There are numerous free museums in Athens and we've been making a point to visit as many of them as we can.

Earlier this week, we visited the Museum of Popular Greek Musical Instruments. The collection included Cretan lyres, lutes, pottery drums, and lots of squeaky sounding clarinets. Each of the displays had headphones so you could hear the instruments in action. I thought it was a little underwhelming but the turtles outside made up for it!

We also visited the Museum of Greek Folk Art: Man and Tools Collection. This great exhibit featured loads of traditional tools that craftsman used to use in their trade. We learned about apprenticeships, taking a product to market, and about a variety of crafts, from horseshoeing to cobbling. Cool!

We visited a private collection of Macedonian folk art:

And finally, today on this drizzly dreary day, we visited the Acropolis. Normally 12 euros per person, it is free on Sundays in the off-season. The structures were impressive, of course, but we found ourselves more interested in the zillions of people visiting the site.

Everyone was taking pictures of everything! Far be it for us to chide anyone for taking a photo, but we couldn't help but contain our laughter as we stepped back to watch the non-stop parade of snapshotting going on around us.

Our favorite was this man, who we dubbed "Happy Captain Camcorder"; he had this look plastered on his face every time we saw him walking around, filming everything as if it was the most magical thing he had ever seen in his entire life. It was really endearing!

A little later on, nearly every person we passed was dutifully posing in front of some piece of rock, throwing a thumbs up or trying to look coy. At the risk of the pot calling the kettle black: tourism is weird!

When it started to rain in earnest, we packed away our camera and headed into town for a bite to eat.

After lunch, we made our way to the new Acropolis museum where we'd planned to meet a family friend, Tara's friend Julia's younger brother Daniel's girlfriend, Madeleine (phew!). She is currently studying abroad in Athens and attends Tara's alma mater, Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina. We met at the agreed-upon spot, and spent an hour or two chatting in the museum's cafe. Thanks for hanging out, Madeleine, it was wonderful to meet you!