It's all Greek to Me!

We spent only two days in the historic city of Athens, but we'll be returning in March with Wade's college students. This was our first stop in a while where we had to work a bit at getting around. Fortunately, many signs are also printed in English because of Athens hosting the Olympics four years ago, but still there are places where the signs (and menus!) are in Greek only. We managed to figure out the public transport from the airport into town and locate our hotel, The Attalos (click for website). After ditching our bags, we headed out to find lunch & explore the town a bit. We might have ordered too much food at lunch. It turns out that I should have ordered Emma a Kabob instead of a Gyro. She received a giant plate of meat, tomatoes, onions, fries, salad & pitas instead of the Gyro sandwich we're used to at the House of Greek in Stillwater. I tried a meat dish that was swarmming in yougurt & tomato sauce -- super yummy! Wade had a Gyro as well & we ordered some olives -- WOW! Of course, we also had bread, the obligatory basket comes at each meal and we pay for it grudgingly. After lunch we headed for the tomb of the unknown soldier & then tried the tram system. I must admit we were not as skilled here as we'd been with the metro. Fortunately, our long walk back to the hotel took us right by Zeus's Olympic Temple, so we got to wander through some ruins on the way. Dinner was ice cream on the rooftop. Be sure to check out that view on the hotel website! Day two found the Watki making the hike up to the Acropolis (click for more info). It was a long, hot trek, but sooooo worth it! Emma had been learning a lot of history in her Horrible Histories book, Groovy Greeks & Rotten Romans, so she was able to share her knowledge with us as we walked around the Parthenon -- very cool! After our visit there, we hit a museum (hooray for air conditioning!) that contained many Greek relics, including a child's potty chair -- be sure and ask to see that photo upon our return! We called it an early evening because we'd have to catch a 6:45 bus the next morning. We look forward to returning and doing more exploring in the spring.