Santorini Day 1

We headed down to Piraeus pretty early to catch the "fast" ferry to Santorini and after some initial confusion about where the boat was, we boarded and headed off to the Cyclades.

Our hotel was on the cliffs overlooking the volcano. What beautiful scenery.

The pool in front of our suite door

View of next door hotels

We had a late lunch at Anogi restaurant (advertised as Santorinian/Cretan/Greek food) and then hiked from Imerovigli to Oia. It was a lovely walk. I took lots of pictures of flowers along the way.

And of the scenery, too, of course but it was overcast repeatedly during our journey so the pictures weren't as beautiful as the scenes themselves.

In the upper right corner, there are walkers coming down the trail from the opposite direction

Taking pictures

Almost there!

When we got back to the hotel, we had some delicious snacks on the patio while we watched the sunset.

A Rainy Day at the National Museum and a Strawberry foot!

I picked up Bryon and Emily from the airport at about 9 am and after they deposited their luggage at the American School, we headed over to the National Museum.

We went through the excellent Antikythera shipwreck exhibit.

"The Philosopher"

The pretty part was buried in the sand while the ugly part was eaten away by sea organisms

A boxer's hand

Odysseus has seen better days

THE Antikythera mechanism!!

Later that night Cathy, Joseph, and Willah surprised me with a gift of a strawberry foot with chocolate toes ice cream treat. I've been looking for this particular confectionary ice cream since October, all over Greece. It's advertised on ice cream freezers but I had never actually found any in stock. I had mentioned this during our museum adventures the other day and so the kids had been keeping their eye out for me. They are so nice!

the first bite!

Olympic torch hand off

We'd heard that the Olympic torch had made its way from Olympia to the Acropolis and would be handed off in the Olympic Stadium so that it could be taken to England for this summer's games. Despite the rain, we headed to the stadium a little bit early to ensure we'd have a place to sit. There were ceremonies and introductions and even an interpretative dance. The torch was relayed around the stadium and then it lit the big torch. From that flame, a small flame was placed in a protective container so it could be taken on the plane to England. David Beckham and Princess Ann were on hand as the U.K.'s escorts of the torch.

We clearly needed to get there early to find an empty seat . . .

Marching band and the Evzones (Presidential Guard)

Runner with torch and olive branch (from the oldest olive tree in the world! Which I've seen!)

"Can I get a light?"

Lighting the big torch

David Beckham and Princess Anne watch the proceedings

Continuing Athens Adventures

This morning Cathy, Joseph, Willah, Sarah, Allie, and I headed out to see a couple of the Athens museums we hadn't yet visited. Our first stop was at the National Historical Museum of Athens. We saw lots of non-ancient historical stuff.

Outside of the building

Then we visited the Athens City Museum where a very kind woman gave us a tour of the entire place. On the first floor is a beautiful model of the city of Athens in 1842.

The building had once been the royal palace and is now filled with furniture from that time, like this old piano.

The top floor exhibited art by local students as part of a campaign against pollution, but I didn't take any pictures. Throughout the building were paintings of Athens by early travelers.

Our final (and perhaps most important?) stop was to a restaurant Cathy's mom had read about in the Toronto newspaper. She sent the clipping to Cathy while she was still living in Austin. The Doris lived up to expectations-delicious traditional Greek food and sweet Greek donuts (loukamades) for dessert.