Athens!

The next stop was Athens, Greece!! This was the part we were even MORE excited for!!

We stayed in another awesome 5 star incredible Marriott, and had a cute little romantical balcony in our room. This was shortly after we had arrived in Athens, out on our balcony!

So, the one thing we didn't count on when we were planning our trip to Athens, was all the turmoil that is going on there. So much division between the people and the government, and it made for a few obstacles. The day we got there all of the Taxi's were on strike, which wasn't too big of a deal, because we were planning on taking the metro to our hotel anyway.

Once we got to the hotel, we realized that there were some pretty heavy duty "demonstrations" aka riots going on down in the city center. So, because it was was almost dark, we were exhausted, and we didn't really know our way around the city yet, we just stayed in for the first night, ordered some good old American Pizza Hut. And had a quiet night in. It was great. We actually did order the "Greek" pizza, which was made with feta cheese, pepperoni, fresh tomatoes and olives. So delish.

Okay, before I go on with this post, I just need to say that I have about a million pictures of our time in Athens, it was SO hard to narrow down what I posted, but I did it, because otherwise it would take 3 days to read this post. SO, now I will continue:

The next morning we got going early, despite the continued "demonstrations" going on in the city center. We went straight to The Acropolis.

The Acropolis Rock was the Sacred Rock where the ancient Greeks built their temples, and the place of the very incredible, and very famous, Parthenon!

The first thing you see after the hike up the rock is the Herodes Atticus Theater, built in 161. So beautiful!

Us up on the Acropolis, with the view of the city, and the Herodes Atticus Theater

It was SUCH an incredible view!

At the top of the rock, the entrance basically into the "city" is through the Propylaia.

And the view from the other side of the Propylaia

The Erechthium, which was built sometime between 421 - 407 BC ... crazzzzy!

and of course, The Parthenon! It was built even FURTHER back, started in 447 BC.

It was such an incredible thing to see. And almost impossible to even imagine that far back! It is so so amazing that it is still standing today. WOW!

A closer shot of the top, I honestly cannot believe how beautiful, and detailed everything was. This shot kinda shows the stories that they told with the sculptures.

Another view from another angle. You can kinda see Mount Lycabettus in the top...

The street at the bottom leads to Hadrians gate, and then into the Temple of Olympian Zeus

more Parthenon

one of the craziest things about Greece, is the stray dogs. There are literally stray dogs EVERYWHERE... the are all supposed to be harmless, and really just lay around and watch you, and sometimes bark at the motorcycles. It took a while to get used to... Here is one just laying on the steps up on the Acropolis...

The view down to the Temple to Hephaestus (on the left) and the Ancient Agora

We hiked back down the rock on the other side, and walked over to the Temple of Hephaestus, this was also built in 460 BC and is the best preserved classical temple in Greece.

In the Ancient Agora, there are just piles of ruins everywhere, it is crazy. This one is kinda neat!

Us in the Stoa of Attalos, which in ancient days was a shopping center, and now used as the Agora museum...

We hit up dinner at this adorable restaurant

and had the most FABULOUS greek salad! AHHHHHH! To DIE for. Seriously...

we have been trying to recreate it since we got home. It looks simple, but WOW!

this is the view of the restaurant from where we were sitting, out on the patio, and behind us we enjoyed people watching and the view of the Acropolis...

my dinner... cam got lamb, and i didn't get a pic of it, but mine was SO SO SO SO yummers!! It's called Slouvaki... which is skewered meat, mine was pork... mmmm... and you put it all together with warm homemade pitas, tomatoes, onions, and scrum-dilly-umptious Tzatziki (greek cucumber yogurt sauce)

okay, my mouth is watering...

Next we went over to the New Acropolis Museum, it holds SO many incredible ruins from all over the city. And explains the meanings of Greek Gods, and different things on the temples. You can't take pictures in the museum at all, so I don't have anything to show you...

For the rest of the evening we just walked the city, enjoying the sites, and the people, and the shopping.

We walked past Hadrians gate...

one side of the gate claimed the Greek area, and the the other side of the gate claimed the Roman area.

Just walking along the street and we walk past these random ruins... It is a very modern city, and then it is crazy how the city is just randomly COVERED in ruins, everywhere.

For example, this is inside the metro station. They built this incredible metro station for the Olympics in 2004. It took forever to build, because every time they started digging they would find more and more ruins... so they would have to stop, and let the archeologists come in, before they could continue. This is some of what they ran into while building the station, and so they put a glass case around it, and used it as decoration... so neat.

snuck this pic of Cam out on the balcony enjoying the view.

Next morning, we slept in, and took it easy BECAAAUSE... the strikes and insane "demonstrations" were back. The entire metro system, and bus, trams, etc, every possible chance of public transportation was striking... SO.. that basically ruined our plans for the day. We had planned to take the coastal tram out to the coast, and enjoy the sights of the ocean. Soooo... bummer, but it's okay, because Greece is DEFINITELY a place we will be back to soon. With the kids next time...

So we woke up, and got ready and such, and walked 30 minutes to get to The Temple of Olympian Zeus

I actually LOVED that this pillar had fallen over because it shows a better look at how the columns were built, layer after layer.

The detail was insane.

me and my love.

One of the neatest things about Athens is that you can pretty much see the Acropolis rock from anywhere in the city.

The roman baths, which reminds me.... the city is incredible, because there are so many layers to it... things dating all the way back to 700 BC and then EVERYTHING in between... so at the same place where the remains of the Temple of Olympian Zeus is, you see Roman things from later in history, pretty interesting.

We wandered over through the Plaka (the old city, incredible shopping, relaxing and eating, also the area we had eaten dinner the night before). Got some Greek souvenirs, and talked and laughed and enoyed the Greek air. It was perfect. We made our way over to Monastiraki Square:

We went to this famous place, and got another version of Slouvaki, which is called Gyros (pronounced Heros) the street food of choice for the Greeks.

This is the same thing, skewered meat, but here it is thinly shaved meat, this time I got chicken. OH-MY-WORDDDDD! It was so so so delish. This is another thing we have tried to recreate here at home already, still delish, but it will never be the same as the real thing. Mmmmm...

my mouth is watering AGAIN...

Totally out of focus pic, but I was in a hurry, because I was dying to eat it. Check out how thick and wonderful that pita is....

So we sat in Monastiraki Square and ate our Gyros and people watched.

Well, I'm glad we ate before we went to this next place, because it was NOT easy to take. It is the central market, where all the greeks come and get their meat and fish. ICK! Really though, it was pretty neat to see!

One of their most famous dishes is grilled octopus, we never had the opportunity to try it, (well I'm not sure I would have, though I say I would) But, you can see some octopus here in this next pic...

This is the fish part of the market, you can see on the ground how wet and slippery and slimey it is with fish juice and guts, I was slipping all over the place.

Just outside, this looked much more delish to me! :)

a street in between Monastiraki Square and the Plaka, and another stray dog...

We spent the rest of the evening in the Plaka, more shopping and strolling through the streets, all looking much like this:

It was SOOOOO amazing. When our trip was all over we weren't ready to go home, Athens was such a neat city, and we can't wait to get back. It was the perfect trip!!

We WERE however, ready to get home to see our babes... we missed them SO SO much. We were able to video chat with them every day, which helped, and I'm pretty sure 80% of our conversations were about them, and it seemed everything we saw reminded us of them...

But, it took us 36 hours to get home. Not kidding. It was rough. Especially since by that point we were just dying to get home to see the kids. We left Athens, took a 3.5 hour flight back to Amsterdam, and we spent 14 hours in the airport, overnight, so we couldn't even go back out and explore the city again, and we didn't feel like it was enough time to leave the airport and get a hotel. After wandering the Amsterdam airport for about 5 hours it was 1am and we were SO tired. The airport was dying down, there were sleeping people randomly everywhere, and only one store left open. It is a HUGE airport, and we had explored all of it by this point. Inside of the airport they have like a mini hotel that you can rent by the hour, with "cabins" with Queen sized beds, and a full bathroom, basically like a hotel, but a little more like a cruise ship room. They called it the "Yotel" we were dying, so we rented it for 5 hours, and tried to get a little sleep, I think I slept for an hour or two on and off, but it was too awkward and weird, and so we really didn't get much sleep. We did however get to shower which was amazing, and definitely helped get through the night. When we checked out of our "Yotel" the airport was coming back to life, and people were checking in for flights and restaurants were opening, and airline workers and such were back. We felt like Zombies and headed over to the KLM Business Elite lounge (which we had spent a couple hours in the night before as well) and got some breakfast, and went and laid down in their sleep areas. It helped, but not much... somehow we made it to the time our flight left, and it has never felt so good to step onto a plane. We were more grateful than EVER at that point that we were flying business class! It was smooth sailing from there.

After 36 hours we made it home to our babies. We were SO happy to see them. They had a great week, and it seemed we definitely missed them more than they missed us. I mean, I know they missed us, but they were too busy having so much fun with Grandma and Kenz, that they barely noticed. It was kinda liberating to realize they are okay without us, and that we do have the freedom to go on trips without them, and they know we will come back, and everything will be okay. So that is neat. Anyway.

The whole trip could not have gone more wonderfully, and it really was the perfect way to celebrate all Cam's hard work over the last couple years!!