The Athens Gate

... the Navigator of the Sea. Itinerary included the following ports: Civitavecchia (basically the port for Rome) ; Messina, Sicily; Athens Greece; Ephesus Turkey; Crete, Greece; and back to CV Wendy was the only one with past cruising experience, ...

... arrived in Piraeus, the port of Athens.  It is very busy with ships coming and going everywhere.  Our hotel is the Athens Gate Hotel.  It sits in central Athens across from the Olympic temple of Zeus.  Gazing out of our hotel room we ...

... go to a midnight showing of Sex and the City in an awesome, outdoor open-air movie theater on top of a building....it was pretty surreal with the Acropolis lit up in the background and stars above.  Athens just became Lauren's new favorite ...

Well, here we are in the birthplace of Western Civilization - and it's wonderful!  Athens is huge and sprawling, but feels easy to get around with lots of different neighborhoods to exlore.  Last night we stopped in at a taverna for dinner, for ...

... the world for the next eight hours or so.  We landed safely in Rome, quickly went to our next gate and, after a couple of hours, left for Athens.   As we neared within sight of Athens from our windows, the worries of the day seemed to melt ...

... some pastries for breakfast waiting for our gate to flash on the tv screen. The flights to Budapest and from Budapest to Athens were uneventful, besides Malev airlines constantly feeding us, and when our plane landed in Athens we stared out of the window ...

... surround a porch.  Four of the original Caryatids are housed in the Acropolis Museum and the fifth is in the British Museum (although Athens wants their marble statues back). We then walked back down to the hotel to have a bit to eat.   I ...

... /river and took shelter under the awning.  It is a bit embarrassing to say, but one of the highlights of our visit to Athens was watching everyone (both the locals and the tourists) deal with the rain.  Some ran like there was no tomorrow to try ...

... Mom was secretly hoping that I would wish to go back up there and take a last look around at the monasteries before heading off to Athens.  Of course!    When I went to check out of the hotel, the owner gave us a gift and wished us well ...

... I had enough time to get off the plane, change my clothes as it was rather hot and go to the next gate to board my flight from Bangkok to Athens. Well this flight left just before 12.30am and was fully packed with a multicutural mix of people, adults and ...

... woman and made some more pesto pasta for dinner before settling into a night of trip organizing. I was overall pleasantly surprised by Athens, it had an incredible bustling cafe scene l would have loved to explore and enjoy more and wasn't nearly as ...

We left Rome at 11:00 am. Checked in in 5 minutes with and started walking toward the ...

... Ancient Greece in the 5th century BC, with its cultural achievements laying the foundations of Western civilization.  Today, Athens is a busy, metropolitan city of five million people.  Over the past decade, the city's infrastructure and social ...

... me to leave and I said goodbye and walked slowly back to the train station, I never caught the blokes name. A pity. I sat in Athens stations overcrowded café and nursed a beer while ignoring a young girl trying to sell me an array of stolen goods from a ...

... -boiled eggs, etc.).  However, once we headed out into the Plaka, the day definitely picked up!  Neighborhood #1: Athens’ Plaka (Greek: Πλάκα) neighborhood is a lively area!  Lying just beneath the Acropolis, ...

... normal to me, especially after some of the places we've been!   Anyways, it only took about 2 seconds to get through Athens customs - definitely a record for us. The guy didn't even look at the picture or anything else in there - just stamped and ...

... an early one.  I set my alarm for 3am, grrr.  But it was wonderful waking up knowing that by lunchtime I would be Athens, seeing Lauree and getting ready to head to the Islands tomorrow morning. Libbee & I caught a cab at 3.45am out to ...

... the city's demise.   We docked in Piraeus, a nearby port town for Athens. Crystal again provided a shuttle to Hadrian's Gate, the main city center.  In some ways, Greek (more specifically ...