Athens, Greece, May 31-June2, 2008

We're trying to use up our remaining USAirways points and then avoid the declining airline forever. So, we upgraded our outbound flight from Philadelphia to Athens to business class. That made all the difference in the ease of the overnight and the smoothness of our arrival in Athens on Saturday morning. The 30 minutes from touchdown to when we were inside the taxi made this the easiest and quickest arrival of any trip we’ve made abroad. The legendary Athens traffic was also light and easy on a Saturday morning.

The Athens Cypria Hotel is a small, mid-rise on a quiet, tiny street, centrally located in Syntagma near the Parliament House. Our fifth floor room is modest, but surprisingly large, including a balcony with a view of a very old, tile-roofed, tumbling down Greek house inhabited by lots of pigeons. The view includes lots of newer, taller buildings, but the old one is charming, somehow.

Diogenes Cafe just above the Monument of Lysikrates



Monument of Lysikrates, which became a Capuchin Monastery and housed Lord Byron on his trip to Athens

with Melina Mercouri near the entrance to the Plaka neighborhood (lots of restaurants & shops)

Hadrian's Arch at the entrance to the temple ruins - that guy got around (York, England to Greece and beyond!)

Olympian Zeus Temple ruins we stumbled on near the National Gardens

FYI.
This trip was undertaken on behalf of our dear friend, Christie D. Vernon (who died May 19, 2002), to visit her Romanian grandchildren. Oh well, it's REALLY because we want to have a chance to be surrogate grandparents for little Christie (5) and Andrei (3).

But, hey, since we were coming this far, we wanted to see some other places we've never visited before. That's how we ended up with the following itinerary spread over 3 weeks: Columbus-Philadelphia-Athens-Bucharest-Istanbul-Athens-Columbus, with some auto travel in Romania to visit Transylvania (yep, Dracula) and Alina's family in Baia Mare up near the Hungarian border.