Italy/Greece: Day 16 - Athens -> Home

What does 26.2 mean to you? Is it the number of miles in a marathon? That's on lots of people's minds right now since the Long Beach Marathon is just around the corner (I'm not running it, if you were wondering...).

Well, 26.2 is also the number of hours that it takes to get from the hotel in Athens to our front door. Yes, you heard that right! 26.2 HOURS!!!

So where do I start... We left the hotel at 8:30am via airport shuttle. That left us a couple of hours to bum around the Athens Airport.

Our flight to Philadelphia is 10 hours 45 minutes. No fancy in-flight entertainment on this aircraft. Nothing to do but watch Marley and Me on the itsy-bitsy screen way up in the front of the cabin, or sleep... UGH! What is that?

What's going on back there?!!

Oh, I see...


While the kids sleep, let me add some random highlights from Greece. First of all, does this look safe to you?

I guess if it's been standing for thousands of years, it'll stand for a few seconds more.

We learned that everything tastes better with olive oil on it.

I don't think I posted this picture of the bridge from the Greek peninsula to the main land:

Uhm... GO BRAZIL???

I think it's AMAZING how archaeologists can know what a statue looks like from the few pieces they find:

In Greece they use guard dogs! Yes, this is not a place for my niece and nephew to visit any time soon. There are dogs all over the ruin site, checking out the people as they walk by... do not pet the dogs!

Slushies! Need I say more...?

Hey, Mary! Athens is Doug's kind of city! Look at the types of cars they drive, lol!

Cheryl can never resist sunflowers! Chris took both of these photos... look at the butterfly he caught in flight!


The Greek islands are over run by cats! Chris decided that he was going to do a cat study. Here are some of his cat pictures.

I'm just realizing that most of these random pictures are by Chris. Here is another one of Chris's photos... a Greek Orthodox Priest,

A goofy goat...

A preposterous pigeon...

Silly swallows...

A freaky fly...

And as Jim calls them... a flying rat...

And here's a behind the scene shot! Is my behind really that big?!!!

Anyway, back to the trip home. We landed at 11pm (Greece time) in Philadelphia, and spend 1.5 hours going through passport control, customs and security.

We left Philadelphia at 3:45am (Greece time). UGH! No movies for almost 6 hours!

We ended up getting home at 11am (Greece time) which is midnight Pacific time. We are WIDE AWAKE and STARVING! Our first meal at home? Del Taco 24 hour drive through! LOL! Welcome home!

After all the planning, all the anticipation, and all the fun, now the trip is over... thanks for all of you who stuck through it all. The trip recap lasted about 4 times longer than the trip, hahaha! The pictures that I have enjoyed sifting through again and again, reliving the trip through the blog, will now get saved to limbo-land (AKA, the external USB drive). That makes me sad... But, now we have next summer to think about. Where are are going next?