4.20 athens Greece

4.20 and so on

We are off...drove to Cornwall and were picked up at Bob's by the big bus and headed to Montreal..all 38 of us.. I am exhausted and not sure when I will be on any sort of normal schedule, just know it has been 8 days of craziness and lack of sleep!! Flight to Paris seems short at 6 1/2 hours..or the norm for me lately..get to Charles De Galle and have to walk a couple miles to our next terminal to get to Athens...and we are here, next big bus to the Divani Palace for 2 nights in Athens, our hotel sits near the base of the Acropolis.

We wander down to a pedestrian street and find a lovely outdoor cafe, of course I had to have Greek salad..oh boy...huge...and with a big huge hunk of feta across the top of a pile of tomatoes, etc.. delicious.

4.21 Athens

Took a tour of Athens this morning, up to the Acropolis, amazing views of the city and sooo old and being refurbished, for the next 30 years..it is quite crazy to think of how old it really is...We also went to the original Olympic Stadium, all marble seats, very beautiful..but so small!! Everywhere you look in this town are ruins. The city of Athens is very large and very spread out, something like 5 million in the central city, all the buildings look white on the hills as far as you can see, there is also some haze or dust from the Sahara floating in the atmosphere making the visibility a bit mute...strange it comes so far and affects the atmosphere here but it is very obvious.

We walk to the Plaka and stroll the narrow, old streets of Greece, vendors of all types and outdoor cafes line the streets, the streets wind on forever with ruins down every other one, we wander around with the Acropolis set high above us like a guide as to where we are...there are steep stairways leading up with cafes and tables all the way up, very quaint and pretty, we decide we will come back this way for dinner..it is lovely.

Dinner we decide will be at one of the restaurants on the Plaka where the owner had given us his card earlier in the day, all 38 of us show up and they are all set to accommodate..and the food starts filling the table....plate after plate of Greek specialties are loaded on the tables, as well as wines and beers, and 2 old Greek men sit close by playing guitar and singing, they are so pleased when Donna gets up and dances..they won't let her sit down!! The food is amazing,tzatziki,salmon pate, olive pate, and so many other things I cannot remember...it went on forever...we finally left and went back to find a quiet rooftop with views of the lit Acropolis..and had shots of the local drink Ouzo on the rooftop below the Acropolis with a lovely guitar player singing to 4 of us...beautiful way to spend our last night in Athens!!!