Trip Report: Greece

Day 1: DMM --> Athens

Travis woke up at 3 am to watch the K-State game and vacation got off to a good start as the Cats pulled off a road win over West Virginia! We left the house at 7:00 to go to the airport, which is SO much better than the midnight departures we have made oh-too-many times. Jeanette decided not to wear an abaya. How scandalous! Once through customs (sorry, no stories this time!), we enjoyed some Cinnabon cinnamon rolls and the semi-(dis)-comfort of the Dammam business lounge, then made it to our plane for Qatar. Lucy and Ellie had a blast in the play area in Doha, as always.

Ellie thinks she can climb this ladder just like Lucy!

The Doha play area is... unique

Peekaboo!

The flight to Athens was typical for traveling with a 1 year old and a 3 year old. Ellie screamed a lot, but eventually slept, Lucy was mesmerized by the iPad, Travis watched a movie and Jeanette slept. Hahaha wasn't that really funny? No Jeanette did not sleep, she took care of the children's many many needy needs.

This is how you entertain toddlers on an airplane. As many electronic devices as possible!

Lucy 'decorated' her space with Minnie Mouse stickers. The flight attendants were sweet and asked her if she could do other seats too :)

Somewhere along the way Travis got half a cup of cognac spilled on his leg, but details are fuzzy. What Jeanette remembers is that immediately after that happened, while Travis was cleaning his pants in the bathroom, a cup of apple juice spilled everywhere and then Ellie kicked a jar of baby food on the floor. It was all cleaned up so well by the time Travis returned he had no idea there had been two more incidents. (Can you tell we took turns writing this section?)

We arrived in Athens at about 5 pm and breezed through customs and baggage claim (our gate checked stroller even met us at the gate for the first time in a year and a half!). The travel agency we booked through met us after baggage claim and took us to our hotel. Maria, our host, is originally from Venezuela but married a Greek man and fell in love with the country. It didn't take us long to figure out why!

After checking in to our hotel we set out to find a spot to eat. It was cool enough for our jackets but the breeze felt great after being in summer weather since last March. We walked around a pedestrian area near our hotel called Plaka and found a great restaurant with pork souvlakis, pork gyros, wine and beer, heated outdoor seating, and live music. Can you tell our priorities? We also had one of our favorite appetizers, Prosciutto and Melon! Our hotel and Plaka are very close to the ruins of the Temple of Zeus and the Acropolis, and we were amazed to be in a modern city with such incredible historical sites so close by. Rome is the only other city we've been to that can compare in that way. Absolutely incredible.

So fresh and delicious! I never got tired of eating pork souvlakis!

Day 2: Athens- We walked. And we walked. And then we walked some more. When we were done walking we ate pork and drank wine. :-)

We had a half-day city tour that picked us up at our hotel at 8:30, which meant we had plenty of time for breakfast. Our hotel, the Royal Olympic, seems to be very popular for business conferences, so of course it has a good breakfast buffet. Not only was the spread delicious, but it came with an incredible view of the Acropolis and the Temple of Zeus.

Panorama from the roof-top restaurant of our hotel. Acropolis on the left, Temple of Zeus straight away, and 'the highest mountain in Athens' towering above the city on the right

What an amazing place to eat breakfast!

The city tour was quite nice. We saw all of the highlights of the city, including the original Olympic stadium (from the modern Olympic Games- 1896, anyways), the Parliament building (including the changing of the guard!) and ended up at the Acropolis. Athens built a new Acropolis museum a few years ago, and it is quite impressive. Many sculptures and friezes from the original Parthenon are housed here, and they set up the third floor to mimic its layout.  My favorite feature is that the glass-bottom floor inside the museum is open to excavations of the ancient city of Athens that are currently taking place, literally beneath the museum!

Posing in front of the stadium from the 1896 Olympic games

Ellie thought these guards were funny

Parliament (I think)

Entrance to the Acropolis museum--so cool seeing the ongoing excavations beneath our feet!

After the museum we went up the Acropolis. All the way up. Pushing strollers on cobblestone, and then leaving the strollers at the check point and carrying the kids the rest of the way up. Did you know that the word "Acropolis" literally means "high city"? I'll admit that this wasn't as bad as the walk up to Neuschwanstein last year, but only because we had to fight ice and snow that time. Anyways, it was well worth the walk. We were blown away by what was left of the temples, and the girls had an absolute blast crawling/climbing around on the marble rocks. We felt so blessed to have amazing weather to be hiking in! We almost opted out of climbing up the Areopagus hill, but fortunately decided to hike up and see what it was about. Turns out, that hill is the spot where the Apostle Paul apparently did most of his ministering to the people of Athens! Walking up there, thinking about what had happened in that space, was an incredible feeling. And again, Lucy loved climbing on the "swippery wocks".

The theater at the Acropolis

From the entrance

Panorama of Athens from the acropolis. The modern building in the middle is the Acropolis museum. The Temple of Zeus is the green space in the middle left. The mediterranean sea is in the distance. Athens is a beautiful city!

Nothing makes this girl happier than rocks. 

Ellie trying so hard to keep up with Lucy! They have no idea what an amazing place they're rock climbing in!

Ellie and Daddy being cute

Aeropagus hill, where Paul preached! With an amazing view of the acropolis and the city! Thankfully no one broke any ankles.

The walk down the hill was much easier than the walk up, but by the end of it we were famished! We happened upon a quaint little cafe and recharged, then headed down to the Temple of Zeus. The ruins of the temple are situated in what feels like a city park, which made walking around it very comfortable. Per Wikipedia, "Construction began in the 6th century BC during the rule of the Athenian tyrants, who envisaged building the greatest temple in the ancient world, but it was not completed until the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian in the 2nd century AD some 638 years after the project had begun. During the Roman periods it was renowned as the largest temple in Greece and housed one of the largest cultstatues in the ancient world...  In the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire, the temple was extensively quarried for building materials to supply building projects elsewhere in the city... Fifteen columns remain standing today and a sixteenth column lies on the ground where it fell during a storm in 1852. Nothing remains of the cella or the great statue that it once housed."

Temple of Zeus. The columns are 55.5ft high and 6.5ft in diameter. There temple was originally designed to have 104 columns! 

Check out that Corinthian column pediment! Aren't you impressed I remembered that from Arch 101?

The fallen column is the one knocked down in 1852 by a storm.

There weren't any other ruins on our bucket list to visit at this time, so we decided to walk around Plaka some more and check out some of the shops. We happened upon this excavation just walking around. Everyone's backyard is quite literally a treasure hunt!

We indulged Lucy in a request for spaghetti for dinner and headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next days drive.

Day 3: Athens -> Corinth -> Nafplion

One of my favorite things about the travel agency we used is that they did all the arrangements for the hotels and rental car for us. The rental agency dropped off the car at the hotel at 9:00... not exactly the vehicle we were hoping for, but it was able to get us around the country! Nicknamed "Moose", as it came from a dealership named ΜΟΥΣΤΑΚΑΣ (Moustakas). MOOOOOOSE!!!

No need to worry about packing light with a vehicle this size! Yes, it drove like a moose.

We were finally packed and on the road out of Athens about 10 am. Knowing we have several types of navigational devices at our disposal I rarely look at a map ahead of time any more, at least not in any more detail than to know the general direction we're supposed to be going. This time we navigated using a combination of our 8 year old Garmin GPS, cell phone Google Maps GPS and street signs. At one point, the Garmin said to turn left, the street sign said to go straight and the phone said to turn right! We trusted the cell phone (note to fellow travelers--it's usually best to follow street signs! We end up in some strange places following the "shortest distance" route) and ended up driving through some orange groves. This explains why we'd been seeing a lot of fresh squeezed orange juice on the menus! 

We stopped in Corinth on the way to Nafplion. The ancient part of town was smaller than we imagined, but it was beautiful. We parked in a lot next to some ancient temple ruins and a playground. Guess which we visited first! Once Lucy had gotten some energy out, we walked towards the main square area to find some lunch. As we were admiring some classical-style painted ceramics in a store window, the owner walked up and unlocked the door. He spent probably half an hour showing us his wares, and we were generally impressed. He was rewarded for his efforts, as we are now proud owners of two pieces of handmade art from Ancient Corinth.

Just playing around on this slide across the street from some ancient ruins... NBD

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pic of plates

The main street in Ancient Corinth was lined with cafes and tourist shops. We chose a lunch spot that claimed to have 'the best view' and was 'no smoking'. The view was nice but there were no less than 5 cigarettes smoked between the four other patrons in the restaurant. Seems the public ad campaigns about the dangers of smoking have not made their way to Greece yet.

A lovely view for eating moussaka and stew!

The art shop owner tried several times to get us to tell him we were going to hike up the Acrocorinth. Since he was so insistent on it we decided we should check it out. We drove up the hill getting more excited about the view with each switchback in the road. Unfortunately we only had about 20 minutes until closing time when we arrived so we only made it about halfway up the fortress, but the shop owner was right! The views were incredible!

Notice how the fortress structure goes all the way up the mountain!

Panorama of the view just from the parking lot!

Starting our hike up the Acrocorinth!

Incredible view!

Family picture overlooking the Gulf of Corinth

Mixed emotions about not getting to climb to the top. I'm sure it would have been fun but my legs were thanking me later!

Couldn't get enough of the views!

An hour later we arrived in Nafplion at our 'Boutique Hotel'. Again our travel agent had done a great job of finding us a 2 BR hotel room so the girls could have their own sleeping space. We headed out to dinner at a top rated TripAdvisor restaurant for pizza and sangria. 



Day 4: Nafplion

After breakfast we decided to drive to the staircase that leads up to the Palamidi fortress. While it was within walking distance of our hotel, we knew we would want to get in the car immediately after our descent! Rumor has it there are 999 steps to the top. The walk up was not easy (mostly thanks to the 30 lbs on our backs!!) but every time the walls opened to a new view it was breathtaking. Or maybe I was just breathless from the stairs. I shed my scarf about 20 m up and had to remove my coat (with a sleeping baby on my back!) at the top. It was a GORGEOUS day and I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Today's opponent!

Ready to conquer the Palamidi!

Whew! We made it the first 50 steps! Only 949 to go...

The Peninsula... more on this later!

Still have a lot more steps to go!

Close enough Lucy can walk herself the rest of the way!

Once we got to the first main fortress area we took our time to wander around. We had no idea how much farther there was to keep going!

Family picture from the 'top'!

Could there be anything more fun for a 3 year old than a large ramp made out of rocks

Only small stairways leading to hidden passages! Who might be under that arch?

The fortress even has a chapel!

There were a few times that Lucy got pretty discouraged so we had to tell her that we were looking for Elsa in the top of the castle. To this day if you ask her about Greece she will tell her that we 'found Elsa'. For the most part she had a great time climbing, running, jumping oh all the rocks!

Uh-oh, Lucy and Daddy crawled in the prison!

Surely this situation seemed a lot safer in real life than it does in the picture...

But maybe we were distracted by the ever-increasing amazing views!

Panorama of the peninsula and view of the city

At the 'top' we realized there was more to explore, so we kept going. And going.. and going...

So much more to see!

And we're still having a great time!

Can't get enough family pictures with this backdrop. Too bad it's really hard to get all members of the family to cooperate!

That peninsula keeps getting smaller!

At the top we found someone who was likely making a pretty good living selling fresh-squeezed orange juice and snacks to naive, thirsty tourists who didn't bring enough provisions for such a hike.

If you look closely, you can see the juicer doing it's work behind the coffee pot.

Enjoying a well-earned snack!

The trip down the mountain then seemed almost more treacherous than the trip up. It's one thing to go down a lot of stairs on your own, it's a completely different experience with the babies on our backs! I was petrified to lean forward at all in fear of toppling over! Thankfully the stone wall provided a good place to hang on for most of the climb down.

But we made it! We found a lunch spot and decided to check out the town. We found a nice shop where they told us about another good hike to go on. And we were crazy enough to follow their advice! The beautiful little peninsula we could see from the top of the Palamidi had a wide, nicely paved hiking trail all the way around it, and conveniently it ended really close to our hotel.

Ellie had a ball pushing Lucy around the place we ate lunch!

Simply beautiful!

Ellie was enjoying it too! Lucy...

...had completely conked out.

See the structure running along the entire length of the top of the hill behind Travis? That was what we had explored just a few hours earlier!

I can't think of a better way to end the day

We were pooped by the time we got to our room, so decided to stay in and eat leftover pizza for dinner and let Lucy watch her favorite movie. I sent Travis in search of some Loukamadis on his way to retrieve the car. A much deserved treat after a long day of hiking!

And i-things. I enjoyed the Loukamadis, everyone else enjoyed i-things.

Day 5: Nafplion -> Olympia

Pretty sure she's the cutest thing to ever be in this hotel breakfast area :)

I was so glad I took this picture of Lucy in this adorable outfit first thing because the road to Olympia was so twisty-turvy my poor girl got car sick. But it was after we got some pictures of these crazy towns on built in to the side of the mountain!

Our amateur photography does not do this vertical town justice. 

Yep, that's a blind-spot mirror on the highway!

Despite Lucy getting car-sick the drive was gorgeous, and we did not regret taking the 'scenic route'. Although I'm pretty sure every route in Greece is a scenic route!

Pretty mountains

More mountains... so mystic looking with the cloud cover! We now understand how so many myths and legends came out of this land.

This is a two-lane bridge with a blind corner at the end. Reminded us of Ireland!

We arrived in Olympia early afternoon leaving us a few hours to check out the museum before checking into the hotel. The girls did pretty well being quiet in the museum, despite sitting in the car all day, and enjoyed pushing their own strollers around.

Sorry dear, this bust was not modeled after you! Just a few more days at the gym...

Once we completed our tour of the museum, we headed to the main square for lunch.Travis declared this was the best pork gyro he'd had yet. The girls thought this was the best restaurant ever because they got to chase stray cats while waiting for the food!

After lunch we checked into our hotel and decided to drive around for awhile, since the hotel restaurant wasn't opening for dinner until 7 pm. There wasn't a whole lot to see, but we did happen upon this theater, which I believe is recent construction but designed in the antiquity style. It would be a really fun place to see a show in the summertime! The view was incredible, and my theater-geek husband really enjoyed reciting some Shakespeare from the stage. The acoustics on the stage were also incredible! I could hear him perfectly at the top, even though he was speaking normally.

We really enjoyed dusting off all the greek we learned in college math classes--it really did help us to read the signs! This one says Theta-Epsilon-Alpha-Tau-Rho-Omega Omega-Lambda-Upsilon-Mu-Pi-Iota-Alpha, or TEATRO OLYMPIA. Olympia Theater. Get it? We thought we were pretty clever.

"TO BE OR NOT TO BE..."

Day 6: Olympia -> Delphi

Unfortunately we woke up to a rather dreary day, but we weren't going to let that stop us from touring ancient Olympia. We really enjoyed wandering around all the ruins, and we even got to see an excavation in progress! It was incredible to think about how many people lived in this site so long ago.

Archeologists hard at work.

From the entrance, overlooking excavations and the gymnasium

Lucy hard at work gathering rocks in her mittens.

Still mitten-rock collecting

Philippeion--A circular construction of Ionic columns built by Philip of Macedon to commemorate the Battle of Chaironeia (338 BC), where he defeated a combined army of Athenians and Thebans (Lonely Planet GREECE, 10th Ed)

There were signs throughout the site which really helped us to appreciate what we were seeing. Unfortunately, I can't remember what most of these monuments are now.

Lucy found an 'O'! She was very excited to identify some letters she recognized.

I think this may have been a chapel of some sort? Priest's house? Wrestling school? Something like that...

Beautiful ancient scroll work!

 This was one of my favorite buildings at Olympia. It was used as a meeting house for the athletes. The rectangular structure directly in front was a pool.

They also found evidence of heating system piped through the walls, a still, and a completely in-tact mosaic floor

Family picture at Olympia!

Lucy sitting on rocks too big to put in her mittens

Lucy attempting to propel the stroller with her feet Flintstones-style sitting on the foot rest. She was surprisingly good at it.

Check out the size of the toppled-column pediment directly behind Travis. This proves these columns were in fact over 6 ft wide!

The entrance to the track! Looks pretty similar to the tunnel the K-State players run out of at home football games, right?

 Lucy and Daddy had fun racing down the track. Mommy was too cold and stayed behind with Ellie to take pictures.

There was a little discrepancy as to who won the race... they both thought they were winners...

Travis wanted to go back to the same place for lunch that we'd been the day before, but unfortunately since it was so cold and dreary we had to sit inside. The pork was still delicious. After lunch we set out for Delphi. I would love to do this drive again in the summer when you could really see the mountain views.

The bridge crossing the Gulf of Corinth from the Peloppenese into central Greece

Beautiful sea side towns along the road to Delphi!

Another breath-taking view!

We arrived in Delphi at dusk via some extremely narrow switch back roads. Turns out we were the only guests in the entire hotel. This was definitely my least favorite hotel experience, and part of it was knowing we were the only people there. The other part was just because the hotel room was old and small and we didn't have a separate space to put the girls, so no one really got any sleep that night. We walked to a restaurant recommended by the clerk, and we were so happy he recommended it--this ended up being my favorite meal of the trip! The pork tenderloin was excellent, the wine was good, and the kids got made-to-order plain spaghetti with butter and cheese.

Have I ever mentioned how hard it is to look at all these pork pictures post-vacation? I MISS PORK!

Day 7: Delphi -> Kalambaka

While they didn't open the entire breakfast buffet for the only guests in the hotel, the owner was very nice and brought us fresh squeezed orange juice, a meat and cheese platter, and some hot toast. Modest but that was fine for us. We really enjoyed the Delphi museum, and here saw the original of the bronze statue replica Travis had taken a picture with at our first hotel in Athens!  Then we had to hike around the archeological site in the rain. I was trying to keep a good attitude, but Ellie wouldn't stop crying, and it was so foggy we couldn't see anything but what was in front of us, so we'll just have to go back and visit in the summertime. When Ellie is old enough to walk.

Sphinx of the Naxians, 560 BC

Frieze from the Siphnian treasury, I think?

See the notations over the script? This is believed to be one of the oldest pieces of music!

Apollo

The Bronze Charioteer, commemorating a victory in the Pythian Games of 478 or 474 BC

Overlooking the Sanctuary of Athena from the Sanctuary of Apollo

We went back to the same restaurant from the night before, partly because it was that delicious and partly because there just wasn't much open in the off season. After lunch we hit the road for Kalambaka. There was nothing terribly remarkable about this road trip, other than we did see some towns that appeared to have been hit really hard by the Greek financial crisis, so that was a little sad to see. We were also stopped at a random checkpoint by the police and Travis had to locate the international driver's license. This caused a few moments of panic as we couldn't remember exactly where it was, but we were so thankful we had done the responsible thing to go ahead and get it!

Road leaving Delphi

Day 8: Meteora, Trikala, and Kalambaka

We started the day with breakfast in the hotel and had our typical favorites of greek yogurt and muesli, chocolate croissants, omelets, tea etc. After breakfast we loaded the car to drive up to the monasteries of Meteora. Only one of the monasteries could be reached by car so we decided to start there and see how we felt about hiking the others after seeing that one. Unfortunately it was an extremely foggy day and we couldn't see hardly any of the splendid views that were supposedly in front of us. The monastery was beautiful though and we happened to piggy back on a tour group that was there so we learned a little about the ornate finishes in the chapel and incredibly old historical documents in the museum.

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More cats to stare at

There's supposed to be an incredible view on the other side of this fog

If the fog was any thicker we wouldn't have been able to see each other!

I still didn't quite feel up the challenge of hiking (considering we had hiked almost every day of the trip so far!), and with the looming fog it really didn't seem it would be worth it, so we drove to a lookout point just to check it out. As we were hanging out on the lookout an amazing thing happened- the fog started to lift! We were finally able to see what we came for and the views were absolutely exhilarating. We could several of the other monasteries from here and despite how amazing the hikes looked, the thought of hoisting the baby on my back and walking up yet more stairs and narrow paths was giving me palpitations, so we settled for just looking at them from here.

MORE ROCK CLIMBING!

I really can't fathom how these were built over 500 years ago using ropes and pulleys

Panoram from the lookout point. So grateful the fog cleared so we could appreciate the beauty of the area!

Just to show how rural this place is...

We really enjoyed the drive through Meteora back to Kalambaka and again, would love to come back in the summer with older children to really take advantage of all the hiking and fun outdoor activities, but for this trip we were too tired and cold to do that, so we headed back towards Kalambaka.

The clerk at the hotel in Delphi had told us that Trikala has a Christmas festival so we thought that would be a good afternoon activity (not to mention we soak up anything Christmas that we possibly can when traveling!) The girls had fallen asleep in the car on the way down the mountain so we decided to continue driving to Trikala to let them nap. We knew very little about Trikala or the Christmas festival, so we thought driving to the town center would be the best course of action. Trikala appeared to be a fun, young city with a pedestrian zone in the middle and we thought finding a place to eat lunch would be simple. After wandering around for over an hour, and seeing countless coffee shops and cafes, but a total of ZERO restaurants, we finally settled on a deli that appeared to be the only place in the entire downtown area that looked like they served lunch. It was decent but more like Jason's deli instead of the charming greek cafe I was hoping for.

After lunch we kept walking looking for this big Christmas festival we kept seeing posters for. We finally found an information booth that helped us locate it on a map. It was no German Christmas market, but they did have a lot of fun activities for kids. I think we may have been the only Americans to ever go to this Christmas festival, there were a lot of people who were both very surprised and proud that we had chosen to come to their festival! While a lot of the activities and carnival rides were geared towards older kids Lucy had a great time on the roller coaster and playing at the Play-Mobil sponsored house. She also wrote a letter to Santa!

I hope carousels are always this exhilarating for you, dear daughter!

Lucy's first roller coaster!

Lucy and her letter to Santa

They even had a mailbox for letters to Santa!

Playing in the Play-Mobil workshop... Ellie was actually trying to steak some toys by sneaking them into the stroller basket.

They put a large bow on the old mill house! how cute!

Lucy and Ellie having the time of their life in a pink Elvis cadillac

Merry Christmas from Greece!

That evening we decided we were finally tired of Greek food so went to a pizza place not far from our hotel. We were the only ones in the restaurant (another perk of traveling during the low season!) and the girls had a great time running around being cute.

Day 8: On the road back to Athens

We only had a 4 hour drive ahead of us so we took a leisurely breakfast at the hotel while planning our route. I discovered some amazing gingerbread cake at breakfast but also enjoyed the usual Greek yogurt parfait, eggs, and bacon. We decided to take the highway route around the coast instead of going back the same way we came, both to see some new scenery and to avoid any more car sickness events from the switchbacks of the central Greece mountain ranges. And even though it was a highway route, we weren't worried about it being a boring highway drive, because it was still a highway in Greece!

Based on the very limited information in our Lonely Planet guidebook, we chose Lamia as our lunch stop. Trip Advisor listed six restaurants so we figured it couldn't be to hard to find a place to eat. I plugged the #1 restaurant into our GPS and off we went. Well our spontaneity nearly got us in trouble again! The GPS led us into the city center, and it was jam packed with people, cars, and one way streets with no available parking anywhere to be seen. After driving around the city center a few times we finally spotted a parking garage. We pulled in and immediately got yelled at in Greek. After a few panic-stricken moments, we realized that it was a valet parking garage and they didn't want us to drive in ourselves. Once the girls were unloaded, we made our way toward the square where our restaurant was supposed to be. The particular restaurant we were looking for was no where to be found, but we did find another great buffet-cafe! The lemon chicken, moussaka, and burger were all really good! And of course we enjoyed more fresh squeezed orange juice.

More orange trees, these in the center of Lamia!

We arrived back at the same hotel we started at in Athens and it was almost like coming home! So refreshing to be somewhere familiar while traveling! They even gave us the same room we had been in before. We headed out to dinner at a restaurant called "Cave of the Acropolis", mostly because it sounded fun, but it also had decent reviews on Trip Advisor. It wasn't the best food of the trip but there's a lot of competition for that in Greece! I had a perfectly prepared white fish. I was a little weirded out by the head attached to the fish on my plate, but the meat itself was so good I didn't mind it after awhile. The best part was definitely the view! We were literally at the base of the acropolis and it looked so pretty all lighted up way up above.

Again we were impressed by the agreement with the rental car company--they came to pick it up while we were at dinner so we didn't have to even see the car again after we arrived at the hotel! I wish all rental car companies would do this!

After dinner we walked around enjoying the Greek outdoor cafe lifestyle and stopped for a few more souvenirs and some gelato. Turns out you shouldn't let your 3 year old order double-chocolate gelato at 8 pm. She has never been more wound up. I think this picture describes it well.

She even requested to Skype with family! This was a first. Normally she runs and hides when we tell her we're going to Skype. Unfortunately both sets of grandparents were on their way out the door for a K-State football game, but Aunt Jessica was available and Lucy chatted her up like never before. They compared stethoscopes (yes Lucy brought her Doc McStuffins stethoscope to Greece!), talked about lab coats, and Travis' parents dog, Charcole. It was a fun way to end the evening but then I had to pack while Travis stayed up to watch the K-State game.

Last day in Greece

We didn't have much time before our shuttle was coming to pick us up for the airport, but it was enough time to enjoy a semi-leisurely breakfast at the great roof-top restaurant with amazing views of the city. I had decided this was the best breakfast buffet of the whole trip so I was happy to get to enjoy it one last time.

Overall we had a GREAT time in Greece. I would really love to go back in the summertime to experience central/northern Greece in nice weather and of course to see the islands. In case you're interested, here's a list of the hotels we stayed in and the travel agent we used. I would use the travel agent again in a heartbeat, but next time might do more research on hotels and try to pick some myself.  I don't think we had a lot of options going in the low season, but in the end it all worked out well and we generally got a good nights sleep. But I really can't speak highly enough of this travel agency! I think the price we paid was very reasonable and the service was top notch. I hope you get to see it for yourself some day!

Links:
Fantasy Travel--We used the "Build Your Itinerary" link

Hotels
Royal Olympic Hotel, Athens
Hotel Ippoliti, Nafplion
Best Western, Olympia
Hotel Amalia, Delphi
Hotel Divani, Kalambaka


Restaurants
Athens cafe
Delphi
Cave of the Acropolis, Athens