We had a nice day of weather today. We got out of the house just before noon and hopped the tram to Piraeus, the Athens port town. As I've said before, the tram is tremendously convenient, but it's slow. A 10 minute drive takes about 30 minutes.

From the tram stop we walked to a church that had an English-language Catholic mass. It was about a 20 minute walk. We could have taken the Metro (subway) but it was a nice day, and we haven't walked around Piraeus, so that's what we did. It's a hilly town - much like I imagine San Francisco to be. We walked some steep roads, but we had lots of time so we took it easy.

The church has a noon Spanish-language mass and a 1 p.m. English mass. Our mas was attended mostly by people who looked like they were of Asian or Pacific Island heritage. Again, if you're Roman Catholic and looking for an English-language mass in this city, chances are you're not from the U.S.

After mass we walked toward the port. We had no idea that there would be a street market. This was not the produce/housewares stuff - this was purses, sunglasses, clothes, watches, etc. All stuff that had undoubtedly fallen off the back of a truck, and all sold by immigrants who spoke English and Greek and probably 2 or 3 other languages. Kim made the mistake of looking over a towel. After she put it down the guy followed after her offering to lower the price. We had a shady guy come up to us and pull a gold chain out of his pocket - a real caricature. He said "Only 125 Euros." I laughed and said "If I had 125 Euros do you think I'd be walking around this market?" He replied "How much." I told him no thanks.

We actually did make a purchase. I bought a pair of "designer" sunglasses for 1.50 Euros (about $1.90). After that we decided to stop for Souvlaki. We sat at this place and ate. You can see where we sat on the bridge going from the square in front of the train station over the road (Poseidon Blvd) . We each got a souvlaki, but as we started to make our way back to the tram, we took the opportunity to stop at other stands where we would get one and share it. Kim wimped out on me after just a couple of more stands (each one is under 2 Euros) and opted instead to get something sweet.

We decided the day wasn't quite done. It's 9 tram stops (I think) between our apartment and Piraeus. We decided to get off the tram a couple of stops before we got to our apartment and walk along the coast as the sun was setting. Sorry, there were some clouds, so there aren't any spectacular sunset pictures.

We did see one guy doing warm-up exercises to go into the water. He was obviously preparing himself for the cold. He stripped down to his "underwear" - Kim said it looked like paper (it was definitely translucent) - and made his way into the water. We weren't the only ones staring at this guy. One Greek guy went down to the water's edge to take a picture. We exercised a little more restraint.

We thought this was very cool - a large chess set on the boardwalk. It obviously gets used. These two guys appeared pretty serious.

Kim decided to walk out on one of the jetties to get a better look. She wanted to see if she could see any sea urchins. I lovingly called out to her that if she fell in, I wasn't going to go in after her.

Today's news item relates to Carnival, ending today. We saw festivals from all over Greece on TV (just enter "Greece Carnival" in YouTube and you'll see festivals from earlier years). A news story tells how church officials are upset over a particular float. In Greece (I know it was true in Italy, too) a number of the floats and costumes are satirical and provide social commentary.

Finally, this picture is actually of Piraeus as seen from the beach near our house (with Kim's long lens). It can give you an idea of what I meant about the up-and-down hills we walked.

Our first set of guests arrive tomorrow. I hope to blog, but don't be surprised if I miss a day. Tomorrow is a legal holiday in Greece - Clean Monday. More on that next time.