Spay Our Way in Romania: We are in Athens!

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Whew! Marian picked us up at 12:30 this am. Amazing that we fit nine of us and all the luggage in the van to the airport! It was a quiet ride… we were all exhausted. We arrived at 3:30am. The first flights out were at 6am. Our flight was not until 10:30am… so it was a loooooong wait at the airport. We were not allowed to check-in until 2 hours before our flight, so we found some chairs and camped out.

Stacy and Marion on the subway.

It was a short and uneventful flight to Athens. Woohoo!! We are in Greece! We rode the subway to Athens, a simple adventure. Pretty easy and only 8 euros each. Our apartment is right across from the subway exit, so it was very easy.

Next stop is....

Panos, the owner of the apartment that we rented, arrived only a few minutes after we did. Our apartment is a nice 2 bedroom with a small kitchen, living room, dining room and bathroom. The veranda is nice and large. (In fact, I am currently sitting out on the veranda, staring at the Acropolis all lit up, watching and listening to people strolling and visiting and eating and drinking Music is playing. It is fantastic!)

Nutmeg posing with the Acropolis in background!

We have the key to the roof veranda as well!! With a 360 degree view of the entire city. OMG!! The apartment building is five stories and the roof is on the 6^th floor. (The ground floor is floor 0, then each of the floors at you go up is numbered, the first one above the ground floor is the 1^st floor, in the US the ground floor is the 1^st floor). Anyway, 6 floors plus the balcony. Luckily there are 2 small lifts (elevators) so we don’t have to climb the narrow, steep, circular staircase! That is a relief! The temperature is in the 80’s with about 45% humidity. So warmer than I would like to be going up and down stairs! Also, our flat does have air conditioning, so it should be nice for sleeping and relaxing.

View on our rooftop balcony looking at the Acropolis

One of our small lifts.

I thought we might take a rest because we were all so tired, but no, off we went to explore and be amazed in this ancient and historic city. We had a nice dinner at one of the local tavernas. I wish I could remember everything we had. Wonderful food. And topped it off with more gelato! Yum!

Looking down our stairwell.

Goods at local market.

Very old verses very new.

We wandered through the Plaka which is one of the most popular neighborhoods for tourists (which we are). Ginny’s knees were bothering her, so she went back to the apartment. Marion and I went off to scope more of our neighborhood. I felt that we needed some wine to drink on the rooftop. I don’t even drink wine! But I still felt it was necessary. So I found a little bottle of white wine and we took the lift to the top!

The Parthenon

The Coliseum

Moon rising...

As the sun was setting, Marion and I enjoyed the views, took a bunch of photos of the moon rising as the sun was setting. And sipping wine. LOL!!! Yep, I would say it was Nutmeg drinking, but it was me!

Finally headed to bed. Looking forward to touring around the city tomorrow!

Kalinychta! (Good night!)