Athens, Greece 04-13-08

The day started at 4:00a.m. Central time for us. We traveled for 18 hours and then right after we landed in Athens, we went on our first tour! Very sleep deprived to say the least, we toured Athens, at moments with only one eye open! A photo from the plane of the sun coming up on us way before we were ready to see it. Nicky got the most sleep. Although he will swear he did not get any. Athens from the air. Surprisingly dense with homes on top of each other.

Athens airport. Kathleen was not in the mood for picture taking but she got into the swing of things quickly! Kathleen was the first one to try Greek pastry. Their "doughnuts"have their filling in a circle so you get a taste of the filling with every bite! Leave it to the Greeks to figure that one out!


DOGS, DOGS, DOGS!!! If you are a dog, Athens is the place to be. No wonder those Georgia Bulldogs are in Athens! There seems to be a Humane Society of sorts that seems to take care of hundreds of stay dogs. They are all over the place. They all have collars and are cared for by this group of people. Mostly they just lay around. They look like they have all been into the uzo!! They are not aggressive at all. I told the kids not to get near them ,as all I could think about was how ba it would be to get rabies in Greece! Not to worry, those dogs don't move much.


There are guards outside the parliment house. They are dressed in traditional Greek clothing. The men that get to be guards have to be tall and have straight legs. At least that is what our guide said. If you have bowed legs you need not apply! There was a celebrity in town but we did not know who it was. There were masses of people there to watch the changing of the guard. We have now been lucky enough to see the changing of the guard in Monaco, London and now Athens!! Shopping. We went to the plakka. The streets were narrow and colorful. Our guide, Elsa, took us to the "crossroads of the plakka for lunch. It is there where we ran into some of our old friends from our trip last year! It was nice to see Stew, Bill and Nathaniel. Then we were just sitting there and Saundra and Hank, Jay and Mary Pat and Joan and Charlie all came up, it was a nice reunion!

This is the closest we got to a dog. You can see the dog is not much interested in Kathleen or me with the camera! The sights!! The Olympic stadium of modern day. It is right in the heart of the city. The stadium is made of all white marble. It is shockingly beautiful. The entire place is marble! Imagine Jordan-Hare stadium in marble! Wonder what those football tickets would cost??? You can see the Olympic rings in the background. When Athens hostedthe Olympics in 2004, they held Archery in this stadium and the finishing laps of the marathon. They knew not many people would attend those events. Parking is just about impossible in this city, so there we no place for buses to park. Our guide said it was a traffic nightmare. Those Olympics cost the city 9 billion dollars and they only made 1 billion!! They went deeply into debt. They had to build 18 stadiums in orer to host the event!
The Parthanon!!! Built by free men. That is the big difference in the Greek ruins and the ruins in Egypt! They were all slaves there. The Parthanon was built to represent two things, Freedom and Wisdom. The Greeks are trying to preserve there ruins as you can see the scaffolding along the sides and areas where marble is being repaired on the ground.

Climbing the mountain to see it all! Acropolis literally means city on top of the hill. Thats what it was, a very big hill! Once on the top the ground was very uneven and slippery. Nobody did a face plant, so that was good.
Looking own from the Acropolis to the oldest theatre in Europe. We call them Ampitheatres at home, they only call them theatres here. No popcorn.

A family shot at the first modern day Olympic Stadium. Day one ended early for us. We got to the ship and our friends, Lyn and Frank from NYC had a welcome back party for us in their suite! Many of our old friends were there to welcome the Weldens back to the ship! We are ready for new adventures for sure but this day was needing to come to an early close. The kids wanted to stay up and see everyone but I made the right decision in calling it a day! Kathleen fell asleep mid-sentence at 7:30p.m. that tells you how tired we all really were. It took a good day and a half to recover from the LONG trip and first must see tour, but we are back in the saddle so to speak and ready to see it all! We will be kicking rocks again all over the place! Athens is a sight, glad we saw it even if only with one eye!