Athens & Delphi, Greece
March 15-18, 2007
We left Katie and Ashley with Niki and flew to Athens for the long weekend. There was a holiday on the Thursday and under Hungarian rules they add a holiday for the Friday, but this day must be replaced by working on the previous Saturday. Strange practice, as I don't think it would fly in the U.S. Making a Saturday a mandatory work day (Banks, governments, etc.), for religious or whatever reason, seems weird. But it works for me! While we were evaluating which flights to purchase when we originally booked these tickets we debated taking a direct flight or saving $50 and making a connection through Munich, arriving at the same time. We opted for the cost savings, and of course, that meant we had mechanical difficulties in Budapest, forcing us to arrive late and miss our connecting flight to Athens. Fortunately they do have a few flights
out of Munich each day, but we still arrived into Athens three hours later than we had planned. You know what they say about best laid plans... and we had some rearranging to do since we arrived later. We had hoped to go right to the Acropolis and take a tour, but it was closing as we got there. Instead, we found a cheap hotel to check into right at the bottom of the hill leading up to the Acropolis. We did take the chance at this point to climb onto the rock structure outside of the Acropolis (Areios Pagos, Mars Hill) on which Paul preached to the People of Athens, warning them about the "Unknown God" (Acts 17:15-34). The issue was that the people were so
concerned about offending one of their many Gods (known and unknown), that they erected temples/statues/idols/etc. to "Unknown Gods" as the catch-all, basically ensuring that any and every god gets some attention and some gift. Paul said in Acts 17 "God that made the world and all things therein...dwelleth not in temples made with hands...neither is worshiped with mens' hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." (Acts 17:24-25). At that point in time, and as we learned when we got to Delphi (as they requested wisdom from the Oracle at the Temple of Apollo), the people were so caught up in trying to ensure the favor of their many gods, leaving gold, silver, and other precious things as tributes, most never came to understand the real Godly offenses they were creating in doing so. Added to the history of the hill was the view and standing on the rock overlooking the city and up to the Acropolis was magnificent.
We made our way back down on the opposite side of the hill from where we walked up and we walked the streets of Placa and Kolonaki, the tourist/historical and restaurant districts of Athens. We walked and walked and walked, and looked for a good restaruant to eat, only to find that there is no dinner seating anywhere until 9 PM (the restaurants do not even open!). That just wouldn't work for us, so we found a little souvlaki place and had some delicious chicken and
pork souvlaki, then went back to our dive of a hotel room (ie, the shower IS the entire bathroom so the room is soaked when done taking a shower). On our way back, walking past the Parliament, we ran into the "changing of the guard". They walk from Parliament to the tomb of the unknown soldier, a block or so away, and change out guard duty of the tomb. This was quite a site as it had the Greek guards do this VERY amusingly choreographed number. I quite expected a "jazz hands" at the end, but, sadly, ended up disappointed!
The next morning, after flooding the bathroom and part of our hotel room with water from the "shower", we headed out to meet the bus for our tour to Delphi. We went on a fabulous tour to this highly historical city about 2 1/2 hours away. Our tour guide filled us with historical facts and mythological tales of days long past.
Once in Delphi we went through the museum first and then walked through the old city. The central part of this area, being the ruins of Apollo's T
emple where the Oracle resided and graced others with her "gift" once a month. People came from far and wide to receive revelation from the oracle, who was more than likely receiving drug induced visions (opium was a common "crop" in the area). Even non-Greeks came, including Croesus, the ruler of Lydia (part of Turkey today) who consulted the Oracle whether he should attack Persia (across the river) and was supposedly told "if you cross the river, you will destroy a great Empire". Assuming that meant the Persian empire, he attacked.
Unfortunately for him (and his people), it was his own "great" empire that fell instead. Another thing we learned that, conveniently, the more gold/riches that you "donated" to the Oracle, the more likely you would receive a response.
Around the temple were many treasuries filled with offerings to the god, Apollo. There was a
large
ampitheatre, and although our tour guide told us it was too far to go before we had to meet the bus, we climbed up the mountain to the stadium.... which was really cool. We rushed down to meet our group, which was already on the bus waiting for us to leave for lunch (I'm sure they got over it). The bus took us into town were the group ate at a hotel, and Aaron and I walked around the town center and found another souvlaki place. We ate really, really yummy gyros, and searched the town for a little store that would be open in the middle of the day so we could buy a picture of Delphi (to add to our collection of pictures). It seems that everything is closed from about 12-3, so we didn't quite find the picture we were looking for. We did, however, find one shop that opened right before we needed to leave where we bought a small picture and a couple of bracelets for the girls.
Back in Athens, we again walked the streets of Kolonaki for a really long time, waiting for our reservation at Sea Satin at 9PM. We were the only ones in the restaurant, and by 9:30 we were done and headed back to our hotel. I don't think I could live there just because of the meal schedule (10AM breakfast, 3PM lunch, 9PM dinner).
In our original plan for the weekend, we had hoped to take on Saturday a 3 island tour of some of the Greek islands, like Hydra... but since our plane was late on Thursday and we still hadn't taken a tour of the Acropolis and seen some of the other sights in Athens we decided to have a more relaxed day and stick close to town. We checked out of Hotel Cheap-o and used some of our Starwood points to spend our last day and night in the nicest hotel in town, the Grande Bretagne, right on Syntagma square and in front of the Parliament. They let us check in early and we were upgraded to a suite and found our room to easily be the nicest we had ever stayed in. The two crystal chandeliers, and the butler that met us at our room to orient us with the ammenities was a first time experience for me. Plus all of the complimentary chocolates and marzipan didn't hurt either.
We ate breakfast on Saturday at a great little place in Placa whose roots were in the dairy business. I ate the yummiest thing I'd ever had. My friend, Shannon McNutt (who used to live
in Athens) recommeded to me to order yogurt with honey and walnuts if I ever saw it on a menu. I didn't think I would, though, since I don't like walnuts. When I saw it offered here, I decided to get it anyway, and it changed my life forever. It was the best way I've ever eaten yogurt... even the walnuts tasted good. I'm sure the homemade yogurt had a lot to do with the delicious-ness, but I was very, very happy.
We spent the rest of the morning at the National Archeological Museum, and saw amazing old, old Greek ruins. Some of the marble from the Parthenon we had seen in the British Museum.... the infamous Elgin Marble. We learned in London how Lord Elgin was "given" (Greeks would say "stole") many of the relics/items from the Acropolis and other areas around Athens. Much of what was not taken ended up in this museum. We were able to see the Mask of Agamemnon (the commander in chief of the Greeks during the Trojan war) and the bronze statue of Poseidon. It really was a fasinating museum.
From there we walked to the Acropolis and found a personal tour guide who took us on a tour for over an hour and filled us
with all sorts of interesting historical facts, and architectual information. We were disappointed to see so much scaffolding on the Parthenon, but found out it has been there since the early 1990's, so we didn't feel too badly, or that we arrived during an unlucky "remodeling" year. Supposedly it will be under restoration for many more years as well.
After our tour, and walking through the Acropolis Museum, we walked down to the Agorra (marketplace) and walked along the Panatheanic Way that led up to the Parthenon. We walked out into Monastiraki and found the Flea Market and a nice cafe to get ... what else??? more souvlaki! I found some nice "Gucci" sunglasses from one of the MANY nice sunglass salesmen. We were stopped by numerous DVD sellers (all carrying the new movie "300" on top). We ate an early dinner which served American cuisine (we had eaten souvlaki already for 4 meals, so we didn't feel bad about this). It was nice to eat American... and not souvlaki for a change. We wanted to spend some time in our beautiful hotel room, so we retired early and watched a bootlegged "Ghost Rider" that we'd been suckered into buying (they just kept coming up to us over and over...once we purchased one we could honestly tell the guys we already had one!).
Sunday morning we took a tram up to Mount Lycabettus, which is the highest point in Athens and where the St. George church is located. It had a phenomenal view of the city, and the Mediterranean. It was quite a hike just to get to the cable car (We couldn't help but think about the hike up Corcovado in Rio to get to the Christ the Redeemer statue there, although once we saw the building for the cable car we realized that the Corcovado hike was 100 times worse!).
As we headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags before heading to the airport we tried, with no success, to find more yogurt with honey and walnuts. Disappointedly, we got our bags and started walking to the Metro to take us to the airport. I realized that the only thing that would make me feel better was getting a "Prada" purse from one of the friendly street salesmen. Aaron, being the kind husband that he was, agreed to my request and we found a cute white summer bag (that we got for 20 euro instead of the 45 euro rip-off asking price).
As a result of the last minute detour, and getting on the metro going the wrong way for one stop, we missed the train to the airport and had to wait 20 minutes for the next one, which turned into 30. Once we finally got to the aiport we had 35 minutes before our plane was leaving. We RAN, but our check-in for Lufthansa was on the opposite side of the terminal from the metro station where we got off. With 31 minutes before our plane took off (1 minute before they closed our flight) Aaron was able to get us to the front of the line and we miraculously made the flight. Thank goodness we only had one backpack with us that we carried on. We were starting to have flashbacks from missing our flight in Romania.
We had a wonderful weekend in Greece; it was enough to wet our appetite for another trip there... maybe to the islands, like Santorini, next time!
I had to go to Singapore for a month for work, by myself. Singapore is a nice country and all, but for four weeks and alone it is not the ideal situation. Fortunately I came home for one weekend, and although it was a long flight and travel time, it was completely worth it and made it a much easier ordeal. Except for the terrible heat, Singapore is a wonderful country. The people are trem
endously courteous and helpful and it was overall a very pleasant experience. I visited a functioning Indian temple, Chinatown, the famous Raffle's 
Hotel, and partook of the "Hawker" food centers (basically large outdoor Asian food courts with numerous different booths of Asian cuisine...although the Thai restaurant in Budapest STILL has the best Pad Thai in the world, ironically enough!)
We were supposed to leave on Friday for our long Easter weekend in Italy, but at noon on Thursday Aaron called me from work and asked if we wanted to leave at 6 that day! So I quickly got our things packed and the car ready to go. 6 turned into 7:30, then after we got gas and got 20 minutes down the highway we realized that we had forgotten the ipod dock in Aaron's car and HAD to go back and get it because we knew the girls wouldn't last very long in the car without movies to watch... and neither would we! So by 8:45 we were on the road again and made it as far as Austria, just before Graz. Unfortunately this 
would be a little foreshadowing of things to come the next day for us. We decided to make our way to Venice through the Dolomite Mountains so we could take in the scenery and stop in Cortina D'Ampezzo (Veneto, Italy). It is a gorgeous year-round mountain resort, and we found a great place for pizza (our first of many great pizzas in Italy). We then began the very arduous drive down the mountains through hairpin turns like we had never seen before... for at least 3 hours. It seemed to take forever! Aaron loves road trips, and driving is very relaxing for him, but this was not so much that way. Once we got down we started driving to Bolano (?), which is where we heard Italian pottery and ceramics are made that is sold to places like Williams Sonoma and Lenox, etc. We finally found the place, but it was Good Friday, and close to 5 PM, so most factories weren't opened and I couldn't find anything that appealed to me. So we had to back-track to go to the next town we wanted to see, Asolo (also in Veneto). Robert Browning said that this town was "the most beautiful spot I ever was priveleged to see". It is in the hills of Veneto with a gorgeous view of the Dolomite mountains, and a typical upper class retreat from the cities. In the 15th century the queen of Cypress actually relinquished her rule so she could go and live in Asolo. After A LOT of driving we made our way back down towards Podova, where we had reservation for the following night at the Sheraton. We found out they were booked for that 
night, so we found a pension down the road a bit. Aaron went out and got some pizza and gelato, and we called it a night... finally! It wasn't our most favorite day of traveling that we've ever had. There was much more driving, and we didn't always find what we were looking for!
along the Grand Canal to Piazza San Marco. On the eastern end of the plaza is the Basilica di San Marco, which had a line that was forever long so we opted not to wait in it to go inside. We imagine it was beautiful and much like a lot of the basilicas we see on every trip we take. It apparantly is the final resting place of St. Mark, whose body was smuggled out of Alexandria by two 
merchants in 828. We have never seen a more crowded city center... it was jam packed! Maybe because of the holiday weekend, but if not, I wouldn't want to be here in the middle of the Summer! We walked up and down the back streets, and over the waterways for an hour or so. Most of the stores carried Murano glass, 
which is made on the island of Murano just a ferry boat ride away. We ate at a restaurant outside, and had wonderful tortellini and spaghetti. Aaron got some linguini with clam. We love Italian food! We went back into the plaza to look for my friend Chrissi, and her family. We were supposed to meet at 12:00 there. By 1:00 we hadn't seen them yet, so we decided to move on and take the ferry over to 
Murano (we found out later that
tired, we were tired, and we were ready to get back to the hotel. We finally got back to the plaza, we bought an oil painting of Venice to add to 
our picture collection, and decided to head back to our car. We made one quick stop on the way back to the car at the Rialto area, and took pictures from the Rialto Bridge that straddles the Grand Canal. We also got some pizza that looked too good to pass up, so we had that for dinner!
saw Casa di Giulietta (Juliet's House), which the city built for all of the lovelorn who come here to breathe the air that Shakespeare's "star-crossed" lovers once did. There is, of course, a balcony. Katie was fasinated with the story of Romeo and Juliet and wanted us to tell it to her again and again. Verona's plaza was also beautiful, complete with a fountain, and we didn't leave without getting more gelato... I think that was the girls' lunch.
From Venice we drove to Vicenza to see the Teatro Olimpico, which is arguably the greatest work of Andrea Palladio (who helped define Western architecture). It is a theatre much like ancient theatres, with a backdrop representing ancient Thebes. The first production took place there in 1585, and there are still performances today.
but this one was unique because they only opened and closed the door at certain times for limited air circulation. So you had to have a ticket with a time on it, and your time also included a 15 minute video, which is not so condusive for Katie and Ashley. Aaron kept Ashley outside for the video, and fortunately they let him enter when we went into the chapel. We had to keep the girls very entertained while inside so they would be quiet and not ruin anyone else's experience. But each group of 15 or so was only allowed in the chapel for 15 minutes and then the next group comes in as our group was escorted out and they provide just enough air at a time for this number of people.
out of Munich each day, but we still arrived into Athens three hours later than we had planned. You know what they say about best laid plans... and we had some rearranging to do since we arrived later. We had hoped to go right to the Acropolis and take a tour, but it was closing as we got there. Instead, we found a cheap hotel to check into right at the bottom of the hill leading up to the Acropolis. We did take the chance at this point to climb onto the rock structure outside of the Acropolis (Areios Pagos, Mars Hill) on which Paul preached to the People of Athens, warning them about the "Unknown God" (Acts 17:15-34). The issue was that the people were so 
concerned about offending one of their many Gods (known and unknown), that they erected temples/statues/idols/etc. to "Unknown Gods" as the catch-all, basically ensuring that any and every god gets some attention and some gift. Paul said in Acts 17 "God that made the world and all things therein...dwelleth not in temples made with hands...neither is worshiped with mens' hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things." (Acts 17:24-25). At that point in time, and as we learned when we got to Delphi (as they requested wisdom from the Oracle at the Temple of Apollo), the people were so caught up in trying to ensure the favor of their many gods, leaving gold, silver, and other precious things as tributes, most never came to understand the real Godly offenses they were creating in doing so. Added to the history of the hill was the view and standing on the rock overlooking the city and up to the Acropolis was magnificent.
pork souvlaki, then went back to our dive of a hotel room (ie, the shower IS the entire bathroom so the room is soaked when done taking a shower). On our way back, walking past the Parliament, we ran into the "changing of the guard". They walk from Parliament to the tomb of the unknown soldier, a block or so away, and change out guard duty of the tomb. This was quite a site as it had the Greek guards do this VERY amusingly choreographed number. I quite expected a "jazz hands" at the end, but, sadly, ended up disappointed!
emple where the Oracle resided and graced others with her "gift" once a month. People came from far and wide to receive revelation from the oracle, who was more than likely receiving drug induced visions (opium was a common "crop" in the area). Even non-Greeks came, including Croesus, the ruler of Lydia (part of Turkey today) who consulted the Oracle whether he should attack Persia (across the river) and was supposedly told "if you cross the river, you will destroy a great Empire". Assuming that meant the Persian empire, he attacked. 
Unfortunately for him (and his people), it was his own "great" empire that fell instead. Another thing we learned that, conveniently, the more gold/riches that you "donated" to the Oracle, the more likely you would receive a response.
large 
ampitheatre, and although our tour guide told us it was too far to go before we had to meet the bus, we climbed up the mountain to the stadium.... which was really cool. We rushed down to meet our group, which was already on the bus waiting for us to leave for lunch (I'm sure they got over it). The bus took us into town were the group ate at a hotel, and Aaron and I walked around the town center and found another souvlaki place. We ate really, really yummy gyros, and searched the town for a little store that would be open in the middle of the day so we could buy a picture of Delphi (to add to our collection of pictures). It seems that everything is closed from about 12-3, so we didn't quite find the picture we were looking for. We did, however, find one shop that opened right before we needed to leave where we bought a small picture and a couple of bracelets for the girls.
in Athens) recommeded to me to order yogurt with honey and walnuts if I ever saw it on a menu. I didn't think I would, though, since I don't like walnuts. When I saw it offered here, I decided to get it anyway, and it changed my life forever. It was the best way I've ever eaten yogurt... even the walnuts tasted good. I'm sure the homemade yogurt had a lot to do with the delicious-ness, but I was very, very happy.
with all sorts of interesting historical facts, and architectual information. We were disappointed to see so much scaffolding on the Parthenon, but found out it has been there since the early 1990's, so we didn't feel too badly, or that we arrived during an unlucky "remodeling" year. Supposedly it will be under restoration for many more years as well.
Sunday morning we took a tram up to Mount Lycabettus, which is the highest point in Athens and where the St. George church is located. It had a phenomenal view of the city, and the Mediterranean. It was quite a hike just to get to the cable car (We couldn't help but think about the hike up Corcovado in Rio to get to the Christ the Redeemer statue there, although once we saw the building for the cable car we realized that the Corcovado hike was 100 times worse!).
As a result of the last minute detour, and getting on the metro going the wrong way for one stop, we missed the train to the airport and had to wait 20 minutes for the next one, which turned into 30. Once we finally got to the aiport we had 35 minutes before our plane was leaving. We RAN, but our check-in for Lufthansa was on the opposite side of the terminal from the metro station where we got off. With 31 minutes before our plane took off (1 minute before they closed our flight) Aaron was able to get us to the front of the line and we miraculously made the flight. Thank goodness we only had one backpack with us that we carried on. We were starting to have flashbacks from missing our flight in Romania.
