Nicole and I headed out this morning to the National Gardens. The forecast was for afternoon rain so we wanted to go early. Not a lot is in bloom this early, but it is still a nice place to see some greenery in downtown. A little like Central Park in NY - but a LOT smaller. In fact, they have a "zoo" - the link I've provided says it has a lion and monkeys, but what we saw Nicole described as "a petting zoo without petting." Athens has a real zoo outside of town, not far from the airport.

After strolling around and taking pictures, we headed down into the Syntagma Square subway station. They actually have a number of objects from antiquity on display. The objects are things that were found in excavating for the subway. It's very cool that they made a sort of "public museum" with what they found. We also happened across an exhibit hall in the metro station that was having an exhibition of food and products from an area of southern Greece.

Sure enough it was just about noon as the rain started. Kim came downtown to join us. Our plan was to do museums since the weather was not going to cooperate. Our first museum was the Theocharakis Fine Arts & Music Center. There was an exhibit of landscapes, mostly of Greece but some done by Greeks of other places. The gallery wasn't huge but the collection was nice, and there was a coffee shop where we sat when we finished to rest up for the "main event."

The Benaki Museum is actually well known among museum people. It is an impressive collection of artifacts. The museum is pretty much arranged chronologically, beginning with pieces from about 6,000 BC. It's very nicely arranged and all labeled in Greek and English. It's located in a former mansion that was expanded and restored. It really is a nice place to view history. We spent a lot of hours in there, and didn't even stop in the museum coffee shop this time.

When we left the museum we figured we were ready for dessert (lunch had consisted of just some cheese in phylo bought on the street four hours earlier) so we stopped at a well-known local place. Then it was off for a quick trip to pick up some specific items (Nicole has only tomorrow before she has to leave).

We decided we'd eat "American" tonight, so we decided 6 p.m. was a good time to eat, and also decided to eat traditional American food: Chinese. Actually the restaurant was Chinese/Thai/Indian. We'd walked past it earlier and the smell caught Kim and Nicole's attention. Nicole got Vindaloo that made her sweat (she was happy). Kim and I didn't feel badly about eating Asian for the first time on the 39th day of our trip. Actually, we three have quite a tradition of eating Asian all around Europe. Of course Nicole kept reminding us that when she goes to Thailand in May, she'll be eating authentic Thai food.

This is actually a Roman aqueduct from Ancient Greece. They had running water in 5,000 BC!

One reflection for the day came to me as I was looking at the landscapes and reading about the artists, some of whom were "Greek," although they'd never lived in Greece and others lived in Greece but weren't Greek. I was thinking about cultural identity. In Greece, the child of immigrants born in Greece is not a Greek citizen. But, Greeks abroad are actually allowed to vote in Greek elections, even if they live in the US or somewhere else in the world. Right now that means returning to Greece to cast a ballot but it has been proposed that Greeks would be allowed to vote at any Greek embassy in the world. Religious difference matters (Greeks are 90+ percent Orthodox) but only some, place born and raised matters, but a number of places have gone from being Greek territory to parts of other countries and back again, so that's not useful either. Language is iffy, too. Although Greece is the country where Greek is spoken, it's not determinative. Identity is a very interesting concept, and national identity has lots of nuances. Nicole told me she has a book she wants me to read about Native American culture that addresses these issues.

I liked this. There was modern art scattered through the Benaki, including a number of figures with wire-frame heads. I liked the juxtaposition of this headless figure "looking at" the disembodied head. After I took the picture, I saw the museum shop selling posters of the same thing (theirs were better pictures, but the same idea).