Florida to Athens Greece

Wed June 3
I jumped up at 6:45 this morning ready to go. Had my tea and did my final house closing chores and turned off my phone and the water and headed outside to wait for my ride. My father and Pippa showed up just about 9 am and we drove down the street to my brother’s house and switched over to their van. Dropped a car at his work and off to Tampa International Airport!

Finally we are on the move! As my 7 year niece Winfree has been saying we are finally headed for Greek. Everything went smoothly at the airport except the confiscated my 3 ounces of liquid soap (Dr. Brommer’s Peppermint) because it was unlabeled. But they left and unlabeled 6 ounces of sun cream I had put in an old unlabeled cough syrup bottle! Go figure. I would rather have lost the sun cream. Oh well. I will just have to use what soap I can find along the way. Or next time send my bottle of soap through with someone else's checked luggage. I have one carry one bag and a day pack.

We say goodbye to my farther as he is booked on a different flight and jump on a full US Air flight to Philadelphia. We are packed in like sardines, and they just have enough room for all the luggage. I had reserved aisle seats for my flights but end up in a middle seat. Darn. Not as much legroom. In Philly we have 2 hour layover so I buy a copy of the New Yorker Magazine. (Probably my favorite) And it’s the annual summer fiction issue, even better!

I had brought a copy of Outside magazine but traded with my father for a newspaper he had finished waiting on the flight. Outside has been sending me free issues for the last couple of years. I find it a bit too yuppie for my taste. Though sometimes there are some good stories.

We walked across most of the airport and there were some cool art pieces on display. My favorite were a group of weavings out of metallic materials that looked like nests and exotic flowers. They were really cool. There were also some artist made books that were neat.

Finally we are on the flight to Athens and this plane is full too. And again I am in a middle seat. And there is a very large gentleman seating next to my and overlapping into seat! (my big fat greek seat companion is running through my head!) He is also very chatty. As we take-off and land he crosses himself and prays feverishly! This could be a very long flight. There is a nice slim Greek American on my other side. We have a pleasant conversation. He and his wife live in Philly part of the year and Greece the rest.

He pulls a fast one and ends up with a new pair of headphones and gives me his old ones. One side works. I almost get the other side to work, not very well. The movie starts out in English and is a fun one. Inkheart. I am enjoying until all of a sudden it switches from English to Italian! Plus it starts squealing like feedback. Ouch. The crew can’t fix it so we watch the rest of the movie with out sound. We had a nice meal of salad, chicken breast with green beans and roast potato and a sweet sponge cake.

I walked to the back of the plane to visit with my brother and his family for a while then hit the head and back to my “seat”.
Tried to sleep but not enough room. So I read my New Yorker, dozed a bit and then read some more. Finally I watched the sun rise in the east and I may have dozed for a few minutes and then breakfast.
Thursday, June 4

We were served a sweet bun and I had a cup of tea with it. Soon we are landing in Athens 20 minutes a head of schedule and it’s 9 am and a beautiful day. Low humidity , clear skies with a temp of a bout 80. Lovely! We breeze through customs. I never saw them ask anyone a single question we weren’t ask if we had anything to declare so while my bother is collecting baggage I go look for my father.

His plane due 10 minutes before ours, but we are 20 minutes early. I go looking but don’t see him. I look for his flight but it’s not listed. UH-OH, not good! I ask an airport person and she explains that the flight was canceled and my father should be in a hotel in NY. She calls but can’t find a record of him at the hotel but gives me the hotel name and phone number. She says he should arrive at the same time tomorrow. He might just make it before our ride to Milina shows up tomorrow morning.

My father also had the only Euros. So we find some ATM machines and my bank card works so I get 100 Euros and my brother get 300 Euros with his credit card. We get in line for a taxi but we are 5 people and they only take 4. We are about to take 2 cabs when a big Mercedes rolls up and crams us all in. We are instructed to duck if the cops roll by as he can get a ticket for too many people in the car! He knows where our hotel is and off we go. We see a couple of cop cars and duck as instructed.

Our driver is very friendly and tells us that our hotel in not in a great area at night. we should be careful after 8:30 pm when the shops close. We kind of knew this but we are within easy walking distance of the Acropolis. There are elections going on and part of the city is tied up with demonstrations. Our taxi gets hung up in traffic and finally our diver pulls a u turn and off go in another direction and we end up driving through some tiny old streets out taxi barely fit through but finally we are across the street from Hotel Attalos. There is no place to park on a very narrow street so we jump out grab the bags, throw money at the driver and run out of the street and into our hotel.

We had reserved 2 triple rooms and tried to change one to a double but they were full. The hotel has two tiny elevators that are each about the size of a phone booth. And there is a nice terrace on the roof with a beautiful view of the ACROPOLIS. We unload and have a quick snack of cheese, rice crackers and smoked almonds and head for the Acropolis. Our goal is to stay up until night and sleep through to get on Greek time. So we head off and after a quick stop at a corner store for more kid food and a coffee for my brother, we begin to climb up streets through a touristy street mall and up to the base of the Acropolis.

There are lots of parts of the old city everywhere you look. We pay our 12 Euros for adults and work around around and around. Finally when we have almost circumnavigated the whole base do we find the way up to the top. It’s spectacular! Lots of people from all over the world wandering around, amid scaffolding and cranes. There is a major renovation going on. Half the Parthenon is covered in scaffolding.

One of the amazing things is all the bits and pieces lying around. Piles of carved stonework everywhere. And the view of Athens from the top is spectacular! Walking around is a little tricky as the stonework under foot is very uneven. Lots of marble that has been polished to a slick sheen by generations of feet. Feels a bit like ice skating in places. My brother commented on the lack of railings as he tried to keep my younger niece Winfree (often called Chopper or Snoozle) from leaping over the edge of the cliff.

There are a number of different temples on top of the Acropolis. We were so jet-lagged that I didn’t really absorb any names. I will try and fin d some. I was especially taken with one temple that has a series of columns carved like women. What incredible stone work!

The temperature has heated up so we all sit in the shade for awhile and the head back down. This time we take the short way down and wander around the ruins at the base of the Acropolis near our hotel. More of the tickets we bought are collected. Now the $12 Euros and all the tickets are making more sense. We wander by an old church and through an Archeological Museum. Lots of artifacts dating back as far as 1400 BC. I took a photo of some clay heads that were pretty cool. The are small the largest is maybe 6 inches across. Very interesting pieces.

Finally Chopper (Winfree) has a meltdown and she and Woozle (Estill) beginning demanding ice cream. They have done very well considering the heat and the jet-lag. So we wander back to the hotel with a stop for ice cream in the market.


When we arrive there is a message from my father. He is in Athens at the airport waiting for his luggage on the 6 pm flight. Great news that he is Athens! Hope his baggage arrives. So we all drop for a nap before dinner. We have no shower but a huge bathtub with a hand shower like my friend Hilda in Ottawa. I hose off the trip with a little cold water and crash.

Father arrives after I have slept about an hour and shares his travel tale of not having enough time in NY to changes planes and arriving at the Olympic counter to find they have closed the flight and won’t let him on. He pleads but they refuse (this is the flight that didn’t leave NY) and send him back to American. He waits a long time in line but finally is able to get a flight to Athens through Rome and has a sandwich and is on his way. They say his luggage is on the his flight! He arrives at 2 pm in Athens but his luggage remained in Rome. He was given a phone number and advised to go to his hotel. We are glad he didn’t get stuck in NY.

He has a quick shower and lies down and is almost instantly asleep, assuring me he isn’t really tired. After about 15 minutes I wake up the others for dinner and the assemble and my father gets a good half hour nap before we head back into the Market and have dinner in one of many outdoor cafes.

Greek salad for my sister-in-law Martha (often just called ‘Tha) Chicken Souvlaki for the girls and Randy (my bro’) and melt-in your mouth Moussaka for my father and I. Randy sampled the local lager and my father and I a small bottle of the local red. All excellent and served with a mountain of fresh grilled and spiced pita bread. We are in the heart of the tourist zone, surrounded by shopping but this little square was all outdoor cafes and just lovely.

An occasional gypsy looking child would wander through trying to sell us trinkets or a song on a tin tinny guitar but they weren’t persistent and are tolerated by the waiters. They are certainly part of the fabric of life in Athens. We are in the old part of the City which is very crowded with lots of graffiti but also lots of color and texture. It’s great to be in a new place. But I don’t think I am going to wander around this part of Athens at night alone.

We finish our dinner and pack the left over pita and chicken to go and head back to the hotel. Everyone but Martha heads for the roof where we watch the sky fade and the lights on the Acropolis come up. It’s very beautiful with the moon rising high above. Chopper and Wozzle send an email to their friends at home about the GYMANTIC mountain they ahd climb to see the Parthenon!

We chat with a young couple of med students from the states who are engaged, starry-eyed and on vacation before they start their residencies. They have been in Rome and Athens and are having a great time. Soon I am tired and head back to our room where my father and Winfree are just climbing into their beds. I take a quick hot shower and crawl into bed. It’s a been a long but wonderful day! Good night dear friends from Athens.

Pictures can be seen at http://picasaweb.google.com/allenloyd
Pictures can be snn at http://picasaweb.google.com/allenloyd