Final Day in Greece - Finally

I admit, we've been stretching things out a bit with our Greece posts lately (well, I have - Laura keeps reminding me to post). But it is finally here, our final Greece post!

On our last day in Athens, the weather ended up being much like the first: off and on rain showers. We set out in the morning to conquer the highest hill in downtown Athens. But first, I insisted that since we were going in the same direction anyway, we should walk by the U.S. embassy. We got to the road the embassy was on and noticed that with the street numbering, we were only 20 addresses away from the embassy. Thinking like Americans, we started walking what we thought would be 2 blocks. Two miles later, we finally saw the embassy and Laura's dirty looks finally subsided for my making her and Amoeba walk all that way. The place is like a concrete bunker, but it was kind of cool to see the star spangled banner flying on "American soil" in the midst of a foreign country.



Since we were right by the large hill, we started the climb. At first, we were just walking through the woods going up a rolling hill, which was like being in Central Park with all of the city sounds coming from all around while being amongst the trees.



Once we started getting higher, we started getting great views of the city. We were headed toward the summit which was home to a beautiful little church that you can see from almost anywhere in the city.



After A LOT of climbing, we finally made it to the summit and had some of the best views of Athens, the Acropolis, and of course the church and bell tower. I think pictures are better than text here, so take a look:







After that, we headed down the hill toward the city. Now, we had been seeing a lot of graffiti all over the city (except for on the ruins), but the path down took the cake. People had carved graffiti into the cactus plants that lined the path! I'm still a little confused why that was necessary.

Once back down in the city, we headed for the Athens central market, which we had heard was pretty cool. The market has a variety of vendors selling fruits, vegetables, nuts, and cheeses, but those are nothing compared to the butchers and fishmongers.



It was amazing to see people walk up and get their meat or fish cut right in front of them.



At first, we were a little embarrassed to be taking pictures of all of it (think pulling out a camera in the grocery store), but a couple of the fishmongers saw us and actually started pointing out which of their fish we should be photographing.



Later that day, we decided to have one last nice dinner before we left Athens. We ate at this restaurant that was tucked away down an alley, but ended up being really nice inside with white tablecloths and candles on the table. We had a great meal and some of the tastiest lamb and veal we've ever had. We were even serenaded while we ate (and this time the guy was supposed to be there). The hostess even chased off the guys selling things before they could get close to the door!



Unfortunately, after that it was time to go to bed and get up early to head to the airport. All in all, though, it was a great trip and something we'd love to do again. We are now inspired to visit London for the Olympics in a couple of years if baby Amoeba cooperates! We took over 600 pictures in Athens, so let us know if you would like to see any more. We'd be happy to share. One last view of the Acropolis to commemorate the trip:

Greece - Third Full Day

Well, Laura has been on me to post about our third day in Greece since it has been several weeks since we returned, so I suppose I should update everyone!

The third day was every bit as beautiful as the second. We decided to go to some of the smaller ruins in the morning. We went to the Library of Hadrian (remember Hadrian's Arch from day one - popular guy). We were actually amazed that some of the mosaic work from the floors was still intact especially since there was nothing stopping you from walking on top of it. Then we realized that no one actually goes to the Library since the only people we saw there were the Japanese family that had been following us from place to place, so maybe it had no incentive not to be intact!



Next to the Library of Hadrian is a pretty cool tower with Tritons surrounding it called the "Tower of the Winds."



We really liked the tower until we saw the sign near it identifying the "So-called 'Agoranomeion.'"



For everything else we saw in Greece there were signs that labeled everything, from buildings to fountains, but for the tower they had to say "so-called?" Of course it was "so-called!" What isn't? They could have said the "so-called Parthenon," but someone had the good sense not to! I hope the archeologist that was in charge of labeling things got fired for that one! "So-called 'Agoranomeion'" indeed.



A Library? Are you sure?



The NE Auditorium? Maybe not if it was labeled by the same person that wrote the sign for the Agoranomeion!

While there we saw more of the dogs that sleep everywhere around Athens. At first we thought they all were strays, but then we noticed they had collars and were only around during the day. It was as if their owners put them out in the morning and said, hey, go sleep in a ruin and come back by dark. They all looked like they were related, but since they were all cute, I guess a little inbreeding didn't hurt.



After that, we decided to head down to the coast because we really wanted to see Mediterranean Sea. Since we were going to a different city, we packed water and provisions and hopped on the train. Seven minutes later we arrived at the coast. So much for a day trip! Being such a pretty day, the water was brilliant blue.



We ate at a restaurant right by the water, which ended up not being the best thing to do. The view was great, but the service and the food were not. Additionally, we were sitting INSIDE the restaurant and people were coming in to sell us pirated movies, knickknacks, and of course more small children. At least we told the people no when they came to our table. The guy that came in with an accordion played two songs at the table next to us before they finally made eye contact and told him to go away! At least the view was good.



Later in the afternoon we headed back and decided to go to a place for dinner where we had seen a lot of locals. For the most part, the food was pretty good. At this place, it was amazing. After our obligatory appetizer of tzatziki (this one had a strong flavor of mint), we each decided to go with our waiter's suggestion and get the mixed grill. Little did we know that "mixed grill" was Greek for 10 pounds of meat. OK, maybe it was more like 3 pounds of meat, but it was a lot. There were four large skewers of various chicken, beef, and lamb as well as 4 gyros worth of shaved meat. I tried valiantly, but the last skewer remained on my plate. Poor Amoeba must have been having a meat overload by that point since Laura had the same thing!

After dinner, we dragged ourselves back to our room and fell into a food coma. Of course, we still woke up in the middle of the night because of the time difference, but at least we weren't hungry!

Next up, our last full day in Greece and the flight home.

Blueberry Waffles

People have been asking me for a while how Laura is doing with the pregnancy. She's been a champ with it all. A few times waking up screaming and grabbing me in the middle of the night because of charlie horses, but overall she had been doing fairly well. That is until about 2 weeks ago. Laura started having cravings for blueberry waffles. Those who know me well know that I am not a blueberry fan, but if that is what Laura wants, that is what she will get.

Now, however, all I can see when I look into our freezer are Eggo blueberry waffles. Laura has them in the morning, when she gets home from work, before bed, in the middle of the night . . . you get the idea. I'm really tempted to buy stock in Eggo, but I know it would just drop when Laura gives birth. I am, however, open to the idea of sponsorship. To you Kellogg executives out there (for those that didn't make the jump, Kellogg makes Eggo), if you provide Laura with blueberry waffles for the remainder of her pregnancy, I'm happy to plug you in my posts. Well, not my Greece posts, I have to plug shaved meat in those, but let's make a deal! An extra freezer would be a nice bonus too, just saying . . .

Athens - Second Full Day

So I told Bryan I would do the next post, which should be interesting since on the best day my memory is 2.3 seconds long, and the pregnancy has certainly done nothing to expand it. But, I am going to try my best!

Our 2nd full day in Athens was similar to the first in that we tried to hit all the major ruins and touristy sites we missed on day one. We began the day with a trip to the famous cemetery, Keramikos. This was pretty cool as it had graves of both the rich and the poor, as well as lots of fun statues (my favorite was of a bull, but for some reason B wasn't nearly as impressed.)



Apparently Keramikos was also the entryway into the city of Athens in ancient times, and you could see some of the ruins of the gate that was used to let people in and out of the city. After we toured the scene here, we decided to walk toward an impressive looking church on the outside of the cemetery.



We were in the church about 1 minute before a menacing looking Greek woman started shaking a broom at us and pointed toward the door. I guess they didn't want crazy Americans messing up their beautiful Greek Orthodox establishment...oh well. It was pretty funny because I think this woman was the only person in all of Greece that didn't speak English so for all we know she actually wanted us to stay longer and was pointing toward some fabulous painting by the door that she thought we'd missed...we figured we wouldn't risk it since I was pregnant and all and didn't want to get beat down by a broom or thrown in Greek jail for trespassing.

Next it was on to the Forum.



After walking through the grounds for awhile we went in the main forum area. You can actually walk on the first floor which is pretty cool, and inside is a small museum where you can see ancient pottery, weapons, toys, etc. Of course there is lots to read about the history inside as well, and being geeks we pretty much loved all of that. Turns out that the forum area would have held 11 shops in ancient times, and the area was used for different purposes throughout history. We went in the museum through the exit it seemed, and it is still unclear to us whether it required a seperate fee from the forum itself, but we decided to exit through the exit as well just in case we had made our second mistake of the day! :)

After exiting the Forum, we walked over to my favorite building in all of Athens, the Temple of Hephaistos. This was by far the best preserved ruin that we saw in Athens and was just beautiful! We pretty much looked at it and took a picture from every angle.

From here, we decided to hike up hill and look down on the city from above. We weren't sure exactly how to get to the hill that we could see, so we just walked up, followed the crowds of mostly Asian tourists, and finally reached the top. It was windy at the top of the city, but the hill gave us quite a nice view of the Acropolis and Forum.



We were impressed, until we climbed what seemed to be a mountain later in the week to get an even better view of things. At this point, Amoeba and I were getting hungry and therefore grumpy, and decided we needed to be fed, so we climbed back down the hill to a little restaurant outside of the Forum.

We decided to have lunch outside since it was a beautiful day. Turns out, that was a bad idea. In Baltimore we get annoyed when anytime we stop at a traffic light 2-3 of our favorite homeless friends walk by our cars to beg for money or food. The craziness at lunch made us wish for the kind Baltimore street peddlers who can take no for an answer. As we ate (I totally forget what we had, but this was the least memorable food of any we had in Athens) 40 or 50 street vendors came right up to our table to see if we would like to purchase umbrellas, useless toys, illegally copied DVD's or CD's, small children, or anything else that looked like it would break after only one use. It was kind of like when you go see fireworks and the people walk through the crowds selling crazy light-up toys, except we were trying to enjoy our lunch and make our plan for the rest of the day. We did feel a little bad for the young girl poorly playing the accordion, but not bad enough to give her money. After that, we definitely learned our lesson and ate inside from that meal on!

After the late lunch I was exhausted so we went back to the hotel for a short nap. We took books up to the top of the hotel and did some lounging and reading in the sun until the breeze got the best of us. We emerged later from our hotel and walked through the surrounding streets (there was a pretty crazy street market that sold everything from crocs to copies of Christian relics) on our way to the James Joyce Irish Pub for dinner.



We had read online that this pub was the place to go if you speak English and like sports, so we figured, there'd be TVs galore all tuned to round 1 of the NCAA tournament. We had timed dinner to coincide perfectly with Maryland's first match-up and were excited to see the Terps get a win. Well, we were mislead. The pub seemed to have just one TV, tuned to a rousing woman's tennis match, and the majority of the people in the pub were Greek, but still we had an excellent meal. We figured since all of our other meals would be traditional Greek we could spend one night eating some stew and mash so we still had a good time!

So that was pretty much day 2. Lots of ruins, some better weather than day one, two interesting meals, and a little time for some rest and relaxation!

First Full Day in Athens - The Acropolis

Sufficed to say, we never really got used to the time difference in Athens. The 6 hours difference caused us not to go to bed until around 2am local time. When we woke up, we got ready for the day. While we were excited that we had a full bath tub, we were a little less excited to see that the shower door only extended 1/3 of the length of the tub. I feel bad for the housekeeping staff that had to dry the floor every day because of our non-coordination and splashing everywhere!



Our hotel had a continental breakfast which was a great way to start every morning. I decided to do the Greek thing with Yogurt and Honey, but Laura was less excited about the look of it. Hey, when in Athens, do as the Athenians (or is it Rome, I can never remember). We then headed to the roof of the hotel for our first daytime look at the Acropolis and had our picture taken by one of the 50 British people staying in our hotel. Seriously, we could have been at a hotel in London with all of the "real" English speaking going on.



We then set out to actually see the Acropolis up close. On our way, we started to notice that there are apparently no traffic rules in Greece. Motorcyclists go wherever they want (including through red lights), cars park on the sidewalks, and pedestrians walk on water (still with us?).

Our hotel was very centrally located to all of the sights, so it was simple to get places from there. All we had to do was head up hill toward the main attraction for the day.



Once we got close, we saw a few small tourist groups, but it appeared that we would have the place almost to ourselves. Apparently the way we went up the Acropolis was the little known back way, because once we got toward the top, we were surrounded by school children. The Acropolis seems to be like the Washington Monument would be to us. The only difference is that the Athens schools all decided to descend on (or ascend) the Acropolis on the day we were there.



After being on the Acropolis for a while, it started to rain. I, of course, had looked at the weather forecast in Greek on the TV, and decided by the pictures that the forecast was for a partly cloudy day. What I seem to have missed was the dialogue telling locals that the pictures were just to throw off the tourists and that they should bring an umbrella. So, it stared to rain and all of the cool high school kids in their tight jeans and popped collars (it really was like being back in the 80's) pulled out their umbrellas and started to laugh and point in our direction. Maybe it was just our 2009 clothing, but it could have been because we were soaking wet.

Well, we started heading down the hill and just outside the gate were folks selling umbrellas - just as it stopped raining. So much for planning! We decided to get lunch, but weren't quite ready to try places that we couldn't read the menu. We found a nice little cafe and weren't the only Americans there, so that helped us ease into anything. On the down side, I spilled hot tea on my hand which caused second degree burns, but vacation can't be all fun!

That day we also went to see the Temple of the Olympian Zeus which we had seen earlier from the Acropolis.



I had seen several Discovery Channel specials on the Temple (and pretty much every other ancient site in the world, much to Laura's chagrine), so I was pretty excited to be there. We also passed by Hadrian's Arch on the way there, which was also one of the things I also really wanted to see. I think it shows the incredible juxtaposition between the ancient and the modern in Athens.



Not yet being wet enough from the rain, we decided to go and see the 1896 Olympic Stadium which was pretty cool, at least to us. There were a grand total of 6 people there looking at it, so we must have been wrong about its importance. I mean, who cares about the founding site of the modern Olympic Games?



On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by Syntagma Square, which is where the Parliament is located. There is also a Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. They have a changing of the guard that is a mix between Arlington and Buckingham Palace. On the whole, though, their uniforms and ceremony are much, much cooler. Who wouldn't want puffy shoes that you get to kick up in the air?



Some people get their pictures taken by the guards after they stop moving, but I couldn't convince Laura to jump up there. You'll have to settle for a couple of strangers, although it is a good illustration of the fabulous Greek clothing trends.



Overall, it was a tiring day with all of the hiking around, so we headed back for dinner and people watching closer to our hotel. Come back soon for our next post on day 3!

It's Official!

On Friday we had our regular midwife appointment and our repeat ultrasound. Despite having already gained 12 pounds which is a bit alarming, everything looked good at our first appointment. It was the first time the tape measure came out for my stomach, and apparently I am measuring fine. The last three times we have heard the beartbeat it has been a strong 153 beats per minute so that has been a relief as well. We did ask Jean if there is anything that we can do to eliminate the charlie horse leg cramps that seem to wake me (and of course when I grab Bryan screaming in pain, him too) up in the middle of the night, and she said what I am doing (eating bananas, drinking water, walking, and getting my servings of calcium) are it so unfortunately these might continue through the pregnancy. I guess since I was blessed with the no morning sickness thing I had to have some unfortunate side effect during the 10 months.

After meeting with Jean we headed down to JHU in the pouring rain to get our 2nd ultrasound. This time we had a no-nonsense woman from Eastern Europe who was quite good at her job. We were just there to finish up the pictures of the spine, and despite Amoeba still being curled up in the exact same breach position, she got what she needed. She also checked out the hardware, and Amoeba is definitely a little girl. The doctor pronounced Amoeba healthy and we were sent on our way. We were kind of relieved she is a girl since we have spent the last two weeks calling her female pronouns...although of course we are even more excited that she looks to be healthy and developing well. 4 more months til we get to meet our little one!

Greece Day One - Getting There

So, we know it has been almost two weeks since we got back from Athens, but it has taken a while to get caught up on everything. I mean, we do (kind of) have lives outside of this blog! Anyway, we will get to the details of Athens soon, but we first wanted to talk about our trip over.

Our flight left Baltimore at 10:00 pm on Monday evening. As those of you that know us well are aware, I usually start getting a little grumpy after 9:00, so waiting on the flight was a little painful. We got to to the airport about 2 hours before our flight, which apparently was about 1 1/2 hours too soon because everything in the terminal was already closed and we just sat there staring at each other (lovingly of course).



We finally got on the flight and took off, but as soon as the TV screens were available, we found out mine was not working. Already being more grumpy than a toad at a frog festival, I was not happy about this. Fortunately for us, after attempting to reset the screen twice (which did take up 20 minutes of my viewing of awful movies), we were relocated to a seat toward the back of the plane. All was well and good until we arrived in London for our connecting flight.

For anyone that has been to London's Heathrow airport and terminal and enjoyed it, I'd like to know how many drinks you had on the flight over the Atlantic. On the positive side, there are a lot of (very expensive) shops and restaurants. On the negative side was . . . everything else. First, the plane couldn't even park at a gate. We were offloaded from the plane just to take a 15 minute bus ride until we could start to see the terminal seperate from the horizon. Once inside the terminal, we got to stand in several different lines for things like passport checks, security, and de-lousing. Fortunately, only 45 minutes after our plane landed, we finally got inside the terminal and were free to walk around.

After the 8 hour flight, we immediately went to freshen up and check on what gate our flight departed from. Apparently, that information was a closely guarded secret (or the airline didn't know what they were doing, one of the two) because there was no gate information associated with our London-Athens flight until 5 minutes before we we supposed to board. We did have a nice breakfast and walked about 13.1 miles (that's a half marathon for those of you not paying attention) around the terminal while we were waiting. We finally were told which gate to head to, but then the real fun started.

We got to the gate, and to our surprise, our plane that was leaving in 30 minutes was just pulling into the gate. We assumed a little delay until we realized that we had the genius patrol loading and unloading cargo from our plane. I would like to be funny here, but it really did take these guys at least 5-6 attempts to line up lifts, trucks, etc.



I'm not a logistics person, but I can tell you that having people who don't know how to drive driving trucks is probably a bad idea. There was also a lot of standing around, which is apparently the best way to turn around a plane quickly.



About an hour late, we finally took off for Athens and our flight. Once we arrived in Athens, though, apparently we weren't very important for the people working at the airport. Our passports got stamped without them looking at our pictures and customs didn't even have anyone working there. The Athens Metro was under construction, so after a very long bus ride, Metro ride, and walk in the rain, we finally made it to our hotel just in time to go to bed. On a positive note, the view from the roof of the hotel was pretty nice.



Next post: First Full Day in Athens - The Acropolis