Athens, Greece

Thursday November 12th

Today we left Rome, and I said goodbye to Italy after 11 great weeks! We headed to the airport to catch our plane to Athens, Greece. We flew on easy jet, it is a value airline so the flight prices were very good, you pay extra for any luggage and there are no assigned seats, So when it came time to boarding we where all filed out onto a bus and then we all made the mad dash from the bus, up the the stairs onto the plan to choose the best seats. We took to window seats and had great views leaving Italy and flying into Greece! The weather was great for our time in Greece, we had on shorts, shirts and short sleeve shirts during most of the day!! We had great little hotel right in the heart of the city that had a small balcony with an awesome view of the Acropolis. That afternoon we went shopping, walked the town and enjoyed some new foods besides pasts and pizza… We started off our day at Quick Pita- we had Doner’s (pita like sandwiches) of lamb, pork, or chicken. We walked to Syntagma Square where the Greek Parliament building sits, through Plaka- a little shopping and restaurant areas and had a lovely dinner on a slopped street right below the Acropolis!! We shared a few appetizers- meat wrapped in grape leaves, cheese pies and yogurt sauce, and two greek salads, then Dad and Time had Slovaki (a greek dish- kind of like kebabs) and Mom and I shared a platter of Lamb in lemon sauce with potatoes and vegetables!

Friday November 13th

We did a lot of site seeing today. We began our tour at the Temple of Zeus (which is the easiest place to buy your combo ticket for the Acropolis and other sites around there) It is amazing to see the size people built back in that day and to think they had no machinery like we do now. Somehow it all got built then and today during our restoration efforts we have to use cranes and such to barely reach some spots. After the Temple of Zeus we walked to the theater of Dionysis and then up to the Acropolis… is we thought Florence and Rome were big from our views from Michelangelo park and Castello San Angelo… Athens spread on and on and on… it seems that the only things stopping it were a mountain or two and the sea. On our way back down to town in search of some lunch we stopped at Areopalos- a big rocky areas that from thousands of visitors a day is quite slippery in some areas but it made a nice spot to sit a see the acropolis and all of Athens. Our search for lunch like the day before ended up with us making a few circles, walking into some interesting, not so nice areas of town and back at Quick Pita again! After eating something we had a few more sites to see on our combo ticket, unfortunately the cemetery area was closer, although we got a pretty good view from the gates surrounding it. We did get to see Ancient Agora- which had a building much like the Acropolis but in much better condition. We had a bit of a hard time finding the entrance to that area and ended up walking through a park that seemed to be more of a homeless park than anything else. We finished are day in Greece with a stroll through the markets, found a show store that had tons and tons of shows just sitting in cardboard boxes stacked all over the place, they were so cheap but apparently even in Greece I wear one of the most popular sizes… We completed are visit with some more greek food, this time at a restaurant right within the market areas… We had slovaki, greek salad, tziki sauce and Greek beer. The restaurant brought us yogurt with honey for dessert and while we were eating it a dog from the city kept walking up and down the street (there are lots and lots of dogs that roam around harmlessly in Athens). We noticed he was carrying a water bottle in his mouth so when he stopped near our table we were able to give him some drinking water- He was a pretty smart dog!