Vacation Post #1 - Greece

Lat (friend from Enosburg) and I were in Athens for three days, June 16, 17, and 18 we spent them in a lovely small Air-B&B apartment (only quirk being the lack of shower curtain) overlooking Mount Lycabettus and a hilarious demolition site that provided hours of amusement. You would only have to see Lat's pictures to know just how amusing it was.

June 16th was arrival day, and then on June 17th we hiked Mount Lycabettus (rather quickly)

to look out over the Parthenon as you can see below. I thought the "trees" were cool.

On June 18th, we went to the Parthenon - I was very taken with the clouds and attempting not to get other tourists in photos. Success? In a nutshell: It was pretty, and old, and pretty old.

We then walked down and entered the Agora near the Acropolis to find this building, the Stoa of Attalos, which made all the parts of me that are obsessed with logic and order and uniformity (a lot of parts of me!) sing with joy.

As the skies darkened, we headed down the hill to Temple of Zeus the where this toppled column made me (a) hungry for pepperoni (b) impressed with the craftsmanship of these insanely old and still super perfect structures. Apparently that fell over in 1852 and has just been hanging out there since then! 

Lightning started threatening as we entered the Panathenaic Stadium, but that did not stop us from climbing all the way to the top and then making our way down to run around. (Complete laps for both of us! Not like the other lame tourists who just ran a short portion for photo ops!) It was built in marble in 329BC (just a few years ago, you know) and had it's fair share of ups and downs before being reconstructed to host the first modern Olympics in 1896. With seating exactly like Centennial field before the new seating upgrade.

We got inside (mostly) before it started to rain. (Some of the only real rain we saw the whole trip.) Later we headed to the ocean in Athens (which turns out to be just a whole lot of ferry boats, including the boat filled with bajillions of our closest friends who had been on the Parthenon tour with us earlier in the day.

Overall, I enjoyed Athens... so much good fruit, relatively cheap prices for food (keep in mind I was arriving from Kinshasa) and attractions (we bought one ticket for the Parthenon that also got us in to the Agora and Temple of Zeus, the Stadium was a bit more but not bad),VERY nice guy who showed us into and out of our apartment, EXTREMELY lovely bakery near our apartment with amazing olive bread, fun food market near our house where we got good cheese and sausages, helpful man who pointed us toward the bus station, (relatively) cheap metro tickets, resulting in an overall very pleasant impression of the city. Greek is difficult (it really is all Greek to me) but with Lat and his trusty hand written alphabet, we were all set.

Midday on June 19th we boarded a bus to travel north (looked a lot like Corsica) to Igoumenitsa to catch our ferry that night. I was very very taken with the chimney toppers that everyone seemed to have... I thought they looked like birds, but I imagine they are made to funnel the smoke a certain way?!?!

We played a LOT of boggle over milkshakes and sandwiches and boarded our ferry at 2am June 20th to head for ITALY!