Italy/Greece : Day 15 - Athens

We slept in today... it felt so good! We went down to breakfast at 7:30am, stopping at the kids' room on the way (they were still sleeping). We'll meet them in the lobby later. We saw a lot of people from our group enjoying a late breakfast. Everyone is in a good mood and ready to explore Athens on our own.

Our first stop was the Plaka and in order toget there, we had to take the Metro. We walked about 10 minutes from the hotel to the station; Cheryl figured out which direction we needed to go; and we jumped on a train! We got off one stop too soon... We should have listened to Cheryl!

We meandered up and down the streets and past the shops displaying their wares.

Athens is full of graffiti... it's everywhere! But, I think it's part of Athens' charm.



Can you see the place behind Jim and Chris? Restaurants would just setup tables right along the side of the street.

We had lunch at a little place like that. We had our favorite... Greek Salad...

And stuffed tomatos!

After lunch, I asked the waiter to show me where we were on the map. Did I mention that we were lost? We were trying to find the Acropolis museum. I gave the map to Cheryl and we headed off!

Athens is full of ruins. Here are some places we saw on our way to the museum. This is called Hadrian Library. It was right in the middle of the Plaka with shops all around it.



This is the Statue of Nike in Hadrian Library. It has no head or arms...

This is what it's supposed to look like. A pretty good likeness, if I do say so myself.

Here is another place called Temple of Hephaistos:


Where the Parthenon is impressive because of its size, the Temple of Hephaistos is impressive because it's so well preserved. We saw it in the distance when we were at the Parthenon two days ago, and luckily stumbled into it today!




Wow, that was a lot of pictures of one building. You can really tell how much I enjoyed seeing it! Here's a last building, called the Church of the Holy Apostles. It's not really considered a ruin because it was built in 1000 AD, but it's still a cool building.

Thanks to Cheryl, we finally found the Acropolis Museum! The muesum is located at the base of the Acropolis hill; built right on top of more ruins of the city surrounding the Acropolis.


There are three floors to this museum and each floor has a glass floor so you can see the ruins underneath.

This also means that if you are on the lower floors, you can look up and see the people above you in a less than flattering angle. At least we were all wearing shorts! The museum contained all the pottery, stone panels and statuary found at the Acropolis site. The stars of the museum were the peplos that decorated a building at the Acropolis. They didn't allow any photos in the Acropolis Museum, but here are the repoductions that we took a picture of two days ago at the Acropolis site:

After the Acropolis, Jim was done with walking. We headed back to the Metro. Oh wait! Look, gelato! There is always time to stop for a gelato! Chris has his...

And how about a swim on the roof before dinner...

Time for our second farewell dinner. Surprise! We are not eating at the hotel! Fabrizio took us out to Monastiraki for a traditional Greek dinner: Greek salad, stuffed mushrooms, and choice of entree. I got the mushroom risotto, which was GREAT! But, there's more... fruit and then a brownie with Greek ice cream. Greek ice cream tastes kind of strange. I prefer gelato. The last thing they brought was a liquor that is supposed to help with digestion. I didn't like how it tasted. YUCK!

Well, time to say good-bye to Fabrizio and all our travel companions. We need to go to our rooms and get packing! We are leaving tomorrow morning!

Another Good-bye to Summer and a few Explosions

I know I already did a good-bye to summer post when Chris went back to school... but Cheryl didn't start school until this past week, so it seems fitting to do another good-bye to summer in her honor!

Here's the last bike ride of the summer. The kids and Papa are taking my nephew's bicycle for a spin down the street.

HEY! Where did Papa go? Did he fall off?

Now on to our first explosion... bottle rockets! Here's Chris using his muscles to launch a rocket. They even sent one over the house and into the backyard pool, lol!



Here is our second explosion... I'm sure you've heard of Mentos and Coke, maybe even seen the videos... but have you ever tried it?

It's easy! Drop a Mento into a liter Coke bottle and run!

Oops, they didn't run fast enough, hahaha!

THERE SHE BLOWS!!!

After all the explosions, what I'm really going to miss about summer is nap time!

For those of you that are wondering when I'm going to finish blogging about the trip... I've tried to finish it, but thinking of doing it makes me sad. Hmmm... I wonder why?

Anyway, I'll get to it eventually... as for now, GOOD-BYE TO SUMMER!

A Card for Fall

I wanted to make a card with fall leaves, but found that I don't have any leaf stamps. So I improvised! I had this cute tree stamp called Itsy Bitsy Giggles from Unity Stamp Co:

See instant leaves! I just sewed them on to the front of the card. And look... I finally used my baker's twine!

Another Card Challenge

Thank goodness for card challenges, or I would never get any cards finished! This challenge was issued by Beth at Scrappin' Mojo. Her challenge was to use Red, Green, Yellow, Brown and Black!!!! Well, here it is Red, Green, Yellow, Brown and Black... It looks a lot nicer that I thought it would. It could be a new favorite color combo!

Italy/Greece : Day 14 - One day cruise

A bus picked up our group of 14 at 6:50am for the one day - three island cruise. We stopped at 5 other hotels picking up people. We were the last ones there. As soon as we boarded, we cast off! We managed to find a table near the rail... a PRIME SPOT!


They called for the lifeboat information meeting. Jim and Cheryl went below deck to attend the meeting. Chris and I guarded our table, and listened to the lifeboat information in Chinese. We eventually gave up our table and hung out at the bow. What a BEAUTIFUL day!

Welcome to Hydra!


Hydra is interesting in that there are no cars. People get around on donkeys. Here's a donkey ready to tote some luggage to a local hotel.

The first thing we did was try to climb to the highest point of the island to get a view back down into the harbor. This is the best we could do:

We got much better views from the fort. You can see it on the left below behind out boat.



Oh, and this is one of Chris's favorite photos, so I MUST put it in!

Our ride to Poros went fast. We were served a nice sit down lunch on the way.

Welcome to Poros!

This is the island of stairs. They don't have alleys that you can drive down. Their alleys full of STAIRS!

We took those stairs all the way up to the clock tower with great views of the island.



And then we took those stairs all the way back DOWN!

And DOWN...

And DOWN...

Whew after all those stairs, it's time to head back to the boat for naps...

On our way to Aegina! Oh, look another little port town and another clock tower.

Well, we have had our fill of walking around little island port towns, and climbing to clock towers. Time for something FUN and EXCITING! How about taking a speed boat...

Across the channel...

To a private island...

For swimming!

BTW, they don't recommend swimming on Hydra, Poros, or Aegina. The water is dirty with all the boat traffic... but Moni Island is different. It has beautiful clear waters.

And peacocks and deer.

Ahhh... this is the LIFE!

I have one more short story... After spending hours in the sun at Moni Island, we decided to sit below deck and watch the Greek show. Do you think sitting in the back saved us? NOPE! I got pulled out of the audience to dance with the Greek dancer. Want to see me dance?



Hahaha!!! Being spun around on a boat can sure make you dizzy! I'm glad I got to sit down after that or I would have fallen over!

A bit of wisdom from a Greek Dancer: Don't just sit there... ENJOY LIFE!