Athens

After four restful days in Paris, we continued our flight to Athens, a noisy, dirty city, with lots of stray cats and almost as many stray dogs. Everywhere you go, you see big, lumbering canines, which Athenians mostly ignore, but apparently, there are organizations that feed and collar some of them. For the most part, they don't seem to be a problem, but it's kind of weird to see them lying around on city sidewalks! 
 

So far, the weather hasn't been nearly as warm as we had expected it to be in Greece. Our second and third days in Athens, it rained on and off, but we managed to do some exploring despite the showers. While walking around the Syntagma (Constitution) Square on day two, we noticed a huge police presence, mostly in riot gear, and we were a little concerned that we had walked into something scary. As it turned out, it was a peaceful, but large protest march of hundreds (thousands?) of municipal workers who are most likely facing similar cutbacks to the ones state workers in Californina, Wisconsin, etc. have been fighting. 
 

Our hotel, the Hotel Carolina, was simple and clean. Our “rooftop garden room with Acropolis view,” was a bit of an overstatement. There were lots of large potted plants and trees, but you could only see the Acropolis if you went to the other end of the “garden” and looked back toward the other side of the building. If you looked between the satellite dishes and TV antennas, you could barely see the Parthenon in the distance. Still, as I said, it was clean, the staff very friendly, breakfast was decent, it was close to everything thing we wanted to see, and the free wi-fi was great!

On the left side of this photo, you can see the front of the Hotel Carolina, and on the right, is the Booze Cooperative, which seemed to be a chess club during the day, and a music club at night.

Not sure what the chickens on the front of the Booze Coop are all about...

Our neighborhood was a shopping district. Lots of clothes, fabric, household linens, and tons of shoes.

“Room 69,” sort of a Greek Frederick's of Hollywood, specialized in some very sexy shoes.

Speaking of shoes, I had a pair of sandals personally fitted for me by the son of the original Poet Sandal Maker.

There are archeological sites everywhere, even under the glass floor near the restrooms in one of the restaurants where we had dinner one evening.

Our first Athens sunset, taken from the pathway that leads to the Acropolis, overlooking the sprawling city of Athens.

The Acropolis lit up at night is very beautiful.

We finally made it to the Acropolis on our last full day in Athens. This time of the year, in Greece as well as Italy, there are red poppies everywhere!

The Temple of Athena on the Acropolis.

This is us on the Acropolis, with the Parthenon in the background, taken by a lady who had asked Sam for help with her camera.

Blue Star Ferries is the ferry company we used to get to the islands of Santorini and Naxos. They're like small cruise ships, with cars, trucks and other vehicles carried in the bottom. Very smooth sailing.