Athens (sorry, not much time to proof read)

Hello from Athens where 10 of our 15 cruise mates have joined to see the city of Athens. The City is spectacular and our hotel location could not be better. Each morning we set and have breakfast with the Acroplolis Theater and the city of Athens as you see above. The crew is pictured right in front of Parthenon: Steve, Cindy, Murril, Frankie, Al, Brad, Julie, Carol, John & Lowell (me). Weather is good, warm but not hot with a breeze to cool us as we hang out at shade covered cafes in the historic Plaka district of the city. Everything is within walking distance of Hotel Astor and walk we have! The combination of high vacation season and huge sales at all the shops have tourists as well as Athenians out on the streets. The Greek hospitality has not disappointed us with friendly locals everywhere. Our friend Murril is fames for meeting people and is on a first name basis with almost everybody he meets.

We do have one big problem.. We were warned about lost baggage and Frankie and I are experiencing it first hand. We’ve been here 2 days and still don’t have our bags. As you might expect these are trying times even tearful at times but we are making the best of it. The grandeur of the city, history and the people overcome the crises but we need our fricken bags. Today we learned that the Italians bombed and destroyed the Parthenon when it was under Turk rule and the Italians probably lost our bags in Rome. Frankie thinks the bags are a much bigger disaster!

There are quaint cafes and street musicians playing classical Greek music everywhere in the Plaka .

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All the ancient ruins are lite at night adding to the ambiance at night.

Today (Thursday) we took a morning bus tour of the city and many of it’s restored ancient sites. Left is the Temple of Zeus behind the crew. Less than 1% of it remains after being used as a source of marble for other construction during 2 centuries of Turkish rule. The Turks are not very well liked around here..

The grand destination of the tour was the hill top Acropolis Theater where the Parthenon sets. This site is the main attraction and was extremely crowded as you can see in the picture below.

Guard at the Presidential Palace >..

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.Allison is having a great birthday>.

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.Ancient Theater at the Acropolis

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.Steve & Cindy out for dinner

.<Meat market downtown

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We had dinner at a hilltop restaurant Thursday night via this tram. Our dining table and the view in the picture below..

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It’s Friday and we’ve decided to escape Athens and take a ferry from Rafina 45km NE of Athens to the island of Andros. The trip started painfuly early with a 6AM wakeup call then a 45 min taxi ride then a 2 hour ferry ride to Andros. Very windy morning with winds gusting to 25-30. Hope this wind backs down before we start our sailing on Saturday! We arrived Andros 10ish with a fully loaded ferry full of people and cars. Andros is a good size island that Frankie’s dentist recommended. To see the island we decided to rent a car. Problem,, no cars available.. but wait. The friendly rental company felt sorry for us and decided to rent his son’s Fiat to us. Short order we’re off listening to the son’s favorite CD he left in for us,, It’s a tall island with narrow curve roads. Entering the first town of Batsi there are single lane streets where cars wait their turn to pass. A quick lunch here and on to the town of Andros (also known as chara). The drive is an eye candy treat with hill side villas overlooking the blue sea. More narrow roads and an encounter with a bus on a narrow road where we had to back to a cross street to allow him to pass. Andros is the classic postcard hillside village and cafes under huge shade trees in the center. An extra bonus, Frankie was able to find some cloths as are bags are still not anywhere to be found.

To wrap this up, we took the mountain pass back to Batsi stopping at the St. Nikolaos Monastery not open but beautiful from the out side and then on to Batsi for some beach time before heading back to Gavrio to catch our 9:15 ferry ride back to Rafina. I’m writing this on the ferry ride back.. We hope to make the hotel by mid-night. Long day but worth it. The urge to return to Greece is building.

The whole crew (15) are now in Athens. Watch for the next update!!

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