We began our adventure from San Francisco with the assistance of Greg's cousin, Frank Hubinsky. Frank, who lives in Brisbane barely 10 miles from SFO (the SF international airport), regularly serves as our "long term parking" chauffeur. Thank you, Frank! We regularly get to see him before we leave on these journeys and he picks us up on the rebound. When I think about it, I'd love to hear him tell his point of view on these semi-annual encounters!

Just the flight itself was one of our most exciting to date (and we don't more excitement in this direction). Our first obstacle was that the Air France computers had some of us multiple times and others were absent from their roster! After working that out (which makes it sound easy and fast), we boarded the airplane and got underway. About 4 or 5 hours into the flight they announced that there was some trouble with our aircraft and that they needed to put us down in Montreal. It was 3 AM local time. A few hours later with the mechanical difficulties behind us, we were back on our way to Paris. The detour and delay consumed all of the layover time we had and thanks to some crazy driving around Charles de Gaule Airport and a stroke of good fortune, we made the connecting flight to Athens. Our luggage did not!
We landed in Athens around midnight. After filing a lost luggage report and much to the dismay of our daughters we did not elect to take a taxi ride into the city. We boarded a city bus to downtown Athens, then a taxi driver took us the last mile (for an arm and a leg, of course) to the Adams Hotel where we had reservations. There Dominique and Antoine were expecting us. We found the Adams somewhat dilapidated especially in the bathroom department, but sufficient for one night.

The next morning which was our biological "night" we had breakfast in the Adams and marveled at our good fortunes over the preceding 36 hours. The reason I had chosen the Adams was its proximity to the Acropolis.

 

We climbed the Acropolis from the west and entered through the gates in the traditional direction, up the Propylaia and through the Beule Gate with the Nike Bastion on the right (not shown in this photo). On the Acropolis we saw the Temple of Athena Polias (third image in this row), the Parthenon and other buildings that the girls had studied in their history classes.

From the Acropolis we had only a few hours remaining, so we pointed ourselves to the National Archeological Museum of Athens. While the girls relaxed on the steps, the adults relished the artifacts such as the Mask of Ageamenon (not shown), Cycladic figures, the statue of the Horse and Jockey from Cape Artemision, the statue of the Poseidon of Artemision, Ephebos (340 B.C.) and other works too numerous to remember or photograph.

With only one day in Athens, we had to see one other important site: the tower of the winds, and got a bite to eat. We had lunch in a great little restaurant in which we were treated to our first taste of a variety of authentic Greek dishes. After lunch, we packed up and headed for the port.