The British School at Athens

What an extraordinary evening we have just enjoyed!  As a special treat for we Pole to Polers (we call ourselves "Bi-Polar" now), Silversea arranged for a visit to the British School at Athens -- an institute for advanced research, and home to one of the world's finest libraries dedicated to Hellenic Studies.  With an archive of holdings dating back to the mid 19th Century, and its Fitch Laboratory which is a leading center for science-based archaeology in the Mediterranean.

We were given tours of the library, the archives, and the laboratories -- all absolutely fascinating.  Afterwards we were feted to a sumptuous dinner served in the beautiful leafy garden of the school, which is located right in the heart of bustling Athens, but you would never have known it as we sat surrounded by lush gardens and singing birds.

This is a collage of some of the things we saw and experienced -- the research library, the exterior of the beautiful neoclassical main building, some 19th Century sketch books and diaries in the archives, early archaeologists, reflections of the flowers at our dinner table in the garden, a guest book signed by Agatha Christie, library shelves, and some sketches of early 20th Century native attire.