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