Happy Birthday Carol!!

Woke at 3:30 am and took the hotel shuttle back to Sky Harbor. Boarded a Continental 737 for a smooth 4.5 hour flight to Newark, passing over the Painted Desert northeast of Phoenix, Meteor Crater near Flagstaff, the snow-capped Rockies, the Great Plains, Great Lakes and many rivers swollen by recent Hurricane Ida. When we spotted the Empire State Building off the starboard side, we knew we were minutes away from touching down at Newark.

I changed my watch to Greek time, and after a delicious breakfast we landed in Athens at 9:45 am, cleared customs and then jumped on the metro from the airport to the Acropolis, where we jumped off and found our hotel, the Airotel Parthenon.

The afternoon is warm and sunny and the tourists have covered the city like a plague of Euro-spending locusts. The news is full of Greek economic woes but we don’t see evidence of it.

After wandering through the Plaka we sat at a shady outdoor café on a tree-lined boulevard and sipped cokes while we relaxed and people-watched. Most of the traffic is motor scooters, bicycles and yellow cabs. The blare of honking horns never stops.

Rested, we continued exploring the Plaka a bit more, then decided to jump on the Happy Train, an open-air sightseeing mini-train that wanders among the many magic areas of Athens.

We also enjoyed meeting and schmoozing with Jeanne and Lisa, mother and daughter from Florida and Phoenix, respectively. Jeanne was spunky at 84 and was going to jump off the moving train when she saw a sight that she wanted to explore further. We nearly had to beg her to wait until the train stopped.

Our new friends departed but we stayed aboard for more of the tour. It was nice to give our feet a break and we enjoyed it. As Carol so profoundly put it, “today is the brush stroke; tomorrow we fill in the details.”

We jumped off the Happy Train(actually a truck-driven chain of open-air compartments,) disembarking near the Parliament building, then slowly ambled back through the Plaka to the hotel, where we washed off the sweat and grime of one of the world’s great cities at the end of summer.

Refreshed, we walked one block north of the hotel where we found Tabepena, a typical outdoor restaurant catering to the tourist trade. The Greek salad, tsatziki, pita, wine and mineral water hit the spot and was a delicious way to experience our first real meal in Greece.

We left Tabepena and decided to walk northwest along the Grand Promenade, the pedestrian walkway built at the foot of the Acropolis for the 2004 Olympics. Enjoyed some delicious gelato along the way, snapping photos and enjoying the cool of the evening before realizing we had been up for about 30 hours and were dead on our feet but too excited to be in Greece to realize it.

Walked slowly back to the hotel, showered, and literally fell into much-needed coma-like sleep after a long two days of travel adventures.

Next Day