We had a shore excursion today and it was an unfortunate demonstration of why doing ship's excursions is a risk. It sounded really good - drive around Athens being shown the sights, go to the Acropolis, go to the Archaeological Museum, some traditional Greek food for lunch and then finish with some shopping at Plaka and then back to the ship.
And really, there's nothing you could complain to Princess about; the excursion delivered exactly what they said it would. Unfortunately there were two big issues with it as far as I was concerned. Firstly, the tour guide seemed to subscribe to what I think of as the "American Baseball" form of entertainment / information - never let a single second go by without saying something. I love to learn about new things and places, but I was completely in information overload by the end of the tour. Secondly, I didn't think a tour guide could manage to destroy a visit to any Archaeological Museum for me, but this one did. She gave the impression that she was just going to show us a few things in the museum and that we would then have some free time. However, that wasn't what happened. First she dragged us past a dozen or more displays in the 'pre-historic' section (I think) going into huge detail about the use of gold and other stuff that has since escaped me. Then, she dragged us through at least 10 different rooms showing us the differences in statue making and funerary displays over time. Now, these are not the things I'd have necessarily wanted to see, and we didn't get any free time. Of course this is a problem with these large tours, you simply have to follow the tour guide's lead. But, I think if I had known that's how the Archaeological Museum visit would be handled then I'd probably have booked a different tour. The rest of the tour wasn't too bad - although the meal was at the distinctively "not traditionally Greek" Radisson Blu hotel, the food did seem to be at least somewhat traditionally Greek and was quite nice. We did get to see quite a lot of places, and as I said we heard a lot of words, but unfortunately most of it didn't sink in...
When we got back to the ship we finally had a chance to take a photo to show where our cabin is; mostly so far the ship has parked starboard side to the dock but this time it was finally the other way around. If you click on the picture you can see a little red arrow showing where our cabin is:
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