Acropolis, Parthenon and the Castro oh my!

Here are a bunch of pictures from the rest of our time in Athens

View from our balcony

Morning ritual: coffee, reading and writing.

First stop: gyros. Yum.

Are we going to have to hike up there?

The answer was yes. This was our first stop/rest half way up. Preeeetty.

The old theater of the Acropolis, at our second stop/rest.

There is supposed to be a video here of the Parthenon, but unfortunately our iPhoto has recently crashed. As soon as we can figure out what has happened, a video with go here.

My own personal payoff for getting to the top....cRats!

cRats like ruins too.

cRats and the amazing view of Athens. So big!

"hot dog", Shai's favorite.

Day 3, we took the Metro to try to find a big Flea market but found this instead..

Yay, bikes!

We found out that our book that was published 2008 was a little out of date, so there was no big outside flea market. The neighborhood that we did end up in, both Shai and I thought, looked and felt like the Castro.

Right?!?

So we found a cafe and sat all day and read and drank Greek coffee.

That's right: Hellas Trans. I must live in Oakland, because this is awesome. (side note, we later found out that  Hellas is  Greece in Greek.)

Our last night in Athens we tracked down a movie theater. The theater was awesome,  but we saw  Bachelorette.  I wouldn't recommend the movie to ANYBODY. It was incredibly terrible and hit every single -ism. We talked about walking out, and we would have had we been in the US, but suffered through as to not be the rude Americans.

Okay, thats most of Athens.  Here is the last few photos of my favorite part of Athens, besides the food, the people that reside in Athens and the beautiful Archeological sites.

Two words: Street Art. Athens, you rock the street art for sure.

(Madonna at the Acropolis)

(This totally would be my tag if I was a street artist)

(wheat pastes I love you)

Next up: Rhodes and beachy times.

jet-lag and Athens, Greece

As most of you know, Shai and I have been planning this trip for sometime and had some pretty sweet circumstances help us to make it possible. I'm not going to actually tell you if you don't already know. I'm a little bit of a conspiracy theorist (and definitely an abolitionist...have I mentioned this before?) and even though I'm sure I love most of you, I also know policing happens on a large level and I don't want any part of it thank you very much.

Moving on..

After a really sweet lunch with the fam, Shai and I flew out on Wednesday night.

Don't know if you can tell, but Ell's hand is up rubbing Shai's chin. I love that my baby-niece has so many amazing people in her life that she loves, and that three of people are ladies with beards. I think it's comforting to her to reach up and feel a beard. If that's not unicorn material, I don't know what is.

In my excitement of international flying and free moves and food I forgot to sleep on the plane. We landed in London Heathrow International Airport knowing full well that we had an eight hour lay over. Originally I was pushing for leaving the airport, hopping into London for a meal and a couple of sweet pics...

Except I felt like this...

Ate this... 

And ended up doing this..

for at-least 7 of the 8 hours.

Our memorabilia of Heathrow Airport and London. 

We landed in Athens early Friday morning 2 o'clock. After filling a missing bag report for my luggage that decided not to take the same flight we did, we took a cab to our hostel. At first impression in Athens we were both surprised to find empty quiet streets compared to our landing in Bangkok two years earlier.  Shai also kept having visceral memories of Isreal.

Up and ready for our day 1 adventures..

after some nescafe of course. Hate you Nestle, seriously you totally suck, but DAMMIT  cooooooffffffeeeeeee.

The first thing on our agenda was to convert some money to Euros. Like the good travelers we are, we converted all of our money into travelers checks. We set out to find a bank. We walked into our first bank and was told that they don't convert money anymore, but gave us directions and two other names of banks that do. We trekked on, found the banks and got the same information, no money exchange. Hmmmmm, notice a theme. So we wondered..

came across this street. 

"ooooooo look, old buildings!"

stopped for a Greek froyo pick me up...

drooled over a shop of baklava...

Bought some fresh fuits, veggies and feta cheese to make a salad back at our hostel..

wondered through a meat-shop isles with super aggressive meat mongers,  but maybe it was the language barrier.

Finally 4 hours later, back at our first stop, right around the corner from the first bank we went into, we stopped on a whim at a Money Gram station and viola! Money exchange happened. Phew.

Day one adventure done. Jet-lag setting in and stinky from wearing and sweating in the same clothes I traveled in, we headed back to our hostel to blog, resume draft and read. Yay, Athens, we like you!

Next up, Acropolis and the Parthenon.