Second outing.

Tuesday, August 6

We get up late, since the 6 hour difference has suddenly made me stay awake until 3-4am and then wake at 11am. Very frustrating! We take a while to get ready, but finally head out in the hot sun intending to go to the nearby and new Acropolis Museum

 Just up our street we pass the fateful hole in the marble pavement that has and will cost me weeks, if not months, of inconvience and medical expenses.

 The new museum is placed at the foot of the Acropolis hill, where one can see scaffolding amongst the ruins, and where it must be extremely hot on a day like this.

We watch it from the cool grey interior of the very beautiful interior space, built around solid steel pillars intended to replicate the lay-out of the Parthenon and thus accomodate the fragments that have remained.

 This display is on the 3rd and last floor and the other two are dedicated to smaller artefacts, all fascinating. None of the latter may be photographed - only the third floor.

 We take a break for lunch in the museum's restaurant , where a couple about our own age sits down next to us. We start talking and it turns out the husband, Richard, is a Wharton graduate (1969), retired now from his own business and traveling all over the world with his Chech wife, Lea. We also discover he knows Cornell well - where Oswaldo taught for 5 years - and has a small investment in Itaú. Small world.
On our way out we notice a wishing well, the bottom of which is covered with coins. We get a coin each and I throw mine. "What did you wish for," asks Oswaldo. "That I can take my cast off and put my foot on the ground soon," I say. "Then I'll wish for that also," he says and throws his coin.

We continue down a walking street, staying in the shade, Oswaldo pushing my chair. The throngs of tourists are not particularly helpful and some look at us in a weird way. "They look at us as if we're Martians," says Oswaldo. He got it exactly right, haha. We take a break for a delicious ice-cream and then continue on to buy me a loose dress, which I try on on top of everything I'm wearing and with a great deal of difficulty standing on one leg, but which will be a wonderful change from the two sets of linen pants, which is all that I brought. Then we find a delicatessen and stock up on wine and goodies and go home to cool off and start our many calls to airline companies and insurance people. Very late at night arrives a short note from my orthopedic surgeon in Rio raising the topic of an operation immediately upon my return. Ugh.....