Hania

We took a ship to Crete overnight then a bus to Hania, an old Venetian town. Probably, asthetically the most interesting area on the trip. Below are shots from our restaurant (open air in venetian ruins) and our hotel entrance Hotel Nostos.

These are other pictures of town:

Acropolis

More pictures from Athens. Day 2 in Greece. These are from the Acropolis (well the last is the Temple of Hephaestus in the nearby ancient agora).

Athens

Athens was more fun than we expected. We got off the plane and took the subwat to the area near our hotel. After the subway, poor Marie who got no sleep while watching Baby girl on the flight, tried to make us go the wrong way. It was a big debate and I eventually had to use my very limited greek to ask someone where the hotel was to keep us from hiking off in the opposet direction, which goes to show that 3 hours of sleep beats no sleep by a lot.


The hotel was in a kinda shabby neighborhood (i.e. most of Athens looks um, not great). Once we figured out that it was only a few minutes from all the interesting sites and Plaka, the nicest area in town, it was great. A 4.5 star hotel we got cheap on Hotwire. The Hotel and good public transportation left over from the 2004 Olympics made Athens the easist part of the trip. So easy, in fact that it is the first time we saw lots of Americans on any of our trips (For whatever reason the more off the beaten path the higher the proportion of Europeans and Aussies, Americans don't seem to be quite as hardy travelers).

Pictures in order, Click to enlarge:
1&2 Temple of Olympian Zeus
3 Hot greek woman and cute baby in front of an othodox church (Marie says someday we need to go somewhere where people won't think she is a native)
4 Street in Plakas
5 View from the Acropolis

Greece

I have been meaning to blog about the trip for a few days but I have been tring to catch up with other things, and now that I try to blog, I have run into a couple of problems, namely my dog and my baby. Tonight I sat down and as I started to look through the pictures, my daughter demanded to see them so I put her on my lap and we went throught the slide show. Then I tried to distract her with the helium balloon that Marie got me for my birthday. Of course once our self appointed canine security chief saw the balloon move, the room exploded into a frienzy of jumping and barking. I have to give Sophia credit though, climbing to the top of the couch to leap off and try to get the balloon off of the ceiling shows real dedication.

Anyhow things I learned about traveling with a baby in Europe (some of which I already knew):

Its best if they already are eating normal food.

Bring baby tylenol etc, for teething.

Babies can't keep up with our usual backpacking, different-city-every-night schedual.

Even at 9 months, there are strong oppinions-its all about animals, bright colors, and fluffy things, not old stones and ruins.

It would be eisier to have a babysitter or something for those long "boring" times like museums.

The Greeks were reasonably good about us traveling with the baby.

The French were not.

2 Trips to Boston.

So in late September I went to Boston for a conference. I am holding up baby girl here in front of the window to the vendor exhibition.

The next weekend Marie's parents were out here and we all went to Cape Cod.