Athenian Adventures

After breakfast we headed to the Acropolis. On the way, we happened to fall in step with the evzones as they headed to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Since we got there at about the same time, we stopped to watch the changing of the guard.

At the Acropolis, we managed to beat the busloads of tourists coming from the cruise ships and had a lovely time looking around and taking pictures.

Down below the Acropolis we visited the Olympeion (also known as the temple of Zeus) and took even more fun pictures. After some souvenir shopping, (during which we passed this amazingly colorful bar)

we hiked up to the top of Lykavettos to have our picnic lunch.

After Bryon left the next morning, Emily and I comforted ourselves by running errands. We started the next day by going to the Panathenaic Stadium and the National Gardens.

In the nice, clean air of the Gardens, we wrote postcards and letters. That evening we went to the going away party at Margie's house. So sad to say goodbye. 

Goodbye Athens!

Site seeing

Dimitris, our driver for the day, met us outside Loring Hall at 8 am to begin our tour of some of the sites outside of Athens. Unfortunately for me, I managed to leave my camera in my room. Thankfully, Bryon and Emily took plenty of pictures.

Our first stop was at the Corinthian Canal. We then visited the ancient city of Corinth and the museum. Dimitris drove us up to AkroCorinth where we got out to take a view pictures from the fortress walls. After a short drive, we had a look in the "Tomb of Atreus" in Mycenae and across the street we explored the rest of the archaeological site.

We stopped in Nafplion for lunch. We ate at a little burger place in view of the water. We decided we wanted to climb the 999 steps up to the top of Palimedes Fortress before heading to Epidauros.The views from the stairs were absolutely breath-taking.

In Epidauros, we checked out the theater, the stadium, the temples, and had a quick run through the very small museum.

Before crossing the canal back into Attica, Dimitris stopped at the submerigble wooden bridge. From there we got a great view of the canal but sadly no boats were coming through so we didn't get to see the bridge go beneath the water.

It was an excellent day and our driver Dimitris was so nice and knowledgable. Maybe I'll add some of Bryon and Emily's pictures to this post one day so it's not so boring.

Santorini Day 3

 From our hotel patio, we could see an outcropping of rock atop a little peninsula jutting out from the island. We decided to start our day by climbing to the top of it.

We wound through the little alleys between the other hotels on the cliff side to get to the peninsula.

The climb ahead

Looking back at the hotels

Taking pictures before we begin

Near the top, the path ended and we started to climb.

On top, we took more pictures.

From the top, we could see that there was a church on the rock facing the water which wasn't visible from our hotel.

We climbed down to have a closer look.

On the way back toward the hotel, I took some flower pictures.

Since we'd already checked out the one red sand beach on the island, before catching our ferry back to Athens, we visited one of the "black sand" beaches.

And one last flower picture:

Santorini Day 2

We began our day at Akrotiri, the Bronze Age archaeological site, which only recently reopened. It was pretty rad.

Then we hiked down to the red beach. The approach involved actual hiking which was also pretty rad.

The sunshine felt great but the water was too cold for swimming. Bryon got close in order to choose some rocks.

We took the bus back to Fira where we explored for awhile and had dinner before heading back to the hotel for another beautiful sunset.

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.