

We decided to make our way to the Serenity around noon and got a cab outside the hotel. We soon discovered that our driver Michael had been born in Montreal where his parents had emigrated some time before, but had moved to Athens with his family at the age of 10. We had the opportunity to talk to him and get a feel for how the Greek people are coping with the economic debacle they are experiencing.

He told us that Greeks are used to a comfortable, not lavish, lifestyle and that they have seen the minimum wage cut down by 20% with severe job losses and pension entitlement reductions. They feel that the government makes decisions that hurt the people and benefit the elite. The resentment stems less from the cutbacks and more from the fact that the rich just get richer as the poor get poorer - sounds familiar? For example, he said, employers were laying off full-time employees who were making, for the sake of argument, 1200 euro per month and hiring instead two part-time employees at 400 euro per month each (instant savings of 400 euro plus the cost of benefits). Jobs being so scarce - unemployment rate is 23% - people are happy to take what they can but their reduced wages make it very hard to subsist. While many Greeks (approximately 70%) own their houses, a great many of them can no longer afford to pay their mortgages.

Despite this, Michael was optimistic, when asked if he thought the situation would get worse before it got better, he said: "no, how much worse can it get".

Michael had quoted us a fare of 25 euro from the hotel to the port of Piraeus (about a 25 minute drive). When we arrived, he said it was only 20. Needless to say, we compensated him adequately; not only for giving us running highlights of the city as we drove to the port, but for being such a great sport and trying to give us a good deal for being "fellow Canadians". Thanks Michael, we wish you and the Greek people all the best.

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