October 8 - Friday - Athens

It's always a good feeling when you get off the plane, go to the baggage carousel, and you spot your luggage coming down the line. Whoopie!!! Made it again! It's especially nice when you're beginning a trip, as we are now, and you know that for the next three weeks you will have all the things you planned on having with you - not only clothes, maps, and the necessary things, but also the knitting, reading, and a few art supplies to help make the non-busy times smooth.

We were prepared for rain in Athens, but we found, instead, a lovely day much as it would be in San Diego.

As you can see from the glare in the upper part of the photo, I was looking through the bus window when I took this picture. My mind was somewhere between the airport and Poway, my camera was pointed toward what I could see from the bus window, and the bus was heading to a Marriott in this place called Athens, about half way around the globe from Poway.

Holland America Lines' service getting us from the airport to the Marriott, Marriott's service getting us checked in and physically present in our rooms (at about 10:00 in the morning after an approximately 9:00 a.m. arrival at the airport), and then the hotel's efficiency getting us to their shuttle to take us downtown so we could explore on our own was excellent. Then came the moment we were dropped off by the shuttle driver, and the realization came to us: We're in Athens. We've never been here before. We haven't a clue where to go or what to do. We took a picture of a landmark where the driver dropped us and hoped our brains would catch up later and we'd be able to find our way back. Which we did!

You can see the Acropolis from nearly everywhere in metropolitan Athens. It sits so high above the city, every hotel within miles can advertise a view of the Acropolis, and it wouldn't be false advertising. Although we've seen many, many pictures of it, who would have thought! I wouldn't have.

Today we walked around the part of town known as the Plaka, a mostly pedestrian-only shopping and restaurant area (huge, just huge) and got our bearings. We visited a few churches (you stumble into one around every other corner, just as though someone placed a church there and then promptly forgot it) and one major area of ruins (there are ruins everywhere, too - in fact, every time someone digs in Athens, a new ruin crops up) called the Ancient Agora. The Ancient Agora was once the center of commercial life in ancient Athens - everything was there. As we went, we generally got our bearings. We learned to read the map by finding our current location in our guidebook, moving to another location and then finding that one (backwards from what one might expect, but we find this method effective for us). We even found out that the Marriott shuttle drops us just two short blocks from where the Hop-On-Hop-Off City Tour Bus starts. Finding that location was one of our goals today. Tomorrow we'll hop the shuttle to the Hop-On Bus and hop on up the road to the Acropolis and a few other places of interest to us.

Today, we found an ice cream shop and stopped for a break - that's always a goal for us when we're traveling. We don't eat ice cream at home anymore, so it's really special when we we stumble on a good ice cream shop when we're traveling. We have had more fun accidentally sight-seeing over the years. Guided touring is great, and we've come to prefer it in our older years, but accidental touring adds giggles.

Since our last travels when I was blogging, maybe three years ago, Google's Blogger and Flickr's photos have changed the way they interface, and it seems impossible for me to make them work the way they used to. I haven't figured it out yet. In the meantime, to see all the photos from Athens (those I've posted for today and those I'll post for tomorrow), follow this link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sroesner/sets/72157625074928594/with/5062628816/

Here's hoping the link works! I'll putz around with this for a few days, and hopefully, I'll have it running smoothly soon.