The Last Time (18/06/11)

Well the congress finished with again a mix of good lectures and those less so. The closing ceremony was of interest as an Australian specialist is the new president of the IAPD, so we stayed for that and then walked into the Plaka - the suburb where we stayed last week - for a meal on our last night in Athens. This area has a lot more eating spots and is more tourist friendly. We have adopted the Greek custom of ordering a lot of small dishes for the meal and sharing then all : had bread, eggplant salad, spinach pie and mushrooms with blue cheese. I was finally able to cross the last thing off my list of "things to do in Greece" when we had a carafe of retsina with dinner. This wine that is boiled and has resin added to it - and it doesn't taste as bad as it sounds. We also received a thank you gift of a couple of shot glasses of a spirit that is distilled from the resin - it was quite smooth but very strong. We then had to walk home through Syntagma Square, where the protestors were all milling again and being roused by speakers. We passed eleven buses that had offloaded riot police, but once we had walked on it wasn't threatening at all. But 5 minutes later fire engines screamed past us in that direction so we don't know if things stirred up again. It should be a lot quiter in Santorini...