Like many who travel to Europe and pay for European goods and services, I’ve spent plenty of time the past couple of years bemoaning how the US Dollar has sunk in comparison. Everything in Europe gets more and more expensive. Then on the home front, the cost of gas has risen substantially, so airplane tickets are up, and even driving trips in the US get more expensive! Oh, woe is us…

But compare it to a REALLY bad time, and all of a sudden, it seems like we’re downright fortunate and prosperous.

During the German occupation of Greece (1941 to 1944), the monthly inflation rate peaked at 8.55 billion percent. Prices doubled every 28 hours. By 1944, they were printing 100 trillion drachma notes.

Daily Frappe: Greece hyperinflation - how far we’ve come…

While our Greek Islands yacht trips would certainly be a lot cheaper with their currency in that state, I wouldn’t wish that on anyone! We visit this fascinating country twice a year, and I’m happy that they’re doing well. (Though I may continue to moan privately about the exchange rate!)

The British Museum in London is home to the Elgin Marbles, many of the finest sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens. It’s an impressive display, but what we see today is a lot different than they looked back in their day.

Today, you see white marble carvings, but originally they were brightly painted, so that people could make out the scenes when they were high up on the Parthenon.

A new film on permanent display in the museum shows how these would have been. Using computers, they virtually reconstructed the sculpture, reuniting the body of the scene with the missing heads (now in Copenhagen). Then they applied the color.

The results are amazing! The battle scenes come to life with vivid emotion and fear. You get an entirely different impression than looking at the physical carvings.

See BBC NEWS | Fear and fury among the Marbles

Our Greece trips for women begin in Athens, and you can see the Parthenon from the hotel’s rooftop pool. I’m always on the lookout for interesting, relevant items, and will post whatever I find in our Greece category.

Greece has argued for years that Britain should return famous sculptures from the Parthenon to Greece. The spectacular Elgin marbles, which make up about 60% of the surviving Parthenon sculpture, were taken from the Parthenon in Athens more than 200 years ago by Lord Elgin, then British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. They are currently housed in London’s British Museum.

A new museum in Athens has been created in hopes that all of the Parthenon sculptures can be reunited in this specially designed building. The first carvings and architectural fragments from the Parthenon are being moved to the museum now, and places of honor will be kept for the Elgin marbles.

The British currently have no plans to return the sculptures, citing the number of visitors who see them in London each year (~6 million), and the excellent care they receive there.

Read full article at washingtonpost.com

Our Greece tours for women begin in Athens, and you can see the Parthenon from the hotel’s rooftop pool. I’m always on the lookout for interesting, relevant items, and will post whatever I find in our Greece category.