ARRIVAL

I picked up my luggage, met Kelly after I breezed through customs, got some drachmas and we headed for a cab. The guidebooks warned us about the shady cab drivers and how apt they were to rip you off. Even semi-prepared, I think we payed way too much to get to our hotel. The cab driver didn't know our popular Hotel Hera. We pronouced it "hair-ah" and until we tried pronouncing it "here-ah" the driver was dumbfounded. He demonstrated its pronunciation by writing it down on paper for us -- in Greek. How helpful.

We weren't staying in Athens that night, but we went to the hotel that Kelly was supposed to have stayed at the previous night. They were quite accomodating and allowed us to store our luggage while we toured the area. We would stay there later that week, anyway.

To my surprise, Kelly wasn't jetlagged at all. We were both starving, so we stopped at a quaint street cafe. It was a Sunday at 2:00p and we were the only people there. Since it was so nice out, we ate on the patio. The waitress taught me how to say "thank you" in her fairly broken English. After some typical Greek food, we were off to the Acropolis just down the street.

ACROPOLIS

The Acropolis is a collection of ruins on top of a hill that overlooks all of Athens. The ruins contain the Parthenon, the largest of the buildings that somewhat resembles the Lincoln Memorial (or vise versa).

We wandered up to the back of the bleachers and onto a path that took us around the base of the Acropolis. We passed a fenced-off section where pieces of unidentified ruins were being stored and cataloged. Each piece, everywhere on Greece whether behind a fence or not, was branded with a red ID number.

We kept going and found ourselves outside the fence of another theater, the Theater of Herodes Atticus. This one was much more elaborate -- stadium seating and a huge 3-story backdrop. We noticed a bunch of modern stage lights and someone sweeping up the stage. I guess it was still in use!

We made our way to the back of the seating and found a gate. On the other side of the gate we found the Acropolis entrance. We paid our admission (separate from the Theater of Dionysos) and asked when the next big performance was. The last showing of Carmen was going to be that night -- Dang! We had to catch our overnight ferry to Santorini. The night we returned to Athens had nothing playing, so we missed out.

At the top of the path you could see all of the buildings of the Acropolis. We were finally at the top. What a view! Turning left on the path we approached the Porch of the Caryatids -- 6 elevated female statues supporting the roof on their heads. Turns out that none of the statues were authentic, all replicas. 5 of the originals were in the Acropolis Museum a couple hundred yards away, the sixth was in a British museum somewhere. A lot of ancient Greek artifacts seem to be housed in Britian somewhere. This was a sore spot for the Greeks.

All the way around the Erechtheion found us facing the Parthenon. We continued towards it and stopped by the monstrous Greek Flag to take some pictures of the city.

Then we headed towards a somewhat sunken building which turned out to be the Acropolis Museum. Lots of statues in here and thankfully it was air-conditioned on this hot day. Many of the statues had filler stone, only a few of them had heads. Some of the statues were way more filler stone than original. We wondered how in the world they knew what those few pieces were supposed to form. I'm glad that wasn't my job. Those 5 Porch statues were in here, some of the only ones behind glass. Most of the statues dated from the 6th century BC.

Outside of the museum we refilled our water bottle, thank goodness we remembered to take it on the day's adventure. We passed some short pillars sitting in the grass on the way to the Parthenon. I don't think there's an area in the Acropolis where you can't see the Parthenon, we were just finally getting around to concentrating our efforts on it.

We ate dinner at another outdoor restaurant. It must have been about 7:00 and nobody was in the place. Greeks eat dinner much later than we do -- about 9:00 at the earliest. The food was satisfying because we were starving, but it wasn't exceptional.

We collected our luggage at the hotel, and easily found a taxi to take us to Port Piraeus where we could catch our ferry to Santorini Island. The taxi ride seemed about as far as our airport ride and only half as expensive, so we must have gotten scammed on our arrival. They must do that sort of initiation scam to everyone

We were pretty early so we hung out at a local outdoor restaurant and had a soda. We watched our massive ship expertly and effortlessly dock and open its drawbridge entrance. The cavalcade of passengers reminded us of the old clown act where 100s of clowns get out of a tiny car. People on foot, driving motorcycles, cars, trucks, and semis all incessantly streamed out of this ship as if it were a direct connection to another city. A half hour later the traffic jam inside the ship was now fully outside and we could board.

Kelly arranged for a private room with a bed so that we could sleep the entire 9 hours it was going to take to get to Santorini. Little did we know that the closet-sized room furnished only with a hanging light bulb, a bunk bed, a sink, and a pillar conveniently located in the center of the room was all that we got. The room was hot, so I checked the vent and unplugged the gross collection of God-knows-what that was obstructing our fresh air. As soon as we got as comfortable as we could get on the same upper bunk bed, a knock at the door asked us for our ticket. Strange since we had to give them our tickets to get a key to the room in the first place.

We were also not informed that the ship stopped at 4 islands before getting to Santorini. At roughly 3:00a the engines ground in reverse to dock and I thought we needed to disembark. I got out to check and was soon set straight. The next 3 island stops didn't fail to awake us; we must have been right next to the engine room.

We made it back to the port and boarded our ferry for the long journey back to Athens. It took forever, and there wasn't much to do on the ship besides nap.

When we got to Athens we were some of the last ones to find a cab. The cab driver bungied our luggage in with some other tourists' and we shared a terrifying autobahn experience weaving in and out of traffic at twice the speed limit. I remember passing a motorcycle where the female passenger was effectively holding her helmet on her elbow. We also passed an old man on a small scooter -- he was in the right lane doing about 1/8 of our speed.

We arrived at our hotel, the same one we stored our luggage at the beginning of the trip. Our room was on the top floor and we had a great view of the Parthenon all lit up for the evening. After getting unpacked we headed off to the Plaka for dinner.

The Plaka was teaming with people. Outdoor cafes, shops that sold museum replicas, and t-shirt stands were everywhere. This was definitely the lively place to be on a Saturday night! It was a slight challenge finding a restaurant that was within our budget. Of course it was an outdoor cafe where we had the same food that we had been eating all week. After dinner we wandered around the Plaka and eventually made it back to the hotel.

The next morning Kelly left on her early bus tour to Delphi (del-fee). I had some time to kill before I needed to be at the airport for my flight home, so I returned to the Plaka to see what it was like on a Sunday morning. It was quite dead.