Mis pensamientos: Greece

Ahhh, Greece. You are lovely. Tyler and I would not recommend a Norway/Greece vacation to many people; we chose polar opposite parts of Europe which required too many hours of travel. On top of the kilometers we had to endure, a snowstorm in central Europe re-routed us ultimately to Istanbul, Turkey to get to Athens. We arrived 6 hours later than scheduled, so unfortunately, we chose to toss out our side-trip to Delphi. Sad, considering how beautiful it appeared in photos.

Anyways, the above picture was taken from the rooftop of our Athens Gate Hotel, featuring the Acropolis/Parthenon behemoth. We were impressed at how high up this site was built (you're looking at it from a 8-floor building, and it's obviously much higher. We were also amazed at how little we knew about Greek/Athenian history - we feel like that may have a little to do with the last-minute nature of the trip. We stayed two nights in Athens, walked around the major sites, ate incredible Greek food, and inhaled life-destroying second-hand smoke. On the last note, we asked to be seated in the non-smoking section (weird to be in restaurants with smoke in the first place) and a Grecian promptly lit up in the adjacent table the moment we got settled. Ah, well...it's Europe, people.

After Athens, we spent 2 nights in Santorini, an island in the Mediterranean about a 20-minute plane ride from Athens. Thanks, Charlie Goldberg, for the advice to visit Santorini. It was simply breathtaking, easily the prettiest place I've been in my life. I already would like to return. It did not rain during our days there, but it was windy. And there are a heckuva lot of stray, tame, clean-ish cats and dogs here (along with Athens). As the island is pretty much uninhabited in late January, we felt like we had all the wild beauty to ourselves, and became foster-parents to a few of these Santorini animals.

Photo time...and now I think I'm done trip-blogging on Europe. Unless the people rise up as one and demand more tales and pics.