Hotel Europa Athens

... We’ll see if we have time for that adventure tomorrow.

Decided to change my other grip shift. I guess Brian’s ’preventative maintenance’ has finally sunk in. since the last duct tape repair inevitably broke down, I didn’t have much faith in this one lasting long either. Taking a matching Shimano grip shift that had been specifically ordered for another customer to pick up tomorrow, the owner attached ...

... from the Acropolis.

The Acropolis holds most of the major ruins from ancient Greece, including the famous Parthenon and the Temple of Athena Nike. If you are a student with a proper student ID they will give you a discounted admission of 6 Euro [even though it is supposed to be for EU students only]. I was pretty happy by this to save a bit of cash. One ticket will give you entry into all the segments ...

... days to go back. So I headed for the Acropolis which is the area that houses the Parthenon. I walked up to the brand new Acropolis museum and discovered that is was closed. Apparently along with Paris, museums are closed on Mondays. Common sense would suggest during the high summer months these places would stay open. But I guess common sense doesn't prevail in this case but oh well. At least all the ruins were open for exploring. So I followed all ...

... Temple of Zeus from my last time here but apparently they corded off the center area and you cant walk through the temple any more. This area was really nice and provided me with some great pictures. I noticed several dogs lying around the ruins and was informed they were strays. I saw that several not only had collars on but they were all FAT! Nothing like the strays in Egypt who were all skinny and anti social. Apparently the dogs are well fed and the ...

... mainly because we wanting something different.  They did not make Pei Wei proportions, so we had gyros for dessert.  Afterwards, we went to a rooftop open-air cinema (Cine Paris) and saw Batman with the night-lit Acropolis to the side of us.  It was great other than the two intermissions...it is probably what the kids will remember about Athens the most :) but they earned it after 2.5 hours in a museum. Today, we went for a walking tour of Athens, which was great.  We saw ...

Wow, made the big 26 in Greece. Since I've become a world traveller I decided to celebrate my birthday in everytime zone so it essentially lasted 2 days. Some OZ friends even bought me a cake and I blew out a lighter! Scott got here the other day, and after walking the streets of Athens for several hours I finally found him. He's the first ...

... which makes taking nice photos very difficult. The view from below at night is very nice as the lights glow. We found the food in Athens very disappointing and over priced besides the very cheap Gyros which I am now so sick off I never want to eat another one in my life. So Athens is ok but ot the best place we have visited. Greek Islands next

Friday 15th June We took a really good walking tour of Ancient Greece with Maria from 'Athens Walking Tours". She put about 3 ~6,000 years of Greek history, religion, culture, myths and legends into a clear, succinct and intelligible perspective for us and the other family who joined us. We spent most of the time at the Acropolis but she also touched on the Temple of Zeus, Byzantine & Greek Orthodox ...

... detail by viewing them up close. Most of the statues and friezes were painted various colors, which I had not realized. Another interesting fact about the buildings is that all of it is built on the principal of optical illusion-therefore, there is as much as a six degree lean on the columns and the bases vary by as much as three inches to compensate. Much of the area was restored in the 1970's. Unfortunately, lead and iron were used as ...